One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

I pay a lot of tax, and I feel, one of the reasons I stay and pay why I’m not based in Monaco… I think my country helped me.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

My mother made me truly appreciate women.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

I think that is a better thing than thanksgiving: thanks-living. How is this to be done? By a general cheerfulness of manner, by an obedience to the command of Him by whose mercy we live, by a perpetual, constant delighting of ourselves in the Lord, and by a submission of our desires to His will.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

If it’s good music, it’s good music.

I don’t want flowers or candy or anything like that. I just want somebody to say, ‚Wow, you’ve done a great job.‘

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

I got a lot of support from my parents. That’s the one thing I always appreciated. They didn’t tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

The Revlon Run/Walk effort to focus on women’s cancer has my wholehearted support and gratitude.

This Sunday School has been of help to me, greater perhaps than any other force in my Christian life, and I can ask no better things for you than that you, and all that shall come after you in this great band of workers for Christ, shall receive the same measure of blessedness which I have been permitted to have.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Forever is composed of nows.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

Do every act of your life as if it were your last.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

I love my daddy. My daddy’s everything. I hope I can find a man that will treat me as good as my dad.

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

I believe if you keep your faith, you keep your trust, you keep the right attitude, if you’re grateful, you’ll see God open up new doors.

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

Fear is the mother of morality.

Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.

I thank God for my failures. Maybe not at the time but after some reflection. I never feel like a failure just because something I tried has failed.

I work very hard, but when God opens that door for you – when life opens that door for you, I should say – I think it’s important to be giving, to return the love back.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

I try to live what I teach. A lot of things come against us in life, but we should try to find something to be grateful for, and see each day as a gift.

Life is precious.

I know that I came into the world with what I call ‚big dharma‘ – with a blueprint to teach self-reliance and a positive loving approach to large numbers of people all over the globe. I am ever so grateful for the circumstances of my life that allowed me to be pretty much left alone and to develop as I was so intended in this incarnation.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.

We all want to win more, but it’s all about being blessed and embracing your blessings. We have life.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.

You do indeed have a past, but not now! And, yes, you have a future, but not now! You can consume your now with thoughts of ‚then‘ and ‚maybe,‘ but that will keep you from the inner peace you could experience.

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

We think too much and feel too little.