Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

My freshman and sophomore years in high school, I spent a lot of time trying to get back on the right track. I was arrested multiple times by the time I was 16, so I had a little harder time trying to adjust like a lot of us do in high school.

I’m not afraid to look like an idiot.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

Me and my dad are friends. We’re cool. I’ll never be disappointed again, because I don’t expect anything anymore from him. I just let him exist, and that’s how we get along.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of ‚Who do you think you are?‘

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

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.

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

Reactive people… are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behavior.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

The same thing I did in 2013 is what I’m trying to do in 2014, which is continue to improve, continue to shock people. You know, I have several projects coming up between 2014 and 2015, and hopefully by 2015, I’ll have another hour of stand-up material where I’ll be able to go on the road and tour again.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

Really, who you are is defined by the people who you know – not even the people that you know, but the people you spend time with and the people that you love and the people that you work with. I guess we show your friends in your profile, but that’s kind of different from the information you put in your profile.

Why am I a star? It can’t be because of looks.

Power does not change you, it unmasks you.

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

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.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, ‚I’m a representative.‘

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

I’ve always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.

Your body has space within you that cannot die.

I’m not good at talking about myself.

I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.

If all you’re doing is grinding for the man, it’s going to burden you. Once you say, ‚Hey, I’m grinding for the man, but I’m putting money away, and this is part of my exit strategy,‘ you’re working for you.

I have never regarded myself as a hero, but Tenzing undoubtedly was.

Solitude is independence.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

You can’t go backward in life.

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it.

All religions must be tolerated… for every man must get to heaven in his own way.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.

You get one life. I’m going to embrace mine.

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?

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.