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.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Most of the time I spend when I get up in the morning is trying to figure out what is going to happen.

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – never knowing.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

The more you seek the uncomfortable, the more you will become comfortable.

I love money because I’ve earned it. I won sixty G’s with my first knockout – and the week before, I was collecting social welfare.

The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

Travel teaches toleration.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

Guilt is just as powerful, but its influence is positive, while shame’s is destructive. Shame erodes our courage and fuels disengagement.

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

The essential lesson I’ve learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you’re not here as a human being only. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.

I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

To this day, some of my closest friends say, ‚Gaga, you know, everything’s great. You’re a singer; your dreams have come true.‘ But, still, when certain things are said to you over and over again as you’re growing up, it stays with you and you wonder if they’re true.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

I’m not a natural performer or exhibitionist. When I was younger, I hated the focus, and it made me feel strange.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

You have to be able to accept failure to get better.

The reward of suffering is experience.

Be as you wish to seem.

I made my fair share of mistakes.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

I believe in the Golden Rule – The Man with the Gold… Rules.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.

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

When it comes to everybody else’s thing and their lane and their timing, I’m never doing anything intentional to, like, come after somebody. That will always be my biggest mistake or anybody’s biggest mistake if that’s their intention.

I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.

You should never give up your inner self.

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

Back in the day, what motivated me was overcoming myself. Now I believe in being a leader. I’ve done it all – I’m good. Now, it’s about setting an example for others to follow. I can’t just talk it – I have to live it.

The self is hateful.

It has been hard for me to find it, but I have found love.