I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

Sometimes, I feel like one who is on the sidelines, who has missed life itself.

Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

Wanting to feel good is synonymous with wanting to feel God.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

You can’t do something forever.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

You’ll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

Sports are such a great teacher. I think of everything they’ve taught me: camaraderie, humility, how to resolve differences.

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

Playing Etta James in the movie ‚Cadillac Records‘ really changed me. It was a darker character, and I realized that if anything is too comfortable, I want to run from it. It’s no fun being safe.

It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you’ve closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.

What the heck is true love? I remember feeling, back when I was 12 and ‚going‘ with this girl, ‚Is this true love?‘

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

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.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

Satan wants us to constantly focus on everything that is wrong with us and look at how far we still have to go. But God desires for us to rejoice in how far we have already come.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

Resist the need to be ‚right‘ all the time or to always have the last word.

The truth doesn’t hurt unless it ought to.

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.

I am not saying I am the best manager in the world. But I’m quite good.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

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

Really, who you are is defined by the people who you know – not even the people that you know, but the people you spend time with and the people that you love and the people that you work with. I guess we show your friends in your profile, but that’s kind of different from the information you put in your profile.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty.

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

You have to just make the choices you make in life. I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me.

It’s only I have seen enough of it and the funny thing is now, I know that I’m skinny, because I know there are even smaller clothes in the store. I think I’m big, when I was big, I never thought about it.