Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

Without being the most confident person in the world, I think I am the right person for Liverpool.

It’s not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do – everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

I like to make people feel happy and superior in their reaction towards my appearance.

Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

In this bright future you can’t forget your past.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

Life is about growing and improving and getting better.

Only the shallow know themselves.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

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

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

When granted many years of life, growing old in age is natural, but growing old with grace is a choice. Growing older with grace is possible for all who will set their hearts and minds on the Giver of grace, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

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 have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.

You can’t go backward in life.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.

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

I was becoming post-ideological.

I just want to be myself.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

I grew up in a funny way.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

When we tell the story of our own conversion, I would have it done with great sorrow, remembering what we used to be, and with great joy and gratitude, remembering how little we deserve these things.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

Individuals need to be willing to face truth about their attitudes, behaviors, even what we want out of life.

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.