You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That’s a part of it.

Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that – that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

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.

Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.

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.

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

Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don’t go well.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

We’re all just a bunch of sinners, but we do the best we can.

In our home there was always prayer – aloud, proud and unapologetic.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up.

A man has a tendency to accept you the way you are, while most women immediately start to pick flaws and want to change you.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

What’s coming will come and we’ll just have to meet it when it does.

I am sometimes sad when I hear the personal stories of Tibetan refugees who have been tortured or beaten. Some irritation, some anger comes. But it never lasts long. I always try to think at a deeper level, to find ways to console.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

I don’t like L.A. It’s just not fun. I don’t know why, but I just don’t get it. You have to drive to get everywhere, and when it rains everybody freaks out.

I believe that one key to success is to accept truth, no matter how it’s spoken.

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

As you read or listen to God’s Word and spend time talking to Him in prayer, your spirit will eventually become stronger than your flesh.

A Christian who does not pray for those who govern is not a good Christian.

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

‚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.

At the end of the day, I understand that life has road blocks, and life is like school – you’ll be tested; we gotta pass it.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they’re all welcome, because to me, church is a place you’re supposed to get healed and whole and loved.

You have to be tough and have a lot of faith.

We can’t form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

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.

Yeah, I wasn’t chosen to be first. I was just chosen to command that flight. Circumstance put me in that particular role. That wasn’t planned by anyone.

God is speaking to us. But are we listening to Him? When our conscience begins to nudge us for whatever reason, we might have this low-level misery or uneasiness about whatever it is we’ve done or we’re about to do. At times like this, it’s wise to prayerfully consider whether we’re offending God with our actions.

I used to pretend that my Peugeot driving to the gym in the rain in Dublin was a Ferrari on the Vegas strip.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

I think that there’s no doubt that as I see friends, families, children of gay couples who are thriving, you know, that has an impact on how I think about these issues.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

I get up every morning and say, ‚Father, give me strength today, not strength so I can lift 500 pounds, but give me strength, Lord, so when I speak, my words might motivate, might inspire somebody, Lord, when they see me, let them see you. When they hear me, Lord, let them hear you. In your holy name I pray.‘

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.

Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.

I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord’s side.

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.