self-improvement quotes

We clearly see in God’s Word that anything He tells us to do, He will give us the ability to do it. But do we really believe it? Do we want to believe it? It’s easier to come up with excuses for why we can’t do things that are hard or that we really don’t want to do.

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

If you’re not very clever you should be conciliatory.

Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.

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.

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.

I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, ‚He is not a lush.‘ That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, ‚Look!‘

We can never make ourselves better by trying… praying more or longer, studying more of the Word, performing good works, etc. Don’t get me wrong… it’s not bad to do any of these things. In fact, it’s good. It’s just that doing them in God’s power is the only way those things will have any real and lasting effect in our lives.

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

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

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.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

Well, in order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times.

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.

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

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.

You either make dust or eat dust.

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

A lot of people cry and complain and put their hand out and beg. It never goes well.

Well I think a lot of times we’re putting things off and I’m going to do it later. I’m going to break this bad habit or I’m going to pursue this dream or I’m going to treat my spouse better.

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.

I already am a product.

Let go of yesterday.

If you’re doing your best, you won’t have any time to worry about failure.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

When I get down, I don’t waller around for long.

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

I created myself. I have taught myself so much.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

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

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.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

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

It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.

If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologize.

Whenever I’m around some who is modest, I think, ‚Run like hell and all of fire.‘ You don’t want modesty, you want humility.

You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself.

And, honestly, if somebody wants to criticize me for not being a trainwreck, that’s fine with me!

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

To do your best is no longer good enough. We now have to do the seemingly impossible.

The more you seek the uncomfortable, the more you will become comfortable.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!