Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don’t do that by sitting around.

I decided, very early on, just to accept life unconditionally; I never expected it to do anything special for me, yet I seemed to accomplish far more than I had ever hoped. Most of the time it just happened to me without my ever seeking it.

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

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

Well done is better than well said.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.

We all die, we all get sick, we all feel hunger and lust and pain, and therefore human life is consistent from one generation to the other. We all – most of us, anyway – want connections with other people and spend our lives looking for them.

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

The secret is not to give up hope. It’s very hard not to because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.

‚I wish life was not so short,‘ he thought. ‚Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.‘

Anyone can have a good day, but you have to be able to perform on a bad day.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

We work to become, not to acquire.

Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it’s a good place that we’re all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.

I mean… in life… what relationship is easy?

Players now have a groin injury for months and months, and I often think they don’t really give a toss whether they’re playing or not because they’re getting paid anyway.

Action is the real measure of intelligence.

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

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Desire is the very essence of man.

Getting stress out of your life takes more than prayer alone. You must take action to make changes and stop doing whatever is causing the stress. You can learn to calm down in the way you handle things.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven’s Fifth.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

Ageing’s alright, better than the alternative, which is not being here.

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.

Someone told me something that stuck with me: ‚You have to envision your life, and then go backwards.‘ I’ve been living by that motto for a while, so I see where I need to be. Now I’m just backtracking and trying to get back up there.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.

Above anything else, I hate to lose.

Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!

Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise.

Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

Civilisations have been destroyed many times, and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

The loss of life will be irreplaceable.

Self-belief and hard work will always earn you success.