There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

When you can whip any man in the world, you never know peace.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don’t censor yourself, you end up with what you’re most concerned about, but you haven’t filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

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.

If you were to ask me what I want to do – I don’t want to be a celebrity, I want to make a difference.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

A person who is truly authentic doesn’t need to play a role in life, we think, but can simply be him – or herself.

I’ve seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.

You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

I think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids‘ dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We’ve all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

In the beginning, I was very insecure. I hated how I looked in pictures.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Catering to bad feelings feeds and empowers them.

I’ve never been reckless – it’s always calculated. I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

There are no second acts in American lives.

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.

You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.

Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.

Vanity is but the surface.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

No one but a fool is always right.

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

If all you’re doing is grinding for the man, it’s going to burden you. Once you say, ‚Hey, I’m grinding for the man, but I’m putting money away, and this is part of my exit strategy,‘ you’re working for you.

Maybe other people will try to limit me but I don’t limit myself.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

One might say that our words are a movie screen that reveals what we have been thinking and the attitudes we have.

It’s so easy to settle for less than God’s best for us because we don’t always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.

My confidence is easy to shake. I am very well aware of all of my flaws. I am aware of all the insecurities that I have.

I was never particularly fond of my voice.

I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

Joanne‘ is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

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.

I do not live on false promises. I cannot afford to live on bad advice.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.