To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

‚I wish life was not so short,‘ he thought. ‚Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.‘

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

The thing I always say to people is this: ‚If you avoid failure, you also avoid success.‘

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.

I know I’m stronger in the songs than I really am. Sometimes I need to hear it myself. We all need to hear those empowering songs to remind us.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

I don’t think about the end game. I’ve got lots to occupy my mind. It’s the rage that keeps me going.

At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn’t collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.

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

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.

Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.

I’m sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useless by it, can make you extend yourself beyond what you would regard as your capacity. If you’re afraid, the blood seems to flow freely through the veins, and you really do feel a sense of stimulation.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.

Aim for the highest.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

Affluence means influence.

I’m not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I’ve flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

Don’t think in the morning. That’s a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don’t think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

A man is not paid for having a head and hands, but for using them.

The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.

I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I’m just living my life.

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

America is another name for opportunity.

I put out one album one week, and I’m already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

All the time, I’ve felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn’t.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

You know, T can stand for anything. T stand for working hard. T stand for loving thy neighbor. T stand for feeding the hungry. T stand for just working, working, working, being happy on the set, you know, lifting everybody’s spirits. T stands for just a nice guy.