I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

I was always taught not to answer no questions. I’m not really good at answering them because I get agitated so fast.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

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.

In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of ‚Who do you think you are?‘

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

There’s a part of you – the born-again part, your spirit – that’s dead to sin. That’s why it bothers you now when you sin. The ‚wilderness‘ part of you – your soul – is your unrenewed mind, out-of-control emotions, and stubborn will.

You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That’s how you know you’re still alive.

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

I have trouble with letting go. That’s my problem.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

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

It was my delusion and naivety that brought me here.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

Sometimes I feel like being an intellectual. Sometimes I like to just be aggressive and all the way in my feelings. Sometimes I might be emotional, or sometimes I might drag on the track and be lazy. I just like to share the different states of existence of Kevin Gates with the rest of the world.

I always have a full-length mirror next to the camera when I’m doing publicity stills. That way, I know how I look.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

There is no way to prosperity, prosperity is the way.

Partition is bad. But whatever is past is past. We have only to look to the future.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

There’s a belief that you’re supposed to be poor, and suffering, and show your humility. I just don’t see the Bible that way. I see that God came and Jesus died so that we might live an abundant life and be a blessing to others.

I don’t know driving in another way which isn’t risky. Each one has to improve himself. Each driver has its limit. My limit is a little bit further than other’s.

I’ve had no problem harnessing anger.

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

It definitely has learning a lesson about the way you’re living your life. I wouldn’t compare our movie to that, but it has a structure where it’s about a man who doesn’t appreciate all that he has and finds out at the end that life has been great and he has to enjoy that.

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.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win – you pass the test.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

To those whose talents are above mediocrity, the highest subjects may be announced. To those who are below mediocrity, the highest subjects may not be announced.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

I can handle pain.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

What I enjoy most is doing something I’ve never done before.

The chimpanzee study was – well, it’s still going on, and I think it’s taught us perhaps more than anything else to be a little humble; that we are, indeed, unique primates, we humans, but we’re simply not as different from the rest of the animal kingdom as we used to think.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.