Michelle Obama

What I have never been afraid of is to be a little silly, and you can engage people that way!

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

You can’t whisper magical thoughts in your daughter’s ear and go into a workplace where you tolerate [this] existence. If you are tolerating that, that’s the workplace that will be waiting for your little girl, and you have sold her a bill of goods.

At the root of this dilemma is the way we view mental health in this country. Whether an illness affects your heart, your leg or your brain, it’s still an illness, and there should be no distraction.

Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton, voted against their own voice.

Every day, you have the power to choose our better history – by opening your hearts and minds, by speaking up for what you know is right.

A bond as important as that of a husband and wife, is the bond between siblings.

My friends tell me I have an intimacy problem. But they don’t really know me.

The best present a man can give a woman is his undivided attention.

Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged only in private– though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh.

I wasn’t looking to be gay. I was quite upset when I discovered that was part of my life. I wished it would go away. But you can’t change who you are. And I tried to fight it in the beginning. And then I had a cancer scare in the mid-70’s. And that turned out to be a mistake, and I thought, ‘Life is too short.’

It’s great if the in-laws themselves put up boundaries. But if they won’t; it’s up to their grown kids to do it and enforce them.

Women prefer men who have something tender about them – especially the legal kind.

I was lucky I always got along with girls. It was never like a big deal. I had a lot of girls that I was friends with that I wasn’t sexual with. I think having two older sisters made me comfortable like that. I just like people, so I can just go up and say whatever.

Much healing can occur through the sexual act with a person you love and trust if the two of you can stay with each other during your most vulnerable moments. You enter into a sacred space, this unknown territory, from which you’ll emerge into new and unexpected states of being.

Friendship, ‘the wine of life,’ said Boswell, should, like a well-stocked cellar, be thus continually renewed. And Dr. Johnson added to this A man, Sir, should keep his friendships in constant repair.

Partnerships must have loyalty and integrity at their core.

Lasting love and forgiveness are two sides of the same page.

A lover cannot be chosen a la smorgasbord. A lover has to be chosen from soul-craving. To choose just because something mouthwatering stands before you will never satisfy the hunger of the soul-self. And that is what the intuition is for; it is the direct messenger of the soul.

Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Sometimes if you’re lucky, someone comes into your life who’ll take up a place in your heart that no one else can fill, someone who’s tighter than a twin, more with you than your own shadow, who gets deeper under your skin than your own blood and bones