I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given. I believed in myself, and I believe in the goodness of others.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

I am not handsome or sexy. Of course, it’s not like I am hopeless.

For me, it’s about the way I carry myself and the way I treat other people. My relationship and how I feel about God and what He does for me, is something deeply personal. It’s where I came from, my family, I was brought up in a religious household and that’s very important to me.

As I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

If there are people you haven’t forgiven, you’re not going to really awaken. You have to let go.

So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

I’m sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useless by it, can make you extend yourself beyond what you would regard as your capacity. If you’re afraid, the blood seems to flow freely through the veins, and you really do feel a sense of stimulation.

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

As a child of God, I am greater than anything that can happen to me.

One of the things I did when I discovered this huge importance of being vulnerable is very happily moved away from the shame research, because that’s such a downer, and people hate that topic. It’s not that vulnerability is the upside, but it’s better than shame, I guess.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me.

In the world today many people rightfully feel entitled to have success and the good things in life, but they usually understand it will require sacrifice and hard work.

The man who has the will to undergo all labor may win to any good.

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.

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.

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

The self is hateful.

Wanting to feel good is synonymous with wanting to feel God.

A lot of critics object to what I do, but I got into comedy to make people laugh, and I’ve always worked hard.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

I’ve been searching for ways to heal myself, and I’ve found that kindness is the best way.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.

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.

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

The truth is, somebody is always talking about you, so you have to let it go… if it’s not a part of your God-given destiny.

If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

When I look back over my life it’s almost as if there was a plan laid out for me – from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn’t afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

I just love working hard. I love being part of a team; I love working toward a common goal.

We work to become, not to acquire.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

I still think I am the greatest.

Go before the people with your example, and be laborious in their affairs.

Chaos is a friend of mine.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

Once you start doing only what you’ve already proven you can do, you’re on the road to death.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.