The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

On every front there are clear answers out there that can make this country stronger, but we’re going to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling. Our job is to make sure that even as we make progress, that we are also giving people a sense of hope and vision for the future.

You can’t be happy by doing something groovy.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

I really didn’t consider myself happy or unhappy.

It’s easy to forget who you are.

‚Royal Beatings‘ was my first story, and it was published in 1977. But I sent all my early stories to ‚The New Yorker‘ in the 1950s, and then I stopped sending for a long time and sent only to magazines in Canada. ‚The New Yorker‘ sent me nice notes, though – penciled, informal messages. They never signed them. They weren’t terribly encouraging.

The nice thing is that when people come up to me, it’s the football they remember, not all the other rubbish.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

Our teachers deserve better feedback.

Honestly, I always believed in myself. For real, for real.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

You can either be a host to God, or a hostage to your ego. It’s your call.

The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

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?

I was raised by a mother who told me I was great every day of my life.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

When you make a mistake and the devil comes and tells you ‚You’re no good,‘ you don’t have to take on the guilt and condemnation he wants to put on you. No! You can immediately confess your mistake to God, thank Him for forgiving you and cleansing you with the blood of Jesus, and move forward in the victory of His grace and forgiveness.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

What I have in common with the character in ‚Truman‘ is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life.

Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

If you don’t set the tone for the day, the devil will set it for you.

I had very good support from Democrats and Republicans all throughout my administration. I had a very high batting average. We added more jobs per year in my four years than any other president since the Second World War.

Obama’s policies have been approximately the same as Bush’s, though there have been some slight differences, but that’s not a great surprise. The Democrats supported Bush’s policies.

Why regret anything? Where does it get you to regret anything you’ve ever done in your life? It gets you nowhere. It’s a pathetic emotion that you can wallow in.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

Every setback means you’re one step closer to seeing the dream come to pass.

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.

‚Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.

I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

My friends, there are no friends.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

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.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

My wife and I don’t compete. We know each other’s preferences, and we work to provide those for each other. One will take over when the other is faced with something he or she dislikes. That’s what friends do.

You have to believe in your process. You have to believe in the things that you are doing to help the team win. I think you have to take the good with the bad.

We’re always looking over our shoulders, ‚what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one – am I making the right career move?‘ When you’re young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

I feel like my message is to let people know that God is a good God, that He’s on their side, and no matter what happens, He has a great plan for them.

Let us be shy no longer. Let us go to our strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age is not only possible but probable.

Joy is the serious business of Heaven.