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 you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

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.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.

When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

I like to change characters and then, slowly I believe the audience treat me as, like an actor who can fight. It’s not like an action star.

My production and songwriting and the environment around those vocals are not inspired by R&B at all.

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment… If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.

‚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.

Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you.

We didn’t crumble after 9/11. We didn’t falter after the Boston Marathon. But we’re America. Americans will never, ever stand down. We endure. We overcome. We own the finish line.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

The men who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.

All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

There’s people that tried to celebrate when I lost that got nothing to do with it. That’s not the sign of a champion.

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

During my first years in the Sierra, I was ever calling on everybody within reach to admire them, but I found no one half warm enough until Emerson came. I had read his essays, and felt sure that of all men he would best interpret the sayings of these noble mountains and trees. Nor was my faith weakened when I met him in Yosemite.

The sun doesn’t always shine in West Virginia, but the people do.

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?

Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

Chinese people themselves, they really want change.

Nothing can resist the person who smiles at life – I don’t mean the ironic and disillusioned smile of my grandfather, but the triumphant smile of the person who knows that he will survive, or that at least he will be saved by what seems to be destroying him.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

If you have to stand and fight, you train yourself so that you’re able to do it.

Our whole life is set up in the path of least resistance. We don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to feel discomfort. So the whole time, we’re living our lives in a very comfortable area. There’s no growth in that.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

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

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.

To have a comeback, you have to have a setback.

Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others because this is America. This is who we are.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

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

My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches.

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

The U.N. bureaucracy has grown to elephantine proportions. Now that the Cold War is over, we are asking that elephant to do gymnastics.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

I believe that God has put gifts and talents and ability on the inside of every one of us. When you develop that and you believe in yourself and you believe that you’re a person of influence and a person of purpose, I believe you can rise up out of any situation.

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

If we depend for our happiness on another, on society or on environment, they become essential to us; we cling to them, and any alteration of these we violently oppose because we depend upon them for our psychological security and comfort.

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