No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

I think as long as I do a good job and put in all my effort to proving that I’m worth it, then everything should be fine.

I’ve learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

I realize I don’t do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to.

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.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

It’s really hard to guarantee things in life. I guarantee if you get up in the morning and you work out, and you work hard, you will have a better day – 100% guaranteed.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

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

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

The only shame is to have none.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Does anybody really think that they didn’t get what they had because they didn’t have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment?

I’m always afraid of failing. I have to quiet that fear if I’m going to get up in the morning.

I had to come from something, come from a place that was negative and positive but the majority of it is a negative place.

For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

And, honestly, if somebody wants to criticize me for not being a trainwreck, that’s fine with me!

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we’ve got a system that allows them to do it.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.

We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it’s so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

I never expected to be anybody important.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

I was in my late thirties when my eyes were opened to truth in God’s Word that showed me I wasn’t living the abundant life Jesus died for me to have. I had a very negative mindset and was miserable most of the time because of the abuse I had experienced throughout my childhood.

The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character.

I’m not going to change the world. You’re not going to change the world. But we can help – we can all help.

Some habits of ineffectiveness are rooted in our social conditioning toward quick-fix, short-term thinking.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

I always believe that there should come a time when your energy, speed, stamina should combine well with your brains.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

We are in a wrong state of mind if we are not in a thankful state of mind.

Character is destiny.

I’ve never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

The only way to get love is to be lovable. It’s very irritating if you have a lot of money. You’d like to think you could write a check: ‚I’ll buy a million dollars‘ worth of love.‘ But it doesn’t work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

I want to solidify as an artist and show that as I grow as a person and make mistakes and learn from them, I’m going to grow artistically.

We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone.

There’s a deceptive sin that can keep us from walking in love: pride. It’s deceptive because when you have pride, you’re usually too proud to admit it. I know this because I used to have teachings on pride and they didn’t sell well.