Alicia Keys

I never thought love could be so deep, so wide, so open, so full, so elevating! Such a teacher! Thank you for teaching me, growing me, deepening me!!

The way I define beauty is individuality and wisdom, which I think creates a certain inner confidence. And not confidence in a way that’s only on the surface, but a deep-down knowing of yourself or settling into who you are.

How incredible our ancestors were. The first astrophysicists, scientists, physicians, mathematicians, architects, creators of so much of the world as we know it. It’s a blessing to know what cloth you’re cut from!

It’s my nature to downplay.

I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing.

You’ve got to have a good spirit on the inside. That’s what’s really going to make you look like you’re ready to rock the world.

If a better system is thine, impart it; if not, make use of mine.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

None of us should be defined by the worst thing we’ve ever done.

Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

Universities are of course hostile to geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine: as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.