There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.

In my next incarnation, I want to be a writer.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Mental toughness is a lifestyle. It’s something that you live every single day of your life. When I was growing up, I was a lazy kid. I was a lazy kid, and everybody goes, ‚How did you get to where you’re at today? How did you get to where you’re running 200 miles at one time in 39 hours? Being so disciplined?‘

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

Meditation can help us embrace our worries, our fear, our anger; and that is very healing. We let our own natural capacity of healing do the work.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was that they didn’t get that. No joke – I’d leave meetings crying all the time.

If you are not living this moment, you are not really living.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

I need privacy. I would think that because what I do makes a lot of people happy that I might deserve a little bit of respect in return. Instead, the papers try to drag me off my pedestal.

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.

A fit body gives you confidence. And there’s nothing more impressive than a great attitude, which you can wear on your sleeve. But you’ll have to remember the difference between being rude and being confident.

You are doomed to make choices. This is life’s greatest paradox.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

When befriended, remember it; when you befriend, forget it.

Nature does nothing in vain.

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

As pessimistic as I am about the nature of human beings and our capacity for atrocity and malevolence and betrayal and laziness and inertia, and all those things, I think we can transcend all that and set things straight.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

I’m always asked, ‚What’s the secret to success?‘ But there are no secrets. Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker in the room.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.

I’m one of the world’s most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

The wisest have the most authority.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Humble people ask for help.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.