You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.

Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

If you want to be successful, it’s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing.

People use irony as a defense mechanism.

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.

Reproach is shame, blame, disgrace, disapproval and a disrespectful attitude toward yourself. When you’re under reproach, your behavior shows it.

The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change and everyone looks up to them.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

Don’t ever call a guy first. The thing they want the most is whatever they can’t have. It sounds really juvenile, but it works.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

You learn a lot from traveling around.

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.

My future is righteousness.

I took the vow of celibacy in 1906. I had not shared my thoughts with my wife until then, but only consulted her at the time of making the vow. She had no objection.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

My job is to bring out in people what they wouldn’t dare do themselves.

Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I’m talking to people. It doesn’t always work, and one shouldn’t always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.

Start wide, expand further, and never look back.

A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.

One of the most important things you learn from the Internet is that there is no ‚them‘ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‚us.‘

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

I don’t look at a man who’s expert in one area as a specialist. I look at him as a rookie in ten other areas.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

If you don’t like what someone has to say, argue with them.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

A letter does not blush.

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

Some habits of ineffectiveness are rooted in our social conditioning toward quick-fix, short-term thinking.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

I think we need more idiot control.

The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

We are what we believe we are.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

And, honestly, if somebody wants to criticize me for not being a trainwreck, that’s fine with me!

I’m not really book-smart.

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

To learn something but not to do is really not to learn. To know something but not to do is really not to know.