Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

‚Perfection‘ to me is, I walk away from a situation and say, ‚I did everything I could do right there. There was nothing more that I could do.‘ I was a hundred percent, like the meter was at the top. There was nothing else I could have done. You know? Like, I worked as hard as I possibly could have. That’s perfection.

Your greatest asset is your earning ability. Your greatest resource is your time.

I have a memory, and I can just eliminate mistakes when they come up because I’ve already made them.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

Even when you’re 50, you can make the effort to improve your standards.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

As your career grows, the list of things that makes you happy should not become smaller, it should become bigger.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

I think my vice would be outdoing myself.

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

I am invariably late for appointments – sometimes as much as two hours. I’ve tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

You’ll never rise any higher than the way you see yourself.

What one has to do usually can be done.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

I look at myself like a show dog. I’ve got to keep her clipped and trimmed and in good shape.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

The dropping of bombs on people – isn’t that terrorism?

The best of us must sometimes eat our words.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

Truth is what works.

I’m afraid to fail again.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.