The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Nothing can come of nothing.

I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Even the best teams can fail. Celebrities can fade. There is only One in whom your faith is always safe, and that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you need to let your faith show!

I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

I’ll never, ever be full. I’ll always be hungry. Obviously, I’m not talking about food. Growing up, I had nothing for such a long time. Someone told me a long time ago, and I’ve never forgotten it, ‚Once you’ve ever been hungry, really, really hungry, then you’ll never, ever be full.‘

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

My music will go on forever. Maybe it’s a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

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

You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Power does not change you, it unmasks you.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

You can’t have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.

Of course there are moments that you wonder how long you should be doing it because there are other aspects which are not nice, of this lifestyle. But I just love winning.

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

I like to change characters and then, slowly I believe the audience treat me as, like an actor who can fight. It’s not like an action star.

Do not let circumstances control you. You change your circumstances.

I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‚Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.‘

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.