I need to keep working on myself for a while.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

Before finding music, I didn’t have too many aspirations. I wanted to hang out, make a little money from whatever I had to do.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

Confine yourself to the present.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

I don’t want to hear the word ‚can’t.‘

Sleep is all about recovering. So if you’re not sleeping, you’re not recovering. And if you’re going to break your body down a lot, you better find ways to build it back up. And the only way to do that is get a lot of sleep. So for me, I go to bed at like 8:30, 9:00. As soon as I put my kids to bed. Because I’m up at 5:30 the next day.

Why regret anything? Where does it get you to regret anything you’ve ever done in your life? It gets you nowhere. It’s a pathetic emotion that you can wallow in.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

I don’t think I will ever be content. I am somebody who is always hungry.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

I’ll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They’re too much fun.

You are not a problem that needs solving.

A lot of football success is in the mind. You must believe you are the best and then make sure that you are.

Whether for life or death, do your own work well.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

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

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

I don’t want to look sloppy, because then I feel sloppy.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future.

Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.

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

The highest result of education is tolerance.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

I was sure I’d set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth – that I hadn’t set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if ‚The Big Trail‘ had been a success and launched me as a star.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being.

I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.

I lived a sloppy life. So I took very small increments in my life. I started making my bed. I started cleaning my room. There were dishes in the sink. It started off with doing small house chores. I saw that the yard needed to be mowed. So instead of being told it needed to be mowed, I would mow it.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

Character is destiny.

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.

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.

You make yourself broad. You make yourself appealing. ‚Hey, y’all, I’m cool with everybody.‘ That’s my message.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

I’m always just surprised when someone writes something about me.

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.

Can people who hunger so desperately for what other people have ever have enough?

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

I mean… in life… what relationship is easy?

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

I think it’s quite great to set yourself a big challenge, and then you’ve got another reason for keeping fit.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

Being humble matters.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.