Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

It’s very important for Christians to be honest with God, which often, you know, God is much more interested in who you are than who you want to be.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

People like to blame others. I think a person should just look at their own situation, look around them, find out what they wish to do, and seek and go and do that. And that’s it.

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

No person is important enough to make me angry.

A great hallmark of mental wellness is the ability to be in the present moment, fully and with no thoughts of being elsewhere.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

I already am a product.

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

I try to not focus on what people expect from me.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

No religion has mandated killing others as a requirement for its sustenance or promotion.

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

If you try to protect yourself from pain, it becomes a stone in your heart. But the more you learn to face things, the more likely that stone can become a pearl.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

I’ve experienced great things, I’ve experienced great tragedies. I’ve done almost everything I could possibly ever imagine doing, but I just know that there’s more.

Without forgiveness, there’s no future.

Peace is not made at the council table or by treaties, but in the hearts of men.

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of ‚Who do you think you are?‘

I’m a genetic optimist.

If you’re put on a pedestal, you’re supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

I’m my own worst critic, and if I don’t pull off what I think I wanted to do in my head, then I won’t be a happy girl.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America’s really large shadow and that’s not all that bad.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive – that you can touch the miracle of being alive – then that is a kind of enlightenment.

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

Sometimes, I think if you get away from what you’re called to do, it’s more of a distraction.

Our present moment is a mystery that we are part of. Here and now is where all the wonder of life lies hidden. And make no mistake about it, to strive to live completely in the present is to strive for what already is the case.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.

I don’t want to be something that just comes and goes.