Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.

This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble.

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

Each day brings opportunity for decisions for eternity.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment… If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

Accountability breeds response-ability.

I just have always felt that people don’t change, circumstances change.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

I’m not very ambitious at all.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

The same thing I did in 2013 is what I’m trying to do in 2014, which is continue to improve, continue to shock people. You know, I have several projects coming up between 2014 and 2015, and hopefully by 2015, I’ll have another hour of stand-up material where I’ll be able to go on the road and tour again.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.

Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

I will praise any man that will praise me.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

I love playing under pressure. In fact, if there’s no pressure, then I’m not in the perfect zone.

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

I always wanted a family.

Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

It’s the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.

Talent without working hard is nothing.

Competition gives me energy. It keeps me focused.

If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.

I’m not going to stop having problems.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it’s unbelievable!

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.

Meditation is a vital practice to access conscious contact with your highest self.

People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get the most.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.

The one thing about the business of entertainment is that you have to learn patience.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement. Discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

My main goal is to be a self-made man and have control over what’s mine.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire. Learn to stop spending that currency on thoughts you don’t want.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.