It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

I still consider myself a little, fat kid from Hawaii.

In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

It is hard to contend against one’s heart’s desire; for whatever it wishes to have it buys at the cost of soul.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

I will be unhappy if I know I have not accomplished something I should have done that was possible.

When you’re 40, you can’t ride the fence anymore. You gotta make definite decisions about your life.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

You need to understand what works best for your own body.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.

The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change and everyone looks up to them.

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

I think I had a mild case of Asperger’s as a younger guy, but that typically just wears off after a while.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.

As the father of eight children, I’m quite convinced that each individual arrives here with their own unique personality. We are intended here from an invisible held of infinite potentiality. That which has no form, has no boundaries – it’s the I that’s in the ever-changing body.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

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

You know, most people really don’t know me.

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

I think everybody’s trying to get to a place in themselves where they conquer what they was afraid of; they achieve some of their life goals, kept their word about what they were trying to do.

I don’t care if people I admire criticize me because their opinion is valuable to me.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

I hate to be smart.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

I’m of the school of thought where if you can’t sort something out for yourself then no one can help you.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately… you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.

Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

I’m not intimidated by how people perceive me.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

I have no delusions about my likability in every scenario. I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular.

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven’t quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

I have to keep improving myself and challenging myself.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

I used to feel unsafe right in the moment of an accomplishment – I felt the ground fall from under my feet because this could be the end. And even now, while everyone is celebrating, I’m on to the next thing. I don’t want to get lost in this big cushion of success.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

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