Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else’s ideas of who you can or can’t become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a ‚Keep Out‘ sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.

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

I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death… I think… peace and tranquillity will return again.

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

‚Hope and change‘ has become a cliche in our nation, and it is daunting to think that any American could hope for change from what God has blessed.

Victory belongs to the most persevering.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

My philosophy is it’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

You have to stay faithful to what you’re working on.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

God wants to use you to make other people happy! And the happier you make others, the happier you will be because you reap what you sow.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

We can feel joy even while having a bad day, a bad week, or even a bad year!

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

You are not a problem that needs solving.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

I’ve got a woman’s ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it.

Over a 10-year period, 99 out of 100 new entrepreneurs will fail. Only one will be left standing as others get pushed out of the market or burn out from working so hard. It’s really sad.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.

Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death… these are things that unite us all.

With drive and a bit of talent, you can move mountains. I know. I’ve done it.

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.

Anything you really want, you can attain, if you really go after it.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

I don’t focus on the critics. Everyone who is making any difference in any field has critics. As long as I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, then I don’t worry about it.

I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

Bragging just sounds good, man.

I think it’s OK to be confident in yourself.

If you’re not careful to think and speak words of faith, worry will creep in, and it will not only steal your peace and joy, it will steal your ‚today.‘ The present is the greatest gift God ever gives us. So hold on to the peace that’s yours in Christ. Don’t let it go.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

That I be not as those are who spend the day in complaining of headache and the night in drinking the wine which gives the headache!

I’ve always been very happy. I’ve always been easy going and I’ve always been very encouraging; it’s just my personality.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.