Michelle Obama

I view myself as being the average woman.

You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.

When I’m happier and healthier, my family is happier and healthier, and it affects how I interact with my friends and the people I work with.

No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half its citizens.

Failure is an important part of your growth and developing resilience. Don’t be afraid to fail.

You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.

A vow is a snare for sin.

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

A true friend freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.