Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.

The myth that everyone once read great literature is just a myth.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

A fit body gives you confidence. And there’s nothing more impressive than a great attitude, which you can wear on your sleeve. But you’ll have to remember the difference between being rude and being confident.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you’re changing, emotionally as well as physically?

I’m selfish.

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

Let go of yesterday.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

To do your best is no longer good enough. We now have to do the seemingly impossible.

The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

I grew up reading science fiction.

Books are alive, you see. They’re not dead, they’re alive.

I was in a terrible mess in my childhood.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Correcting bad habits cannot be done by forbidding or punishment.

You don’t read in your own field. You read in that field when you’re young, so that you can learn.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

It’s not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn’t sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

I break ground. I trailblaze.

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.

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

I’m always reading the next book. Taking notes. Highlighting, researching, studying. It doesn’t stop.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

My father was a great sympathizer of Ahad Ha’am. Every Friday night we would read Hebrew together, and often the reading was Ahad Ha’am’s essays.

Have the humility to learn from those around you.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

I am not a fan of books.

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

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.

Anyone can have a good day, but you have to be able to perform on a bad day.

If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

If you deserve it, go get it.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

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

Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

I want people to draw strength from me.

Until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.