Many people look at me and think they know me but they don’t at all. This is the real me. I am a humble person, a feeling person. A person who cares about others, who wants to help others.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

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.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

In prayer, we stand where angels bow with veiled faces. There, even there, the cherubim and seraphim adore before that selfsame throne to which our prayers ascend. And shall we come there with stunted requests and narrow, contracted faith?

Live truth instead of professing it.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself.

I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.

This above all; to thine own self be true.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

The more I grow in popularity, the lonelier it gets. Because you don’t really know me. You just know this part of me. You fell in love with that. But it’s way more intricate than what meets the surface.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

The fact is that when you do something from your heart, you leave a heart print.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

Stay humble and be concerned for the less fortunate.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.

I don’t mind telling a dark side.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

Many religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

I’m not generally a sensitive person, but I tend to be more sensitive toward others and what they’re going through. I don’t know if that’s the healthiest thing, but it’s the truth.

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

If anything, we should feel sorry for the people who want us to feel bad about ourselves, because they are the ones struggling for approval. In middle school, bullies tortured other kids because they thought it would make people like them more.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

I come from a poor family, I have seen poverty. The poor need respect, and it begins with cleanliness.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Humility is not something that comes naturally. But it is a cardinal virtue that should be pursued more than any other.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

It sometimes makes people feel better about themselves, you know, to put other people down, or make fun of them, or maybe make mockery of their work and that doesn’t make me feel good at all.

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

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

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

Have the humility to learn from those around you.

I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.