Things won’t get better dwelling on the past. Accept what has happened. Then move forward.

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

And we are never too old to study the Bible. Each time the lessons are studied comes some new meaning, some new thought which will make us better.

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.

I liked his ability to deal with a lot of the negativity that surrounded him. Even though he was in a world that he didn’t want to be in, he still saw the bigger picture.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

I made my fair share of mistakes.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

Whenever you give up something, you must replace it with something.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.

Don’t program yourself to break down as you age with thoughts that decline is inevitable. Time may be passing for our bodies, but because they house our ageless souls, we never need to see ourselves as old and infirm.

We will move forward, we will move upward, and yes, we will move onward.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

I’ve arrived at the place if I’m not taking a career risk, I’m not happy. If I’m scared, then I know I’m being challenged.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

I think it is the height of ignorance to believe that the sexual act is an independent function necessary like sleeping or eating. Seeing, therefore, that I did not desire more children, I began to strive after self-control. There was endless difficulty in the task.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

That is my wish, hope, instruction for all of you: Take your education seriously, okay? Always do that. Because I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my education.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

Sometimes you must suffer through something to defeat your fear of it.

The more people I reach, the more people there are that have opinions about me. Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Delhi means everything to me. This city has given me everything, and I love it.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don’t suffer anymore.

Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you.