When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

I stayed focused, and I never surrendered, and now I’ve been blessed. now I take care of my mother, my father, and my entire whole family.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

Every day is a gift from God. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow, so that tells me to see the good in this day to make the most of it.

There are certain things that bother me and certain things that don’t. Personal attacks on me? I think I’m just so used to it.

We all gonna die eventually from something or other, but don’t be a wimp. Put up a good fight.

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

I’m just glad to be feeling better. I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

I’m grateful for always this moment, the now, no matter what form it takes.

Thought is powerful in all phases. Even in my career, even in my life, things end up exactly how I visualized them.

I always joke that my kids‘ favorite holiday is Father’s Day. They love the way I celebrate the occasion by writing each of them a thank-you letter and a generous check. It’s my way of letting them know how much I appreciate the great pleasure and privilege of being their dad.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

I love being American, and I love family. I love having a family, and I feel so blessed, and I feel like God gave me exactly what I wanted, so now I have to do the right thing in God’s eyes also. Just follow what God wants me to do.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

If you don’t stand your ground, then all that happens is people push you backwards.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

If it wasn’t for baseball, I’d be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.

Pride is an independent, me-oriented spirit. It makes people arrogant, rude and hard to get along with. When our heart is prideful, we don’t give God the credit and we mistreat people, looking down on them and thinking we deserve what we have.

Most of our lives aren’t that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.

On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one’s own town.

I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

I have bad reflexes. I was once run over by a car being pushed by two guys.

There’s many ups and downs in the fight game.

When times are bad is when the real entrepreneurs emerge.

God wants to bless us where we are.

If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy.

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

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

As you know, I’m an immigrant. I came over here as an immigrant, and what gave me the opportunities, what made me to be here today, is the open arms of Americans. I have been received. I have been adopted by America.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

I never read one hateful thing said about me by some 12 year old. So I got to live an actual life. And I’ve kept that mentality. Just because there’s a hurricane going on around you doesn’t mean you have to open the window and look at it.