We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

Instead of blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, pray for God to help you take an inventory of what’s been on your mind so you can think about what you’ve been thinking about.

My weaknesses have always been food and men – in that order.

I’m very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me. I’m rather surprised at who I am, because I’m actually like my dad!

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

I am my own sanctuary and I can be reborn as many times as I choose throughout my life.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

I don’t have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

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.

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

Deficiency motivation doesn’t work. It will lead to a life-long pursuit of try to fix me. Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

I thank God I’m in a position where I can pick and choose – there are some roles I don’t play.

I love getting out of my comfort zone.

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

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

A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

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

Don’t let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.

If you have an enemy, then learn and know your enemy, don’t just be mad at him or her.

Ambition has become a dirty word, and I believe it is a great evolutionary force for the positive. If people fail or go astray in their ambition I can live with it but not with people lowering their expectations, wasting time, slacking off and glorifying failure and stupidity.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

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

I’ve always believed in God. I also think that’s the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you’re in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.

Man is a universe within himself.

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.

To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

It doesn’t take much to make me angry.

My freshman and sophomore years in high school, I spent a lot of time trying to get back on the right track. I was arrested multiple times by the time I was 16, so I had a little harder time trying to adjust like a lot of us do in high school.

I just want to be myself.

It’s very hard to live with yourself if you don’t stick with your moral code.

Mine is better than ours.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

I got teased my entire school life. What they were picking on I don’t even understand.

I want people to draw strength from me.

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

I don’t regret anything.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

The trained mind is a rich mind.

Start wide, expand further, and never look back.

I have so much in my life. I want to be of value to the world.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

I was so ashamed of who I was.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.