We feel and know that we are eternal.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

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

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.

Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

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

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

We should never let material things get ahead of God or become so important in our lives that we can’t walk away from them if He tells us to. Anything you own that has a hold on you is a problem.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

Sometimes it’s the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

My moms always told me, ‚How long you gonna play the victim?‘ I can say I’m mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

I’m very aware and very conscious of the path I chose in life, and very aware of the path I didn’t choose.

I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

Know your worth! People always act like they’re doing more for you than you’re doing for them.

Fear is present when we forget that we are a part of God’s divine design. Learning to experience authentic love means abandoning ego’s insistence that you have much to fear and that you are in an unfriendly world. You can make the decision to be free from fear and doubt and return to the brilliant light of love that is always with you.

Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul.

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

What is the Tao Te Ching? Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

To realize that you are not your thoughts is when you begin to awaken spiritually.

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven’t quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

I’ve never been an intellectual but I have this look.

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

The more I grow in popularity, the lonelier it gets. Because you don’t really know me. You just know this part of me. You fell in love with that. But it’s way more intricate than what meets the surface.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

All I know is that, thanks to a sort of habit which has always been ingrained in me, I have never, at any moment of my life, experienced the least difficulty in addressing myself to God as to a supreme Someone.

You have to be someone.

People are looking for something a little more stable; people are feeling like they need to get closer to God.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.