I’m not a god – I do bad things.

Any top-level athlete, it’s always the same. There’s always that hint of arrogance there… It’s hard to be humble when you’re the best.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

My life is mine to remember.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

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

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

I really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.

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

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

I’m quite a chauvinistic person.

I woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

I know who I am, I know what I can and can’t do. I know what I will and won’t do. I know what I’m capable of and I don’t agree to do things that I don’t think I can pull off.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

I don’t dabble and spend much mind or time dealing with, I don’t know, people’s perceptions of me. I truly don’t.

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

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

If the grandfather of the grandfather of Jesus had known what was hidden within him, he would have stood humble and awe-struck before his soul.

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

I’m no leader; I’m a little humble follower.

The personal ego already has a strong element of dysfunction, but the collective ego is, frequently, even more dysfunctional, to the point of absolute insanity.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

We are all at times unconscious prophets.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

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.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

Little things affect little minds.

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government, must ask themselves two questions: ‚Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions in order to choose the best path?‘ If you don’t ask those questions, your governance will not be good.

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

It definitely has learning a lesson about the way you’re living your life. I wouldn’t compare our movie to that, but it has a structure where it’s about a man who doesn’t appreciate all that he has and finds out at the end that life has been great and he has to enjoy that.

As you think, so shall you become.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

I don’t consider myself an intellectual. And this is not one of my aims. But I admire intellectual people.