I don’t think I get that upset over things.

Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

I have never regarded myself as a hero, but Tenzing undoubtedly was.

It’s easy to become very self-critical when you’re an actor. Then you get critiqued by the critics. Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

When I’m dancing, I’m not thinking about anything. I am here. I am totally there. You know? And the feeling is a sensation of being away from myself. My soul dances with the angels, and my body dances with my wife.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen.

Fear is real, but so is love.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

Well, I think we tried very hard not to be overconfident, because when you get overconfident, that’s when something snaps up and bites you.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

If I forget to pray, I can’t get through the day without snapping at people.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

I’ve never been an intellectual but I have this look.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Cry if you have a compound fracture, by all means. Or if your grandpa died. But otherwise, save it for your pillow.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

You see, you are a spirit, you have a soul, and you live in a body. You have emotions, you have thoughts, you have a will, and you have a conscience. You are a complex being! And Jesus came to heal every single part of you. There’s not one part that He doesn’t want to make completely whole.

You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.

If you’re not careful to think and speak words of faith, worry will creep in, and it will not only steal your peace and joy, it will steal your ‚today.‘ The present is the greatest gift God ever gives us. So hold on to the peace that’s yours in Christ. Don’t let it go.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

Have you not noticed that love is silence? It may be while holding the hand of another, or looking lovingly at a child, or taking in the beauty of an evening. Love has no past or future, and so it is with this extraordinary state of silence.

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

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.

I like to let things breathe.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

Fear is the thought of admitted inferiority.

I don’t think about the end game. I’ve got lots to occupy my mind. It’s the rage that keeps me going.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

I tend to overthink things. I’m not the guy who screams ‚This is a world smash!‘ when I finish a song.

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

I get nervous when I don’t get nervous. If I’m nervous I know I’m going to have a good show.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

Meditation is a great way to keep my body well-centered while juggling shooting schedules and recording sessions.

I’m super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I’m critical of other people, too – I try not to be, though.

At some point, you grow out of being attracted to that flame that burns you over and over and over again.

Love is trembling happiness.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

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.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.