I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

If you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you’ll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There’s nothing foolproof.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.

Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

If you have a family mission statement that clarifies what your purpose is, then you use that as the criterion by which you make the decisions.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don’t know nothing. I mean, that’s my life lesson.

If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

My confidence is easy to shake. I am very well aware of all of my flaws. I am aware of all the insecurities that I have.

Do the best you can, and don’t take life too serious.

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

Life loves the liver of it.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

Everyone knows nowadays that people ‚have complexes‘. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.

You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.

Fear is the thought of admitted inferiority.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity of others.

If everything isn’t black and white, I say, ‚Why the hell not?‘

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get.

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.

If a guy hits .300 every year, what does he have to look forward to? I always tried to stay around .190, with three or four RBI. And I tried to get them all in September. That way I always had something to talk about during the winter.

No sooner said than done – so acts your man of worth.

We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.

There’s two sorts of fear: one you embrace and one you should listen to and turn the other way.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

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.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

When I used to play sports, I’d be the one cheering the team on, ‚Come on, we can beat these guys!‘ That’s just in me.

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

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

My life is mine to remember.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.

If you are lucky enough to find something that you love, and you have a shot at being good at it, don’t stop, don’t put it down.

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.

Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.

Be not simply good – be good for something.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.