My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

Being self-made means never making an excuse as to why you can’t take steps toward whatever your goal is.

You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside.

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

My freshman and sophomore years in high school, I spent a lot of time trying to get back on the right track. I was arrested multiple times by the time I was 16, so I had a little harder time trying to adjust like a lot of us do in high school.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

If you’re trying too hard to be the girl next door, you’re not going to be.

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

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you’ll stay on the floor.

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

When you know what you want, and want it bad enough, you will find a way to get it.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

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.

The starting point of all achievement is desire.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ‚Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.

If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

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.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

I’ve been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It’s natural.

I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

I’m very secure about my talents and about who I am.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me.

I can imagine it’s hard to make a relationship last. I wouldn’t know.

If you try to protect yourself from pain, it becomes a stone in your heart. But the more you learn to face things, the more likely that stone can become a pearl.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

I think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids‘ dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We’ve all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.

I feel that I’ve done what I wanted to do, and that makes me feel fairly content.

I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It’s embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.

Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.

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

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

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

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.