The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

This above all; to thine own self be true.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.

Having a simple career as a musician who liked music was good enough for me.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

You can be happy where you are.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.

Material things are delightful, but they’re not important.

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

There’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do.

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

I don’t want to be fake. I’m just being me. And I have the power to break stereotypes and whatever useless rules that society puts on us.

As for our majority… one is enough.

I’ve sat in sushi bars, really fine ones, and I know how hard this guy worked, how proud he is. I know you don’t need sauce. I know he doesn’t even want you to pour sauce. And I’ve seen customers come in and do that, and I’ve seen him, as stoic as he tries to remain, I’ve seen him die a little inside.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

I don’t ever want to come out with something safe and get away with, ‚It sounds good!‘ It’s got to be more than sounding good. The music I like are events.

I’ve always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

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.

I say that in the most humble way: I always knew that I could perform with the best of ‚em and I could deliver with the best of ‚em.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

I’m not a star. I don’t feel I’m so great. So how can I make you feel great just because you’ve got my signature on a piece of paper?

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Once you’ve changed who you are or who you’ve portrayed in your music, the fans, they’ll catch it… Once I feel like the world knows me for anything else but my music, then I feel like I failed.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

You know, when I have a bad game, it continues to humble me and know that, you know, you still have work to do and you still have a lot of people to impress.

I feel like the reason people feel like they know me is because I’m giving you myself in the music. There’s where the connection comes from; you can’t Twitter that.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being.

Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

He has the most who is most content with the least.

If you’re really satisfied with your position on something, you just say, ‚Hey;‘ you just very calmly present something.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

Lord Jesus, we come just as we are; this is how we came at first, and this is how we come still, with all our failures, with all our transgressions, with all and everything that is what it ought not to be, we come to Thee.