If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

Learn to say ‚no‘ to the good so you can say ‚yes‘ to the best.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

All of our problems start in our minds.

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

When I look back over my life it’s almost as if there was a plan laid out for me – from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn’t afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

Let go of yesterday.

When I was four, my mother insisted I get out of the car and find my own way home. Although I got lost, I did find my way home. It taught me the value of independence at an early age.

It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

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.

There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

We become what we repeatedly do.

I don’t follow all the 48 laws. Like, I’ve never crushed anyone totally.

The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world.

I look at myself like a show dog. I’ve got to keep her clipped and trimmed and in good shape.

The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others.

I have wasted my hours.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

I’m not looking for sympathy at all.

Quitting doesn’t enter my mind.

It is possible to live happily in the here and the now. So many conditions of happiness are available – more than enough for you to be happy right now. You don’t have to run into the future in order to get more.

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

I’m substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They’re sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they’re hitting back and forth.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It’s hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

Life well spent is long.

I have always thought I was the best ever player.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

Living in America and, of course, just being women in general, we’ve got more strength than we think we do.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

Watch out for the joy-stealers: gossip, criticism, complaining, faultfinding, and a negative, judgmental attitude.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

Little things affect little minds.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Well, in order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times.

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

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