We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster – closed and forgotten within the first year.

Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one’s belly, in order to be able to save one’s head.

There’s always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.

It’s true my father abused me and didn’t love and protect me the way he should have, and at times it seemed no one would ever help me and it would never end. But God always had a plan for my life, and He has redeemed me.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.

For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.

All of our problems start in our minds.

A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases – one was Alzheimer’s, and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer’s.

There’s a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I’m affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn’t want to leave. He likes it very much.

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Do not laugh much or often or unrestrainedly.

I know how to swim through backlash. I can tread water through backlash… If anything, that’s all giving me power.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don’t let it get the best of you.

I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don’t retire before I go senile, then I’ll do more damage than good at that point.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of a loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply.

I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

Exercise is really important to me – it’s therapeutic. So if I’m ever feeling tense or stressed or like I’m about to have a meltdown, I’ll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

The dieting wars have got to stop.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

Serious illness doesn’t bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host.

I say there’re no depressed words just depressed minds.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

You have within you right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you.

Happiness is the cessation of suffering.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

People in tough times – it doesn’t mean they don’t have a great attitude.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in the wizarding world.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

I am in my own head most of the time.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.

He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.

Didn’t get promoted? Good. More time to get better.