Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

I just got to feel that whoever I marry has some real regard for me.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

Ambition has become a dirty word, and I believe it is a great evolutionary force for the positive. If people fail or go astray in their ambition I can live with it but not with people lowering their expectations, wasting time, slacking off and glorifying failure and stupidity.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.

I’m not perfect.

I always thought it was wrong for me to take credit for the work that I did. I don’t think that anymore.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

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.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

I love money because I’ve earned it. I won sixty G’s with my first knockout – and the week before, I was collecting social welfare.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

It’s not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do – everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

I believe time wounds all heels.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

In the beginning, I was very insecure. I hated how I looked in pictures.

Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship – never.

In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that’s called marriage, and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

Few are drawn to the person whom others avoid and neglect; people gather around those who have already attracted interest.

I got my own back.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

I don’t like to read things that people write about me. I’d rather read what kids have to say about me because it’s not their profession to do that.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

A lot of times, people make other people responsible for their joy: ‚You’re not making me happy, you’re not doing this, you’re not doing that.‘

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.

The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I’m sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody.

I don’t have many friends; I’m very much a loner. As a child I was very isolated, and I’ve never been really close to anyone.

I’ve always wanted to live above my means because it inspired me to work harder.

Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn’t mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.

My father will anticipate everything. He will leave you and me no chance to do a great and brilliant deed.

Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.