People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Many people feel so pressured by the expectations of others that it causes them to be frustrated, miserable and confused about what they should do. But there is a way to live a simple, joy-filled, peaceful life, and the key is learning how to be led by the Holy Spirit, not the traditions or expectations of man.

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

I came up from a difficult background.

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

I cry so much less than I used to. I used to be one of the most teary people.

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

I really think that there was a great advantage in many ways to being a woman. I think we are a lot better at personal relationships, and then have the capability obviously of telling it like it is when it’s necessary.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

My future is righteousness.

The truth is, somebody is always talking about you, so you have to let it go… if it’s not a part of your God-given destiny.

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony because it takes them unawares. I have had experience enough to know what I say.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

I think that we have opportunities all around us – sometimes we just don’t recognize them.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

I fear that too many have sadly surrendered their agency to the adversary and are saying by their conduct, ‚I care more about satisfying my own desires than I do about bearing the Savior’s power to bless others.‘

I think I have to trust that you end up with the person you’re supposed to end up with, and that everything in between is there to teach you stuff.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

Love always ends differently and it always begins differently – especially with me.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

Don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.

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

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.

I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

I spent two years in the military service, then I trudged around in repertory for quite a while. I somehow wound up at the National Theatre, though, and then I was definitely on my way.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people – one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion’s den. You can’t just play around with all those big cats – you’ve got to take somebody on.