Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

It’s not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do – everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.

People want to tear me down, they were going to knife me anyway.

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

Then suddenly something just kicked me. I kind of woke up and realised that I was in a different atmosphere than you normally are. My immediate reaction was to back off, slow down.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‚If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?‘ And whenever the answer has been ‚No‘ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Nothing’s ever easy as long as you go on living.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

The Middle East is hopeful. There’s hope there.

I was hit by a car once on my bike, but I still rode home.

The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don’t let it get the best of you.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn’t.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

When you’re young, you’re not afraid of what comes next. You’re excited by it.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

A jug fills drop by drop.

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

Error is always more busy than truth.

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.