The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

It’s important that we invest in America – literally. The terrorists wanted to destroy our economy, and we can’t let our system fall apart. We also have to invest in one another.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.

The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

There’s a part of you – the born-again part, your spirit – that’s dead to sin. That’s why it bothers you now when you sin. The ‚wilderness‘ part of you – your soul – is your unrenewed mind, out-of-control emotions, and stubborn will.

The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I’m changing into the woman I am meant to be.

It’s absolutely normal that different human beings want to go different ways.

Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

The only way you gain mental toughness is to do things you’re not happy doing. If you continue doing things that you’re satisfied and make you happy, you’re not getting stronger. You’re staying where you’re at. Either you’re getting better, or you’re getting worse. You’re not staying the same.

Weak character will neutralize all of the other possible good qualities a person might possess.

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

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

People who don’t know the true character of God – who don’t believe He is merciful, gracious and slow to anger – can never have a close, personal, intimate relationship with Him.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

Within all of us is a divine capacity to manifest and attract all that we need and desire.

At 155, I will be the same animal, an even better animal.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

I grew up in the east side of Detroit in an area where there was very little, except for a lot of scarcity, poverty and hunger. I never woke up saying, ‚I’m an orphan again today, isn’t this terrible? Poor me.‘

Me not finishing school – in my head, I still have this insecurity when I’m talking to someone educated.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

I said I would never wear my gold again because it would be insensitive and disrespectful to all the people who died and lost everything in Katrina.

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

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

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

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

My dad always said, ‚Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.‘

My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be.

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?

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.