When you know better you do better.

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.

I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?

We will sometimes have defeats in life but you can have defeats without being defeated, you could fail without being a failure. When you see failure and defeats as merely part of the process to get to when.

Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.

Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.

The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.

The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.

Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!

Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.

It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.

Life loves the liver of it.

No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

You will face many defeats in your life, but never let yourself be defeated.

We need much less than we think we need.

remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind.

You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.

I don't trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

I thank God I'm myself and for the life I'm given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

If you want what you're saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody's life. Your own, first.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that.

I was born in St. Louis but lived there just for a few minutes in my life.

love life, engage in it, give it all you've got. love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it

At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family.