I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted; then I realized that the interruptions were my work.

While visiting the University of Notre Dame, where I had been a teacher for a few years, I met an older experienced professor who had spent most of his life there. And while we strolled over the beautiful campus, he said with a certain melancholy in his voice, "You know,… my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.

We often are very, very busy, and usually very tired as a result, but we should ask ourselves how much of our reading and talking, visiting and lobbying, lecturing and writing, is more part of an impulsive reaction to the changing demands of our surroundings than an action that was born out of our own center.

The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours …but it is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, [...] compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?

Well I think a lot of times we're putting things off and I'm going to do it later. I'm going to break this bad habit or I'm going to pursue this dream or I'm going to treat my spouse better.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

I wish I could have known you.

This society in which we live is radically changing. What previous generations saw as evil is now embraced as being good. It is a dangerous and slippery slope upon which we stand when we reject what Solomon called the beginning of wisdom - the fear of God.