Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.

The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has.

I wake up in the morning and my heart is light, man. It’s not heavy. I don’t have skeletons in the closet on their way out.

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.

I wake up some mornings and sit and have my coffee and look out at my beautiful garden, and I go, ‚Remember how good this is. Because you can lose it.‘

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

I’m my own worst critic, and if I don’t pull off what I think I wanted to do in my head, then I won’t be a happy girl.

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

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

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

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

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.

Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

The self is hateful.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

A lot of times, I run a thought experiment: ‚If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?‘

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

If it’s stress of things that we cannot control, what you have to do is you mitigate that stress as much as possible. You’ve planned, you’ve trained, you’ve done everything you can in your power to mitigate the stress that’s facing you. And then after that, there’s nothing you can do. So, you have to let that one go.

I can’t stress to you enough how much I can relate to teens being cyberbullied. Something that helps me is looking at old videos of me and my friends from middle school, or videos of my family. I love watching funny videos of my favorite people – it really cheers me up.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

I never said I was the best in anything. I never said I’m an icon. The world decides all of that.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

I was ill, and everyone could see it but me.

I really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.

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

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

God is speaking to us. But are we listening to Him? When our conscience begins to nudge us for whatever reason, we might have this low-level misery or uneasiness about whatever it is we’ve done or we’re about to do. At times like this, it’s wise to prayerfully consider whether we’re offending God with our actions.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

I like to let things breathe.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

‚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.‘

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

I’ve been reckless, but I’m not a rebel without a cause.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

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.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.