I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? 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.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

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

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

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

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

I don’t have emotional needs, only physical ones.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

I’m afraid to fail again.

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.

A woman has the age she deserves.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

I’m honest enough to say I don’t know everything. You know, I don’t. I don’t understand all of God. I don’t understand, you know, some kind of why bad things happen.

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

It is important to remember yourself.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives… inside ourselves.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

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

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

Sadly, of course, there is real evil in the world. You watch the news, and you see all of the people suffering and so much cruelty.

To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

I knew I wasn’t going to be a rocket scientist – let’s not be fools – but I wasn’t going to be a bum.

I’ve seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.

Competition is a sin.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

He knows my limitations and where I’m a good wife and a good mom.

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.

Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

Little things affect little minds.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn’t, then why would you say I am.

I love money because I’ve earned it. I won sixty G’s with my first knockout – and the week before, I was collecting social welfare.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

I never want to change so much that people can’t recognize me.