Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

It was as if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring, bittersweet tones and flowed away, becoming temporal and transitory once more.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.

I don’t have any regrets. I made all my own decisions.

My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all directions.

You need to understand what works best for your own body.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

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

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that’s Memoirs.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

The poorest people are the sweetest people.

Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

I think if I keep working in the way that I am, from the heart and from passion and with love, well, the fruits of that will keep coming.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

I always thought that if I made it big or got successful at what I had started out to do, that I wanted to come back to my part of the country and do something great, something that would bring a lot of jobs into this area.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

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.

I was becoming post-ideological.

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

I always make my dreams into goals.

I am not handsome or sexy. Of course, it’s not like I am hopeless.

Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn’t done in life. They wish they hadn’t kicked their dog when they were ten or something.

Success isn’t supposed to happen, no matter how hard you work. There’s no guarantee you’re going to succeed. There’s nothing set in stone.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.

I mean we all need a second chance sometimes.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

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

You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

People suffer because they are caught in their views. As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don’t suffer anymore.

I’ve always strived to be successful, not famous.

Money ain’t everything.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

I feel like my message is to let people know that God is a good God, that He’s on their side, and no matter what happens, He has a great plan for them.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

I still have mixed feelings about what growing up is – this thing that happens to everyone, so I’ve heard.