I can handle pain.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once, and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died.

It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one’s belly, in order to be able to save one’s head.

For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

The best way out is always through.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

I was in my late thirties when my eyes were opened to truth in God’s Word that showed me I wasn’t living the abundant life Jesus died for me to have. I had a very negative mindset and was miserable most of the time because of the abuse I had experienced throughout my childhood.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

I’m going to use all my tools, my God-given ability, and make the best life I can with it.

There’s room for role models who make mistakes.

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

I’m not a natural performer or exhibitionist. When I was younger, I hated the focus, and it made me feel strange.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

I’m pretty positive, optimistic, so I always expect the best.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was that they didn’t get that. No joke – I’d leave meetings crying all the time.

Nobody can ever say that being negative ever helped them at all – not in any way.

These times are so hard, and they’re getting even harder.

More people should read books. It’s the most concentrated experience you can have.

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

Any hand that I’ve shaken, any person that I met when I was Joe Blow, now that I’m this guy Kevin Hart, has come back. That’s why I treat everybody with respect. I’m always a nice pleasant guy to meet because when they come back to you, they remember.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor – got her master’s with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.

It’s getting harder to make decisions to just want to do something to work… I’m trying to find things that are extremely challenging or mean something to me deeply.

He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.

Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.

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

He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty.

Accountability breeds response-ability.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

There’s a difference in thinking you are a champion and knowing that you are.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

I resigned from the Marine Corps and flying in 1974, even though I loved them both. I quit because I no longer wanted to fight for peace. Instead, I believe we can build a more sustainable peace by working for prosperity.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

I grew up in the east side of Detroit in an area where there was very little, except for a lot of scarcity, poverty and hunger. I never woke up saying, ‚I’m an orphan again today, isn’t this terrible? Poor me.‘

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

I’m chasing perfection.

Cowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

Always say ‚yes‘ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‚yes‘ to life – and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you.

In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.