I know and share the many sorrows a human being can experience, but I do not cling to them; they pass through me, like life itself, as a broad eternal stream...and life continues.

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.

As life becomes harder and more threatening, it also becomes richer, because the fewer expectations we have, the more good things of life become unexpected gifts that we accept with gratitude.

Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.

Such words as 'God' and 'Death' and 'Suffering' and 'Eternity' are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be.

Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that's not too awful either, but never, never give up.

Each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.

That I should die next week, I would still be able to sit at my desk all week and study with perfect equanimity, for I know now that life and death make a meaningful whole.

I don’t want to be anything special. I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise.

There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.

If someone tells you it can't be done. Smile and humbly agree. Then go back and work so hard that you can prove them wrong equally as fast.

The sound of a kiss is not as strong as that of a cannon, but its echo endures much longer.

I keep dreaming of a future, a future with a long and healthy life, not lived in the shadow of cancer but in the light.

I always want to be the best at whatever I'm attempting to do.

Aside from my son, no person has ever shown for me the gentle concern I knew from Governor Adlai Stevenson.

There are many different ways that a military person's career can be translated.

At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

Defeat is always momentary.

Brooklyn is the only place where a guy can open up a candy store sell no candy and gross over eight million dollars a year.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all the people some of the time, which is just long enough to be president of the United States.