Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

I’d be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I’d been given. I’d be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.

Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

I built a label at the same time I built a career.

I used to stutter really badly. Everybody thinks it’s funny. And it’s not funny. It’s not.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

Go as far as you can see; when you get there you’ll be able to see farther.

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow.

My dad always said, ‚Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.‘

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

Enjoy the satisfaction that comes from doing little things well.

The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.

My success isn’t a result of arrogance – it’s a result of belief.

It is not God’s will merely that we should be happy, but that we should make ourselves happy.

You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

There are many things that I don’t understand.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

Academic qualifications are important and so is financial education. They’re both important and schools are forgetting one of them.

You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‚I release the need for this in my life‘.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that’s powerful.

The important thing is that your teammates have to know you’re pulling for them and you really want them to be successful.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

The one thing about the business of entertainment is that you have to learn patience.

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.