The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

I’m not a regrets-type person.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire. Learn to stop spending that currency on thoughts you don’t want.

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

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

Why go through life if you’re not going to challenge yourself?

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Without being the most confident person in the world, I think I am the right person for Liverpool.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.

Whatever you dwell on in the conscious grows in your experience.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

No public man can be just a little crooked.

I don’t have stylistic loyalty. That’s why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.

Love always ends differently and it always begins differently – especially with me.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.

A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Aim for the highest.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

I think as long as I do a good job and put in all my effort to proving that I’m worth it, then everything should be fine.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

All of our problems start in our minds.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

I’ve discovered that when we take time to renew our minds with God’s Word, we learn how to think like God thinks, say what God says, and act like He wants us to act.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

I’ve never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

Only the insecure strive for security.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.

Right now, we don’t have a very good relation with creation.

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.

I’ve never been a jealous person, and I’ve never felt built up by someone else’s failure – that’s a cheap thrill.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don’t want it smoothed out.

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

I deserve respect for the things I did not do.