We must have a theme, a goal, a purpose in our lives. If you don’t know where you’re aiming, you don’t have a goal. My goal is to live my life in such a way that when I die, someone can say, she cared.

A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy – the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first born babe, and assures it of a mother’s love.

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

Our lives improve only when we take chances – and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.

Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death’s perfect punctuation mark is a smile.

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

When you take charge of your life, there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.