I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

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.

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

I don’t mind telling a dark side.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

I never do anything that I don’t want to do.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

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.

Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

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 couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

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.

I didn’t consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in.

I think I’m like most people – we fear the unknown and the things that have yet to come to pass, which are the very things that don’t deserve to be feared. When you give God complete control, it’s very hard not to be fearless.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

I don’t think I’m bad for people. If I did think I was bad for people, I would go back to driving a truck, and I really mean this.

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

I like working. That’s when I’m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that.

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.

I came to China to follow my star and to steep myself in the raw regions of the universe.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

I’m an introvert somewhat. There could be a room full of people, I’ll go stand in the corner.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

You’re not going to scare me into being somebody I don’t want to be.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

My ‚fear‘ is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

I always believed that when you follow your heart or your gut, when you really follow the things that feel great to you, you can never lose, because settling is the worst feeling in the world.

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

Enemies are so stimulating.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

I am a big believer in education, because when I grew up in Austria – when I grew up in Austria I had a great education. I had great teachers.

Don’t let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don’t whine. You can be brought low, that’s OK, but don’t be reduced by them. Just say, ‚That’s life.‘

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

I tend to get bored quickly, which means I must be boring.

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

The left paw has done me well over the years. I’m not a scientist, I’m a martial artist.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.