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.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that’s going on. I feel like I’m in my own bubble.

There’s a rebel lying deep in my soul.

I have never given adoration to any body except myself.

I don’t think anything about a personal legacy. I mean, those words would never come out of my mouth unless I just repeated them. Those things have never been important to me.

I am in my own head most of the time.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself.

You can’t be happy by doing something groovy.

I thought I couldn’t make a difference because I was too small.

I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

I talk about myself in the third person all the time. I don’t live my life in the way someone like you does. I live my life completely serving only my work and my fans.

I was so ashamed of who I was.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

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.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

I have an obsession with knowing the answers to things. When I don’t know what happened, it just bothers me, gets under my skin, and I need to write about it.

I always make my dreams into goals.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.

Both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom: the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come.

An unclean person is universally a slothful one.

It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.

Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

Dream and you shall become.

An elusive, enigmatic aura will make people want to know more, drawing them into your circle. Create such a power by hinting at something contradictory within you.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don’t.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.