I realize I don’t do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

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

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.

You can change your world by changing your words… Remember, death and life are in the power of the tongue.

It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

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

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you’ve blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

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 am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

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

The Internet is a big distraction.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

I didn’t work hard to sit down and not work.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

I didn’t know how to deal with success. If there was a Rock Star 101, I would have liked to take it. It might have helped me.

We become what we repeatedly do.

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.

Character is power.

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.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

We boil at different degrees.

I’m trying to keep a level head. You have to be careful out in the world. It’s so easy to get turned.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

How one life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us.

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

I’m very, very serious – I’m serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.

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

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

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.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

Perfectionists demand perfection from themselves first and foremost.

An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.