Alicia Keys

The memory of a day like today reminds me to hold the ones I love that much tighter, that much longer… Take that much more time to be present and to feel the blessing of another day…

Love is real, love is pure, you only take what you give and give what you take. At its purest it is real. No pretending.

As I grow and I get older I’m realising more and more that there’s such a beautiful, sensual power that we have as women.

There are certain things we come into this world having to defeat.

Everything I do stems from something personal, not just because it will look good on paper or be a tax write-off.

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.

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to prepare for the long haul, the rise and fall, and let neither define your sense of self.

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.

Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?

The way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.

Excellence must be pursued, it must be wooed with all of one’s might and every bit of effort that we have each day there’s a new encounter, each week is a new challenge.

If a man’s eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

Nothing is more important than reconnecting with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real.

Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists – talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.

The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it. Theres another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modernit dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: The tail of China is large and will not be wagged. I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment.

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.