The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

As long as you blame someone or something else – something outside you that’s bigger than you are – as the source of your problems, the problems won’t get solved.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.

I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think something’s not good enough, and I won’t stop until I feel like I’ve made it. I’m never satisfied.

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

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

Mastery passes often for egotism.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

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

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

That’s the biggest gift I can give anybody: ‚Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you’re doing and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.‘

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

We are the most amazing creatures that this world has ever produced, but we seem to also have this herd mentality; we seem to be the most stupid, also.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.

Catering to bad feelings feeds and empowers them.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

The darkness is really out there. It’s not something that’s in my head, just. It’s in my work because it’s in the world.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

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.

We all self-conscious. I’m just the first to admit it.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Either you’re the one erasing or you’re the one being erased.

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

If you’re embarrassed because you have some notion about how men are supposed to behave, and it doesn’t include weeping, then you have some personal work to do.

We choose what attitudes we have right now. And it’s a continuing choice.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

Your emotions are very unstable and should never be the foundation for direction in your life.

I’m my own worst critic, and if I don’t pull off what I think I wanted to do in my head, then I won’t be a happy girl.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.