God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

I feel confident imposing change on myself. It’s a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That’s why I need to throw curve balls.

I’m just looking to learn, grow, stay focused, and become a better fighter and a better athlete.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better.

I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise.

I have promised myself that I’m going to do everything I can for as long as I can.

Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

When the negative thoughts come – and they will; they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

You must do the things you think you cannot do.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

People want to feel hopeful.

Individuals need to be willing to face truth about their attitudes, behaviors, even what we want out of life.

I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

I don’t think I’m such an amazing person who needs to be written about.

I am sure there’s going to be times when I do things wrong that no one’s going to like and everyone’s going to think I’m terrible and rubbish but I know I’m going to go through those times, and it’s just about understanding that that’s going to happen.

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‚Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.

Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

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.

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

My rich dad believed we should all learn to take care of ourselves.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

You can do the same thing with $20 million that you would do with $50 million. So at a certain point in your life and in your career, you realise that it’s not about the money.

I have learned that I really do have discipline, self-control, and patience. But they were given to me as a seed, and it’s up to me to choose to develop them.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you’ve closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.

I’m no leader; I’m a little humble follower.

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.

Why lie? I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say the opposite of what I think, like some others do.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‚Calculus for the Practical Man.‘ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

At some point, you grow out of being attracted to that flame that burns you over and over and over again.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I’ve got Alzheimer’s.

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.

Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.