Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one’s own character to himself.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

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.

Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn’t trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart and know that my heart still functions normally. I feel grateful for my heart.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

Well, I think we tried very hard not to be overconfident, because when you get overconfident, that’s when something snaps up and bites you.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Death is the king of this world: ‚Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

Confine yourself to the present.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

I knew that I was ‚interesting‘ at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.

When it comes to everybody else’s thing and their lane and their timing, I’m never doing anything intentional to, like, come after somebody. That will always be my biggest mistake or anybody’s biggest mistake if that’s their intention.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

I’ve always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

We should play free football, defend lively with a passion, and have the best understanding in offence.

Cowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can’t have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I’d rather not be in a cage. I’d rather be dead. And it’s real simple. And I think it’s not that uncommon.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

Sometimes I’d like to play the bad guy and sometimes I’d like to die in a movie.

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

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

We should all start to live before we get too old.

Life is so short. I would rather sing one song than interpret the thousand.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.

We all get weary sometimes, and we tend to think that life is what makes us weary.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.