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

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

As you think, so shall you become.

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

I have the problems of, I must confess, old age.

The big message of gospel is that you don’t have to keep fighting the universe; you can stop, and the universe is quite good to you. There is a loss of ego.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

I always teach myself calm and visualization stuff.

I used to get into a lot of fights.

Be a player; don’t play yourself. And don’t play basketball. That’s not your sport, Jeb Bush.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.

It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.

I’m no natural beauty. If I’m gonna have any looks at all, I’m gonna have to create them.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

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.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

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

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

Getting stress out of your life takes more than prayer alone. You must take action to make changes and stop doing whatever is causing the stress. You can learn to calm down in the way you handle things.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

We’re always looking over our shoulders, ‚what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one – am I making the right career move?‘ When you’re young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

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

It was clear to me that if I could get through Princeton at the top of my class, I could do anything in the world.

I love the attention but I don’t like too much of it.

Your energy, your spirit are important considerations. Feeling petty and frustrated can have reverberating consequences for your ability to think strategically and reach your goals.

I’m a can-do girl.

In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

I’m so wrapped up in my work that it’s often impossible to consider other things in my life. My marriage ended in divorce because of this, my relationship with Holly has suffered by this.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

My head’s never really quiet. The only time I can get it to turn off is if I watch ‚CSI‘ or ‚Law & Order,‘ where I have to follow the crime. If I can’t turn my head off during that, I know I’ve really got a problem.

I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct.