Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.

Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Your energy, your spirit are important considerations. Feeling petty and frustrated can have reverberating consequences for your ability to think strategically and reach your goals.

I’m selfish.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know.

You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.

As soon as I accomplish one goal, I replace it with another one. I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I just say to myself, ‚All right, well, I’d like to headline a tour,‘ and then when I get there, we’ll see what my next goal is.

I’m always trying. Between every book, I think, ‚Well now, it’s time to get down to the serious stuff.‘

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

Losers are people who are afraid of losing.

I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, ‚He is not a lush.‘ That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, ‚Look!‘

People always tell you, ‚Be humble. Be humble.‘ When was the last time someone told you to be amazing? Be great! Be great! Be awesome! Be awesome!

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

I lived a sloppy life. So I took very small increments in my life. I started making my bed. I started cleaning my room. There were dishes in the sink. It started off with doing small house chores. I saw that the yard needed to be mowed. So instead of being told it needed to be mowed, I would mow it.

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

Control your own destiny! Control your own destiny!

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

The man who has done his level best… is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

Tomorrow, every Fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes.

Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

Anything I do, I want to do it well.

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

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

If you want to be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic.

I didn’t have nothin‘ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.

The Bible tells us to be perfect. This is likely a scary thought for many people. It used to scare me. I didn’t think I could ever get there, no matter how hard I tried.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

Better is the enemy of good.

We are never defeated unless we give up on God.

I don’t even know how to speak up for myself, because I don’t really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

Words are powerful; if you change your words, you can change your life.

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

Education can become a self-fulfilling activity, liberating in and of itself.

God made you a masterpiece – be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.