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.

I think everyone should be with who they love.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

My future is righteousness.

You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it’s the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there’s not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

Only the shallow know themselves.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

We all have experiences in our lives that change us, and we all learn from people, like my dad, but at the end of the day, it’s only us. And we’re only responsible to make ourselves happy.

Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

As I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.

People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.

I think that success is having fun.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

How happy had it been for me had I been slain in the battle. It had been far more noble to have died the victim of the enemy than fall a sacrifice to the rage of my friends.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‚Well gee, let’s not mess this up.‘ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

Do the best you can, and don’t take life too serious.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.