Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.

It is important to remember yourself.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

The only shame is to have none.

On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.

What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse. So for me, it’s a great thing to be able to scream and say whatever I want.

Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.

Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart and know that my heart still functions normally. I feel grateful for my heart.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

The true identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual. It’s been taken.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

Before I look stupid and not know what a word means or how to pronounce it, I’ll stop the whole production: ‚Hey, real quick, guys. Define this word for me. Somebody.‘

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

Luckily for me, people don’t scream at me that much in my everyday life.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we, as a people, can be engaged in.

Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.

If I can be a leader, I will.

True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity.

The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.

I put my flaws on front street. So the world accepted my flaws, so I don’t have any flaws.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

To wear your heart on your sleeve isn’t a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.

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.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.

I’ve always strived to be successful, not famous.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

People have this capacity within them to set the world straight.

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth; it’s a shield.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.