To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

I couldn’t ever go back home without being something. I probably would never have gone back home. That was definitely a big motivation. To get back home, and not empty-handed.

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

Nothing can be by itself alone, no one can be by himself or herself alone, everyone has to inter-be with every one else. That is why, when you look outside, around you, you can see yourself.

Don’t make me into this airy-fairy, moralist, idealist because I’m not.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

I’ve always been really, really aware of my insecurities – really, really aware. I never developed that thick skin that keeps you from letting things get to you.

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America’s really large shadow and that’s not all that bad.

Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.

I’ve discovered that when we take time to renew our minds with God’s Word, we learn how to think like God thinks, say what God says, and act like He wants us to act.

My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.

My number one thing? Don’t overleverage yourself. Don’t say you can do something when you really can’t.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

True wealth is not of the pocket, but of the heart and of the mind.

I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

To me, my house is always recreating what I lost in youth.

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.

I am particularly drawn to the form of meditation called Japa. I know it works.

I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I’m dumb, I smell. Did I mention I’m stupid?

Everyone has been in love, at some point or another.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

I sometimes ask people, ‚Can you be aware of your own presence? Not the thoughts that you’re having, not the emotions that you’re having, but the very presence of your very being?‘ You become aware of your own presence by sensing the entire energy field in your body that is alive. And that is the totality of your presence.

When you’re outside, and everything is highland, it’s like nature has its own sound, and that’s one of my favorite sounds. I really loved sitting still silently outside, in a tree or in a bush, to just think.

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.

I realized, ‚Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.‘

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.

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

It’s like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf… most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

I put cocoa butter all over my face and my iconic belly and my arms and legs. Why live rough? Live smooth.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.

I never expected to be anybody important.

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.