Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for – scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

Playing Etta James in the movie ‚Cadillac Records‘ really changed me. It was a darker character, and I realized that if anything is too comfortable, I want to run from it. It’s no fun being safe.

Your life will be a blessed and balanced experience if you first honor your identity and priority.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

Jealousy… is a mental cancer.

I’ve learned people are watching, so don’t do nothing stupid.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

I’m not a god – I do bad things.

Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

I think one of the basic reasons men make good friends is that they can make up their minds quickly.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

We think too much and feel too little.

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

You have a nice personality, but not for a human being.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

You get one life. I’m going to embrace mine.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.

At some point, you grow out of being attracted to that flame that burns you over and over and over again.

Let go of offence. Let go of fear. Let go of revenge. Don’t live angry, let go now!

We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right mayhap our children and our children’s children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

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

If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.

I have survivor’s curiosity, I guess.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

I got my own back.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens.

I always had faith in my creative capacity.

I was so ashamed of who I was.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

I set records that will never be equaled. In fact, I hope 90% of them don’t even get printed.

I am a big believer in education, because when I grew up in Austria – when I grew up in Austria I had a great education. I had great teachers.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

The idea of recognising your strengths and using them in as versatile a way as you can is cool to me.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.