I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

Control your own destiny! Control your own destiny!

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

We are wiser than we know.

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment.

Right now, we don’t have a very good relation with creation.

I’m always afraid of failing. I have to quiet that fear if I’m going to get up in the morning.

The devil is a peace stealer, and he works hard to set us up to get upset. But we can learn how to change our approach so we don’t live upset all of the time. And Jesus gives us the best example to follow.

I’m just going to say it: I’m pro-guilt. Guilt is good. Guilt helps us stay on track because it’s about our behavior. It occurs when we compare something we’ve done – or failed to do – with our personal values.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

A Christian who does not pray for those who govern is not a good Christian.

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.

To do your best is no longer good enough. We now have to do the seemingly impossible.

I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

For me, there is no such thing as a negative experience.

Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.

Me don’t dip on nobody’s side. Me don’t dip on the black man’s side, not the white man’s side. Me dip on God’s side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white.

Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.

To live is to think.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

Our personal intelligence is everlasting and divine.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

When the negative thoughts come – and they will; they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.

Character is power.

Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

I was raised in a religious environment, and my wife is one of the more religious people that I have ever known.

Your success, or lack of success, is your responsibility. Even when you have a chain of command that you don’t like as well, its your responsibility to work with the up chain of command.

All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

I restore myself when I’m alone.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

If you have God on your side, everything becomes clear.

As much as it might look like, to someone else, that I’m successful, I never feel like I’m anywhere. The further I go, I still feel equally further from my eventual goal. Because as I grow, I get more goals. I’m never content.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

Anyone can have a good day, but you have to be able to perform on a bad day.

My own dreams fortunately came true in this great state. I became Mr. Universe; I became a successful businessman. And even though some people say I still speak with a slight accent, I have reached the top of the acting profession.

If your treat an individual… as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

God’s grace is amazing! We’re saved by grace – God’s undeserved favor – and we live by grace, which is also God’s power in our lives to do what we could never do in our own strength. And it’s all because God is love, and He loves us unconditionally, constantly and completely.

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.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

What’s dangerous is not to evolve.

If you’re not very clever you should be conciliatory.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.