Every time I think that I’m getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

Dave Mackay is my definition of a superstar. The man broke his leg three times, but wouldn’t be carried off. He walked off.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.

A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.

I’d go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.

I never read one hateful thing said about me by some 12 year old. So I got to live an actual life. And I’ve kept that mentality. Just because there’s a hurricane going on around you doesn’t mean you have to open the window and look at it.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

You have within you right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you.

My life is a struggle.

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.

There are times when you throw an interception and you’re beating yourself up.

People say you have to hit rock bottom, and, I can tell you, almost dying is as rock bottom as it gets.

My reputation grows with every failure.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right, even when you’re not sure it is.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one’s self to do without it.

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

Courage is grace under pressure.

You can’t stop everything from happening. But we’ve gotten to a point where we’re certainly trying. If a car doesn’t have four hundred air bags in it, then it’s no good.

The older I get, the more important the eternal becomes to me personally.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

I nearly failed when Virgin was in its infancy; I nearly failed in the early 1980s, and, of course, I have nearly died more than once trying to achieve a world record for boating or ballooning. But through a combination of luck and planning, both Virgin and I are still here.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

If you don’t stand your ground, then all that happens is people push you backwards.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst, and with continued unity of effort, we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States – that is, prosperity.

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

I’m very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me. I’m rather surprised at who I am, because I’m actually like my dad!

You can’t have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement. Discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.