“I know that I’ve never been perfect. I think we determine what’s perfect to us. I think we understand perfect doesn’t come perfectly. If I was to be bare face or a face full of make up. I won’t be perfect until I determine what I see as perfect enough.”
“I could not see beauty until I held hands with chaos in silence.”
“Understanding who you are is critical for your career advancement. Self-awareness helps you get ahead.”
“Our lives consist of a series of internal battles, deep within us, where weapons don t exist and technology is unable to create devices that better the best of yesterday. Our knowledge is our only defense; caution, our only friend.”
“Greed robs you of more value than the price of what you ve gained.”
“We are creatures of habit more than we are creatures of change.”
“Once you start settling, and letting others control your life, it can quickly become a habit, so it’s best to avoid such things altogether.”
“Man is the question he asks about himself, before any question has been formulated. It is, therefore, not surprising that the basic questions were formulated very early in the history of mankind.”
“A good leader must have the wisdom to know when a pursuit is no longer worthy of being pursued - a time when the losses of the present must be accepted - and cut - to preserve the gains and providence of the future.”
“Sometimes the heart can hear what the ears do not.”
“Some only follow the holy man while others only follow the warlord. But the truth is, both sides are within all of us, and if people could only see that, they wouldn t have to wear masks, or pretend to be holy like a holy man, or pretend that nothing can hurt them like a warlord. They could just be themselves, unjudged.”
“Sometimes it s best to trade an ideal for something more practical that you can guarantee.”
“Her Brooklyn accent only comes out when she s angry. This is the best part....I pick at my pancakes while she tells me, simply, It s ok to change your mind. About a feeling, a person, a promise of love. I can t stay just to avoid contradicting myself. I don t have to watch him cry.”
“There’s all this pressure in our society to be beautiful, to be strong, to be sexy. So we spend our time and money on trying to become these things. We put on the high heels, the suits, the makeup, the mask. Then, we feel more awkward than confident, so we drink away our anxieties. That doesn’t make us look any sexier – it just makes us stop caring about how we look. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone is sexy. Everyone is strong. It’s lunacy. We’re all running around trying to become something that we already are. You know what’s really sexy? A person who’s 100% comfortable with themselves. And you know what’s really funny? It is just as time consuming and difficult to learn to accept yourself as it is to pretend to be someone else. The only difference is – with self acceptance, one day, it’s not hard anymore. One day, you feel like your sexiest, strongest self just rolling out of bed in the morning. You’re either going to spend the little time you have in your life on trying to know yourself or trying to hide yourself. The choice is yours. You can’t do both. And you know what’s really amazing about choosing self-love? You’ll be setting an example for all the people around you and all the kids of the coming generation. You’ll be part of a revolution to take back the precious moments of our lives out of the hands of shame-inducing advertisers and back into the hands and hearts of real people like you, like me, like all of us. I know you’ve dreamt about changing the world. So this is your chance. Learn to love yourself, accept yourself, and unleash your strongest, sexiest self. It’s in there. You just have to believe it.”
“I had the strangest feeling -- like I had lost something without ever really having it in the first place -- that I wasn t what I once was, and wasn t at all what I was meant to be. The sensation made me feel hollow down to my bones.”
“In the land of light there is only one currency. The currency of love.”
“Every book is a revolution. Books are our ticket out of boredom, despair, loneliness—but also ignorance.”