Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

The self is hateful.

I am the center of attention in my job every single day; the thought of a wedding to me is exhausting. Why would I put myself through that?

What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

Total relaxation is the secret to enjoying sitting meditation. I sit with my spine upright, but not rigid; and I relax all the muscles in my body.

I am just one human being.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Throw off your worries when you throw off your clothes at night.

I do the same exercises I did 50 years ago and they still work. I eat the same food I ate 50 years ago and it still works.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

We have an epidemic of insecure people in our society today.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

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.

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

I didn’t think Marilyn Monroe was beautiful. It used to worry me. I thought maybe I’m not put together like the other chaps.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

Never marry someone in hope that they’ll change later.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

Never get out of bed before noon.

Character is power.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

‚They‘ is… stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of ‚they.‘ You might have a personal ‚they.‘ They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don’t like winners; they don’t like people who’s blessed. So everybody’s got a different ‚they.‘

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.

I don’t let even a day go by wherein I don’t give at 100 per cent.

Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.

Vanity can apply to both insecurity and egotism.

I first found delight in the Sabbath many years ago when, as a busy surgeon, I knew that the Sabbath became a day for personal healing. By the end of each week, my hands were sore from repeatedly scrubbing them with soap, water, and a bristle brush. I also needed a breather from the burden of a demanding profession.

Transformation literally means going beyond your form.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

I don’t know how to live good. I only know how to suffer.

If you’re going to spend two years of your life on something, it has to matter to you; you have to be passionate about it.

I’ve had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.

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.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.

I was at a New Year’s Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, ‚I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,‘ and I actually meant it.

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

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.