You’ve got to learn to survive a defeat. That’s when you develop character.

I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don’t have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I’m sure he didn’t call everybody jerks.

Learning about climate change triggered my depression in the first place. But it was also what got me out of my depression, because there were things I could do to improve the situation. I don’t have time to be depressed anymore.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

I learned to fly a few years ago in England. It’s the only place I’m completely alone – up in the air, detached from everything.

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

No man was ever great by imitation.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Sometimes, if you begin to sing in a halfhearted mood, you can sing yourself up the ladder. Singing will often make the heart rise.

Never find fault with the absent.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Observe all men, thyself most.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

I’m about being the best.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

I will praise any man that will praise me.

The people of Northern Ireland have sorted out my whole life.

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

Any hand that I’ve shaken, any person that I met when I was Joe Blow, now that I’m this guy Kevin Hart, has come back. That’s why I treat everybody with respect. I’m always a nice pleasant guy to meet because when they come back to you, they remember.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.

Love is a better teacher than duty.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

When things are going bad, don’t get all bummed out. Don’t get startled; don’t get frustrated. If you can say the word ‚good,‘ guess what? It means you’re still alive. It means you’re still breathing.

Why regret anything? Where does it get you to regret anything you’ve ever done in your life? It gets you nowhere. It’s a pathetic emotion that you can wallow in.

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

I’m crazy, but I’m not too crazy.

I went through a period when I felt my film characters were having more fun than I was. It might partly explain why I ended up tattooed or doing certain extreme things in my life.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.

I had nothing growing up, but I always wanted to be ‚sexy,‘ even before I knew what the word was.

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

No man is hurt but by himself.

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

You can be happy where you are.

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

I don’t want to hear the word ‚can’t.‘

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

We will all fail in life, but nobody has to be a failure. Failing at a thing doesn’t make you a failure. You are only a failure when you quit trying.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

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