It’s getting harder to make decisions to just want to do something to work… I’m trying to find things that are extremely challenging or mean something to me deeply.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.

An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

If you’re embarrassed because you have some notion about how men are supposed to behave, and it doesn’t include weeping, then you have some personal work to do.

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

Die to everything of yesterday so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigor and passion.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

Every single one of us has a few months here or there that feel like dark months.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

I’ll never, ever be full. I’ll always be hungry. Obviously, I’m not talking about food. Growing up, I had nothing for such a long time. Someone told me a long time ago, and I’ve never forgotten it, ‚Once you’ve ever been hungry, really, really hungry, then you’ll never, ever be full.‘

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

I think one of the basic reasons men make good friends is that they can make up their minds quickly.

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

Choose people who lift you up.

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.

Sometimes you have to take two steps back to take ten forward.

As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.

There’s only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‚Didn’t you make that movie already?‘ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.

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.

Absolutely not. I have no problem with commitment. In fact, I love having someone in my life.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

Don’t just let the devil use your mind as a garbage dump.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

I never make conscious decisions.

The trained mind is a rich mind.

A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don’t know nothing. I mean, that’s my life lesson.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Sometimes I feel like being an intellectual. Sometimes I like to just be aggressive and all the way in my feelings. Sometimes I might be emotional, or sometimes I might drag on the track and be lazy. I just like to share the different states of existence of Kevin Gates with the rest of the world.

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

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.

I think that a president needs to have a variety of views presented. But also, there has to be a team effort, because otherwise, I think it creates a dissonance and difficulty.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

The true identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual. It’s been taken.

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

I gather from motivation around me – from a lot of personalities who have done well in their respective fields.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

There are hunters, and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience, and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

It is always your next move.

Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts; in a uniform manner.

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

You should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to.