Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

I come from – I came from Wales, and it’s a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is get on with it. I don’t waste time being soft. I’m not cold, but I don’t like being, wasting my time with – life’s too short.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.

I always ask God to work through me and let me be a light of some kind and help in this world, so I always pray for that, and I always want to do good.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

Be a force of love as often as you can and turn away negative thoughts whenever you feel them surface.

Check your ego at the door. The ego can be the great success inhibitor. It can kill opportunities, and it can kill success.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

The man who has no problems is out of the game.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Compliment three people every day.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

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

Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

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

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren’t random.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

You can’t stop everything from happening. But we’ve gotten to a point where we’re certainly trying. If a car doesn’t have four hundred air bags in it, then it’s no good.

The thing we fear we bring to pass.

I can’t jump the highest. I’m obviously not the biggest, not the strongest.

I didn’t work hard to sit down and not work.

The way to know life is to love many things.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

To be honest, I think kids have got a lot more going on than adults. They’ve got their heads screwed on a lot better.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

I’ve never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

There’s always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.

I don’t think I’m an unlucky person.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘