The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them.

As unique as we all are, an awful lot of us want the same things. We want to shake up our current less-than-fulfilling lives. We want to be happier, more loving, forgiving and connected with the people around us.

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn’t care for it in other people either.

That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.

We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.

I don’t have any regrets. I made all my own decisions.

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

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?

The course of true love never did run smooth.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

It’s an offseason. These days are valuable for everybody.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

Chemistry can be a good and bad thing. Chemistry is good when you make love with it. Chemistry is bad when you make crack with it.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that’s Memoirs.

You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.

Love is a better teacher than duty.

I knew I was blessed with a gift of having both parents.

You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

Grief is the price we pay for love.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

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.

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they’re between you and God.

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

It’s the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.

I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

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

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

Boot camp sucks – SEAL training sucks – but you know what? That’s what makes you good.

Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot.

I’ve learned not to look at reviews. Early on, I did. I was always curious.

I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It’s embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Really showing love requires more than just words.

We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.

You’re not going to scare me into being somebody I don’t want to be.

I’m very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me. I’m rather surprised at who I am, because I’m actually like my dad!

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

There’s only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty.

Life is about growing and improving and getting better.

The more you know the less you need to say.

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.