Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

Silence is a source of great strength.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

If all you’re doing is grinding for the man, it’s going to burden you. Once you say, ‚Hey, I’m grinding for the man, but I’m putting money away, and this is part of my exit strategy,‘ you’re working for you.

I’m only going to stand before God and give an account for my life, not for somebody else’s life. If I have a bad attitude, then I need to say there’s no point in me blaming you for what’s wrong in my life.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

I just feel so much more comfortable and confident every game I play.

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

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

The worst part of success is, to me, adapting to it. It’s scary.

You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.

Living in America and, of course, just being women in general, we’ve got more strength than we think we do.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.

Don’t grow accustomed to living with less, doing less, and being less to the point that you eventually sit back and accept it.

One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.

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

I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

My message isn’t perfectly defined. I have, as a human being, fallen to peer pressure.

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

One of the best mental disciplines for people to implement is simply putting together a schedule or a task list and actually executing it. Write the list or the schedule the night before, and then do what you said you would do. Life becomes much better when you do that.

We will all fail in life, but nobody has to be a failure. Failing at a thing doesn’t make you a failure. You are only a failure when you quit trying.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

I was never really good at anything except for the ability to learn.

I have wasted my hours.

A daily portion is really all we need. We do not need tomorrow’s supply, for that day has not yet dawned, and its needs are still unborn.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.