You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

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.

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

Fortunately, we have help from the media. I have to say this: I’m very grateful for the support and kindness that we’ve gotten. People have respected their privacy and in that way, I think, you know, no matter what people may feel about my husband’s policies or what have you, they care about children and that’s been good to see.

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

Needing to have things perfect is the surest way to immobilize yourself with frustration.

Unlike some politicians, I can admit to a mistake.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

If your inner life is not producing what you would like on the outside, don’t be discouraged… just be willing to change.

An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.

The self is hateful.

An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

We’ve been programmed, from the time that we were very, very little, about what we can’t do – about what is impossible.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

Yeah, I was a delinquent. It was when I was in the ninth grade. I was doing stupid stuff, and the cops came into the class. I was humiliated more than anything.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

God didn’t make me to make movies, flex muscles, buy gold. What you love the most becomes your God… If I never make another dollar, my life is complete.

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

I’m not going to stop having problems.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

I’m tender on the inside.

Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

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.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

Watch out for the joy-stealers: gossip, criticism, complaining, faultfinding, and a negative, judgmental attitude.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

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

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

I was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.

He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.