Every human being is under construction from conception to death.

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

I’m not intimidated by how people perceive me.

I remember, when I was a young guy in the SEAL teams, I was very afraid of making mistakes and looking stupid or doing dumb things and getting a bad reputation.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

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

Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.

I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

We all have done something unethical.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

I feel matured in a way that I’m happy about. I’m at this other stage in my life – and it’s not a bad thing at all.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

We work to become, not to acquire.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

Mothers and daughters generally have fairly complex relationships, and ours was made much more so by Mother’s illness. She had Parkinson’s disease, which was not diagnosed for a long time… All that made me very self-protective, because for one thing, I didn’t want to get trapped.

The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.

I was ironing my own clothes when I was 11 years old. My mental strength goes back to those days.

Success has always been a great liar.

As I grow up, the lessons I learn in love and relationships and how we treat each other are hopefully maturing – hopefully.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn’t mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

I’m not going to stop having problems.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

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

It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

One of the things I’ve told men over and over and over and over is if you’re being rejected by all the women that you approach, it’s not the women!

I believe growth should be constant, sustained and inclusive. It’s only meaningful if these three things are there. Otherwise they’re just economic figures.

Perfectionists demand perfection from themselves first and foremost.

I learned a long time ago how to be coachable.

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

I’ve learned that we all change constantly. It’s rare to find that person who is growing with you in the same way at the same time, who encourages you to grow.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Playing in MLS was a great experience. It has boosted my confidence and I feel I have matured as a player.

To say that Christ is the term and motive force of evolution, to say that he manifests himself as ‚evolver,‘ is implicitly to recognize that he becomes attainable in and through the whole process of evolution.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.

I never fall in love.

We all self-conscious. I’m just the first to admit it.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

That’s something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.