Quotes on Life

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

Life is a great university for the unfolding of the mind, for developing character. In choosing our life work, when we are free to choose, we should remember this, and choose that which will call the biggest man or woman out of us and not that from which we can coin the most dollars.

There are certain weights in life you simply cannot carry. Your Lord is asking you to set them down and trust Him. What do you say we take God up on His offer?

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.

It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit; divorced from it, they remain barren.

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

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering.

I give myself permission to be all that I can be, and I deserve the very best in life.

If I'm half as good as everybody said I am, I'm far too good to be wasting time with ordinary people. But I seem to be spending my life with ordinary people, who are the best people in the world.

A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything needed for the extravagant journey that is his life. What counts for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive.

The biggest temptation I believe is to feel comfortable, to feel like you've worked through all of that here on Earth, and are satisfied with this life.

Everybody needs to show respect to each others' ways and the cultural life that you get on this planet. Don't get caught up on 'I'm brown, black, white, red, blue, whatever.' You gotta ask, what were you called before 1492? All these names we're using now are just an illusion made to keep us fighting each other.

For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

The more specific we are, the more universal something can become. Life is in the details. If you generalize, it doesn't resonate. The specificity of it is what resonates.

Has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? . . . No other human institution comes close.

He possesses dominion over himself, and is happy, who can every day say, "I have lived." Tomorrow the heavenly father may either involve the world in dark clouds, or cheer it with clear sunshine, he will not, however, render ineffectual the things which have already taken place.

For me, the most important thing that I have to accomplish is to be a good father. That's the most difficult challenge of my life. That's the most important thing for me, more than films.

I've come to understand that art is awesome and beautiful because it's a reflection of life - but it's just a reflection, and the real thing is my daughter.