I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

There’s only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

I’m sure that at no point in my life could I ever have shown the kind of focus and discipline and commitment necessary to work a station at elBulli or Le Bernardin. No. That ain’t me.

The reward of suffering is experience.

You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that’s left for you or to make one of your own.

Help others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life.

Did you know there’s a difference between being busy and being fruitful? Did you ever stop to think that just being busy – running around in circles all day but not accomplishing anything – is the same as wasting your time? It’s frustrating to expend so much energy and time and not have any fruit from your effort!

Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions – Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.

In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a ‚continent,‘ a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.

Once you have six children, you’re committed.

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.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

We cannot learn men from books.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

Marriage is this grand madness, and I think if people knew that, they would perhaps take it more seriously.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

A lot of people tell me a lot of things about my conduct, my game, my future… but I try to stay away from their words of wisdom. I don’t let it distract me. On the field, you will be facing the ball alone. If you fail, you will the only one to blame. So, you should be the one deciding for yourself.

Life is about growing and improving and getting better.

I can be a cruel person.

I have never given adoration to any body except myself.

Everything’s intentional. It’s just filling in the dots.

I made my fair share of mistakes.

God made me and broke the mold.

I always tell young girls, surround yourself with goodness. I learned early on how to get the haters out of my life.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

My weaknesses have always been food and men – in that order.

Any hand that I’ve shaken, any person that I met when I was Joe Blow, now that I’m this guy Kevin Hart, has come back. That’s why I treat everybody with respect. I’m always a nice pleasant guy to meet because when they come back to you, they remember.

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I’ve had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm’s way until they could be their own guides.

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

I’ve never been a jealous person, and I’ve never felt built up by someone else’s failure – that’s a cheap thrill.

I like to be myself, and I don’t pretend. For instance, I don’t dress up for occasions; I am what I am.

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don’t suffer anymore.

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

I don’t need to be vindicated, and I don’t want attention.

We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

I’m not a sheep.

Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.