People don’t usually compliment your character.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

I don’t have a problem with ageing – in fact, I embrace that aspect of it. And am able to and obviously am going to be able to quite easily… it doesn’t faze me at all.

It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.

It’s not an easy course. It’s not designed to be. We’re not here to get you in touch with your inner child.

How one life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us.

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me.

I’ve never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

The people in my songs are all me.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

Either you run the day or the day runs you.

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

I think happiness is a goal all of us can agree on. Let’s face it – we all would like to be happy.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

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

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

Hair is about when you’re younger. I am my hair.

Without forgiveness, there’s no future.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

Chaos is a friend of mine.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

Even with my divorce and with everything, I don’t need money.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

‚Worry‘ is a word that I don’t allow myself to use.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.

My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

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 was very depressed when I was 19… I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.

You’ll never rise any higher than the way you see yourself.

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

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.

You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.

Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

As I followed my dream – stayed in-Spirit, that is, inspired – I made more money in the first year after I gave up my employment than I had made in the previous 35 years of my life.

Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

I didn’t know how to deal with success. If there was a Rock Star 101, I would have liked to take it. It might have helped me.

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.

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.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.