The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

What good are fans? You can’t eat applause for breakfast. You can’t sleep with it.

The last thing you want is to not be recognized for all of the hard work you put in.

All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

I always wanted to be a Vine star. I wasn’t, thank God.

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me.

Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Our love, our gratitude, our admiration for our men and women in uniform, our veterans and their families – all of that is bigger than any one party or any one election.

For every disciplined effort there is a multiple reward.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.

You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have.

In my entire life, any time I’ve ever lost something, I’ve gotten something even better going around the next corner. It’s like one door closes and another door opens. As long as I can walk through the produce section in every grocery store in this country and eat the grapes that they’re going to throw away, I know I can be fine.

I probably work harder, putting in a lot of time and effort, than a lot of drivers because all I think about, and all I do, is to do with racing, trying to make myself a better driver.

When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.

I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

We don’t thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.

The Global Fund is a central player in the progress being achieved on HIV, TB and malaria. It channels resources to help countries fight these diseases. I believe in its impact because I have seen it firsthand.

Every day is a gift from God. Learn to focus on the Giver and enjoy the gift!

I was a chemistry major, but I’m always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I’ve brought scientific thinking to literature. There’s been very little gratitude for this.

If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

I would never exchange my life with anybody else’s.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

If you really love films, and you really want to get the full impact, there’s a huge difference between watching something on a small screen with a mediocre sound system and watching it on a giant screen in a giant theater with a huge beautiful sound system. I mean, the difference is electric.

Most of the time, I’m not even working; I’m just helping people, because I feel that I am too lucky.

Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.

Oh, hour of forgiven sin, moment of perfect pardon, our soul shall never forget you while, within you, life and being find immortality!

It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs – that’s where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that’s very cool.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

If I’m a star, then the people made me a star.

Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.

I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to come and witness my hanging.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

Glory be and praise to God. I didn’t do any of this. God did. I don’t have a recipe or a blueprint. I prayed for it, and my prayers are continuing to be answered.

I saw 14 games in two and a half months at Churchill. It was what I really signed for. They were eyeing the championship and also playing the AFC Cup. So I am very thankful for Churchill, the coaching staff and the players.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

When you write a song like ‚Forrest Gump,‘ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.

I’m just glad I play for Coach Belichick.

The first fresh hour of every morning should be dedicated to the Lord, whose mercy gladdens it with golden light.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

I want to thank my Eritrean fans for feeling connected to me and for supporting me. I feel extremely grateful.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

Every man who has at last succeeded, after long effort, in calling up the divinity which lies hidden in a woman’s heart, is startled to find that he must obey the God he summoned.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.