I’ve arrived at the place if I’m not taking a career risk, I’m not happy. If I’m scared, then I know I’m being challenged.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.

I am criticised for not celebrating my goals enough. I am very happy from within, very calm. I just don’t celebrate. I celebrate inside.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

I am happy and proud to play for my country and my club Mohun Bagan.

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.

Be not a slave of words.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

I’ve discovered that when we take time to renew our minds with God’s Word, we learn how to think like God thinks, say what God says, and act like He wants us to act.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

My future is righteousness.

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

The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I’m changing into the woman I am meant to be.

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.

Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.

A lot of times, people make other people responsible for their joy: ‚You’re not making me happy, you’re not doing this, you’re not doing that.‘

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.

It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

The truth is, somebody is always talking about you, so you have to let it go… if it’s not a part of your God-given destiny.

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

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

Key is never be afraid of being yourself. Never!

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

When granted many years of life, growing old in age is natural, but growing old with grace is a choice. Growing older with grace is possible for all who will set their hearts and minds on the Giver of grace, the Lord Jesus Christ.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

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

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

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.

I was ironing my own clothes when I was 11 years old. My mental strength goes back to those days.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.