I have often been downcast but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary, I treat all the privations as amusing.

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

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

I’m not looking for sympathy at all.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

My life is a struggle.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one’s self to do without it.

If you don’t stand your ground, then all that happens is people push you backwards.

Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

If you’re embarking around the world in a hot-air balloon, don’t forget the toilet paper.

People want to tear me down, they were going to knife me anyway.

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.

Perhaps one day I will go into space.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

The most positive men are the most credulous.

You not supposed to feel down over whatever happen to you. I mean, you’re supposed to use whatever happen to you as some type of upper, not a downer.

Around every corner, always protect the engine that powers you.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

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.

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.

Any East Coast road trip we have is very exciting, just being on the road, taking it all in.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it.

To have a comeback, you have to have a setback.

Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.

Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.

Man is not made for defeat.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

Courage is found in unlikely places.

Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.

When I started my last business, I didn’t receive a paycheck for 13 months. The average person can’t handle that pressure.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

I believe in manicures. I believe in overdressing. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipstick. I believe in pink. I believe happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and… I believe in miracles.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

In 1975, when my students were kidnapped by rebels, I was accused of hiding instead of trying to save them, and of not giving enough money for their ransom. I wasn’t believed.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

I had a project for my life which involved 10 years of wandering, then some years of medical studies and, if any time was left, the great adventure of physics.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

The best way out of a difficulty is through it.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

The man who has done his level best… is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.

We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.

I got the stern end of the stick. It was kind of that iron fist. I am who I am today because of my mother.

I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.

My show ‚The Big House‘ was picked up; they flew me to New York. I’m about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart’s ‚The Big House.‘ And a hand grabs my shoulder, ‚Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.‘ It’s a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can’t.