One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

No one but a fool is always right.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

You not supposed to feel down over whatever happen to you. I mean, you’re supposed to use whatever happen to you as some type of upper, not a downer.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can’t un-see.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

A saint is tolerant and is attentive to the pleadings of other human beings, not only to spoken messages but to unspoken messages as well.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

When things are going bad, there’s going to be some good that’s going to come from it.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

Money doesn’t make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

We can feel joy even while having a bad day, a bad week, or even a bad year!

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Respect the burden.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

People who think you could wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind.

Money can’t buy life.

We’re going to be OK because of the American people. They have more grit, determination and courage than you can imagine.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

I don’t mind people hating me, because it pushes me.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‚I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.

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

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

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

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

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.

We have communion with Christ in His thoughts, views, and purposes; for His thoughts are our thoughts according to our capacity and sanctity. Believers take the same view of matters as Jesus does; that which pleases Him pleases them, and that which grieves His grieves them also.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.