What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

I am not handsome or sexy. Of course, it’s not like I am hopeless.

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.

Because of a great love, one is courageous.

Education is what you learn after you leave school.

When you are learning about a martial art, it is about respect.

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

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.

Do all you can to make your dreams come true.

A lot of times, people feel that if they forgive the person who hurt them, then they will continue to take advantage of them or not take responsibility for what they did wrong.

Life is filled with detours and dead ends, trials and challenges of every kind. Each of us has likely had times when distress, anguish, and despair almost consumed us.

There are some singers that know exactly when to go, and others hang on much too long and that is the same, that is the same with judges.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.

Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.

It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can.

I’m about being the best.

Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.

This guy Clubber Lang, I’ve been him all my life. He’s mean and hungry just like me.

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

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.

I was in my late thirties when my eyes were opened to truth in God’s Word that showed me I wasn’t living the abundant life Jesus died for me to have. I had a very negative mindset and was miserable most of the time because of the abuse I had experienced throughout my childhood.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

Don’t ever doubt yourselves or waste a second of your life. It’s too short, and you’re too special.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. And when I think about the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children, that’s what I want.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.

I learned a long time ago how to be coachable.

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

I’m not a natural joiner.

It sounds simple telling people to work hard and never quit, but to really execute and demonstrate those principles takes discipline and faith. Those are the two factors that I believe separate the good from the great, the successes from the failures.

Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don’t go well.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

It is easier to stay out than get out.

I am not the humblest person in the world. I admit that.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!

I know the blessing of having a dad who played 16 years in the league. That experience, and seeing him as an example, let me know that it’s possible. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

I never got into training to be an All-Ireland boxing champ or to win a belt. At the start, I just got into it to learn how to defend myself when I got into situations.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

Delhi means everything to me. This city has given me everything, and I love it.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

You’re not better than anybody else, but you’re not less than anybody else. You’re a child of the Most High God.

A boy carries out suggestions more wholeheartedly when he understands their aim.

The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don’t think so… I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

Every noble work is at first impossible.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

Music is really driving my whole life.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.