I always thought money was something just to make me happy. But I’ve learned that I feel better being able to help my folks, ‚cause we never had nothing. So just to see them excited about my career is more of a blessing than me actually having it for myself.

I’m thankful for the incredible advances in medicine that have taken place during my lifetime. I almost certainly wouldn’t still be here if it weren’t for them.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

OK, I have a nickname. My family calls me ‚Trey‘ because I’m William the third. My dad has the same name, which is always confusing because my dad is well known, and I’m also known.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

I remember when my mother, Shyamala Harris, bought our first home. I was thirteen. She was so proud, and my sister and I were so excited. Millions of Americans know that feeling of walking through the front door of their own home for the first time – the feeling of reaching for opportunity and finding it.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn’t care what kind of movies I made.

When I was a teenager, my biggest lessons came from Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, George Strait, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. I learned so much from opening up for those artists, and it also taught me how to treat your opening acts and make them feel like they’re part of a family, not just a tour.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.

God wants to bless us where we are.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

I was always interested – I mean, it’s kind of part of your job – I was always interested in the camera.

Our greatness has always come from people who expect nothing and take nothing for granted – folks who work hard for what they have, then reach back and help others after them.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

Throughout my 20s and early 30s, I had jobs that I loved. I worked in city government. I ran a youth organization. I served as an associate dean at a university. And I couldn’t imagine how a baby would fit into all of that.

I’ve arrived at the place if I’m not taking a career risk, I’m not happy. If I’m scared, then I know I’m being challenged.

Most people would assume my business success, and the wealth that comes with it, have brought me happiness. But I know I am successful, wealthy, and connected because I am happy.

The happiest moments are when we sit down and we feel the presence of our brothers and sisters, lay and monastic, who are practicing walking and sitting meditation.

I am criticised for not celebrating my goals enough. I am very happy from within, very calm. I just don’t celebrate. I celebrate inside.

My mom and I have always been there for each other. We had some tough times, but she was always there for me.

Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.

I’m a decent cook; I’m a decent chef. None of my friends would ever have hired me at any point in my career. Period.

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plan living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. Man’s happiness really lies in contentment.

A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.

The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

I knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out with no picture.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

My sisters are stronger and my brother’s bigger than me.

Of all nature’s gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?

I definitely don’t think that money can buy you love. It can buy you affection but certainly not love.

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.

It seems like a lot of people seek their peace in things. And most of us are not even satisfied with the things we have… we always want more.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

Life is precious.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

This Sunday School has been of help to me, greater perhaps than any other force in my Christian life, and I can ask no better things for you than that you, and all that shall come after you in this great band of workers for Christ, shall receive the same measure of blessedness which I have been permitted to have.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.

The kindness that’s been shown to me, by doctors as well as my family and my friends, it’s really saved my life.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

When I was growing up, I wanted to adopt, because I was aware there were kids that didn’t have parents.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

Measure your wealth by what you’d have left if you lost all your money.

The money can be a hindrance to someone like me because the danger is that you start thinking, ‚Is that a $20 million take?‘ That kind of thing, and being self-critical.

I think that success is having fun.