It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.

On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.

I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

No matter what, people grow. If you chose not to grow, you’re staying in a small box with a small mindset. People who win go outside of that box. It’s very simple when you look at it.

The more people I reach, the more people there are that have opinions about me. Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

What’s dangerous is not to evolve.

A lot of football success is in the mind. You must believe you are the best and then make sure that you are.

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.

It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.

Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.

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 spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.

Only the shallow know themselves.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

Start your diet during a period of optimism and happiness.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates.

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.

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

I allow myself to fail. I allow myself to break. I’m not afraid of my flaws.

My life is my argument.

Some people have a hard time getting rid of stuff. If that’s you, pray for God to give you the courage to get rid of things you don’t really need or things He wants you to give away. This will help keep your surroundings organized and clutter-free.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

I think I have always had a little humor.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

People like to blame others. I think a person should just look at their own situation, look around them, find out what they wish to do, and seek and go and do that. And that’s it.

They would not find me changed from him they knew – only more sure of all I thought was true.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

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

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

I don’t want to just revolve. I want to evolve. As a man, as a human, as a father, as a lover.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.

Keep your nose out the sky, keep your heart to god, and keep your face to the raising sun.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

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

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

You’ll never rise any higher than the way you see yourself.

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

It’s better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

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.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.