personal growth quotes

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.

A lot of times, people feel that if they forgive the person who hurt them, then they will continue to take advantage of them or not take responsibility for what they did wrong.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

The most challenging project I’ve ever done, I think, is every single thing I’ve ever tried to do. It’s never easy.

I try to not focus on what people expect from me.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

My dad seemed comfortable with his decision to be a ‚have-not,‘ but I knew that I wasn’t.

The older I get, the more important the eternal becomes to me personally.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

Catering to bad feelings feeds and empowers them.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

You can’t put your feet on the ground until you’ve touched the sky.

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.

Sometimes I’m a bit under-aggressive and sometimes a bit over. But I think it’s good to have both.

Responsibility, I believe, accrues through privilege.

I was in my late thirties when my eyes were opened to truth in God’s Word that showed me I wasn’t living the abundant life Jesus died for me to have. I had a very negative mindset and was miserable most of the time because of the abuse I had experienced throughout my childhood.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

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.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

It’s so easy to settle for less than God’s best for us because we don’t always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.

Spending time with God through prayer and His Word is a prerequisite for having a great life and fulfilling your purpose.

Let go of yesterday.

I’ve had a few semi-toxic relationships, but it’s not what I look for when I’m seeing someone.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

I don’t need to be vindicated, and I don’t want attention.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn’t mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

Fame is ultimately about the cycles of desire and how to do away with them or manage them well.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

Satan wants us to constantly focus on everything that is wrong with us and look at how far we still have to go. But God desires for us to rejoice in how far we have already come.

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.