You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages.

Anyone can have a good day, but you have to be able to perform on a bad day.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

On every front there are clear answers out there that can make this country stronger, but we’re going to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling. Our job is to make sure that even as we make progress, that we are also giving people a sense of hope and vision for the future.

Instead of blaming everyone and everything else for your problems, pray for God to help you take an inventory of what’s been on your mind so you can think about what you’ve been thinking about.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.

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.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

He who enjoys doing and enjoys what he has done is happy.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

Don’t let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don’t whine. You can be brought low, that’s OK, but don’t be reduced by them. Just say, ‚That’s life.‘

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 now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

True nobility is exempt from fear.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

When I was a child, I was very poor and wanted everything. So when I got money, I began buying things.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

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.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.

I was a bit challenged when I was younger to stay on the right path.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

I’ve been through natural disasters. I lived down in Miami and was down there for Hurricane Andrew which was a Category 5. There were members of my family that thought they were going to die. Everyone was in the bathtub.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

The older you get, the better you get.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

The difference between us and them, between you and success, is not that you never fail, but it’s how you recover from those failures – is that you keep getting up time and time again. You figure out what you did wrong, and then you make it right. I say that to my kids every day.

It’s so easy to settle for less than God’s best for us because we don’t always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.

I knew ‚Crenshaw‘ had elevated me and distinguished me.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

I didn’t die young. So I am very lucky. There are other artists and people that didn’t survive certain things… people can imagine that I did the most dangerous, and I did the worst… for many reasons, I shouldn’t be here.

I grew up in a funny way.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

When your higher self is present, it always promotes peace.

The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil.

If you’re going to be a winner in life, you have to constantly go beyond your best.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.

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