I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

Start wide, expand further, and never look back.

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?‘

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

I just want to make sure when I have kids, I can spend time with them. That’s the whole point.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

Observe all men, thyself most.

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they’re between you and God.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who’s only texting you back three words. I’ve learned that from trying to figure out people who don’t deserve to be figured out.

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

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

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.

Any teammate of mine that had a kid and a boy that was capable of playing baseball, I think I set a terrific example of ‚Don’t do this‘ and ‚Don’t do that.‘ And that’s one of the things that I’m most proud of.

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about ‚Wind in the Willows‘ and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought – you know about ‚The Wind in the Willows.‘

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

I can’t believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

Train up a child in the way that he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Little things affect little minds.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature. But, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.

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

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.

If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Help others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn’t care for it in other people either.

I’m a super-duper over-analyzer. You mix that with self-doubt and pressure, and that’s never healthy.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

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.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

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.

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

I resigned from the Marine Corps and flying in 1974, even though I loved them both. I quit because I no longer wanted to fight for peace. Instead, I believe we can build a more sustainable peace by working for prosperity.

Any time we are misused or used for a purpose other than what God intended us for, it’s damaging.

If you want someone to say, ‚She’s so sweet, and she’s so cute, and, honey, point your foot,‘ that’s not my school. You can go to the YMCA and have a nobody teach your kid if that’s what you want to hear.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

You don’t have to give way to careless speech or complaining. You don’t have to let your feelings get in the way of what God wants to do in your life.

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.

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

The Bible tells us to be perfect. This is likely a scary thought for many people. It used to scare me. I didn’t think I could ever get there, no matter how hard I tried.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

I believe that God has put gifts and talents and ability on the inside of every one of us. When you develop that and you believe in yourself and you believe that you’re a person of influence and a person of purpose, I believe you can rise up out of any situation.

The first step in a person’s salvation is knowledge of their sin.

None of my kids want to be actors. They are actually very interested in being musicians. I think they like the process of film from the outside. Mad is interested in editing. Pax loves music and deejaying.

It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.