To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success.

Don’t ever play yourself.

Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

You know, you can make a small mistake in language or etiquette in Britain, or you could when I was younger, and really be made to feel it, and it’s the flick of a lash, but it would sting, and especially at school where there’s not much privacy, and so on. You could, yes, undoubtedly be made to feel crushed.

I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

Whatever good things we build end up building us.

He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty.

It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

I don’t have a problem with ageing – in fact, I embrace that aspect of it. And am able to and obviously am going to be able to quite easily… it doesn’t faze me at all.

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

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

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

It’s always appealing to play a character that has to overcome himself as well as an obstacle. It makes the drama so much deeper.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‚Calculus for the Practical Man.‘ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

I still have mixed feelings about what growing up is – this thing that happens to everyone, so I’ve heard.

We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

I don’t want to make money; I want to make a difference.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

You can never get enough of what you don’t want.

A shady business never yields a sunny life.

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

I’m a big believer in doing things that make you uncomfortable. So, we live in a world where we want to be as comfortable as we can. And we wonder why we have no growth. We wonder why – when the smallest thing in our life gets difficult – we wonder why we cower and we run away.

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.

The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.

Every three months, I’ll say, ‚Honey, I think I should learn how to cook‘.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

From the moment I open my eyes, I’m trying to free my body. I’m trying to get looser, more flexible, to gain control. Movement is medicine to me.

I’ve never been a jealous person, and I’ve never felt built up by someone else’s failure – that’s a cheap thrill.