personal growth quotes

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

Feels good to try, but playing a father, I’m getting a little older. I see now that I’m taking it more serious and I do want that lifestyle.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge.

Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.

The problem with me, as far as getting married and having a family, is that my comedy is so important to me. So I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good a dad as my dad.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

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.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

I just have always felt that people don’t change, circumstances change.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

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

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.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.