Hugh Hefner Quotes

It's hard to tell our good luck sometimes. Hard to tell sometimes for many years to come. And most of us have wept copious tears over someone or something, when if we'd understood the situation better, we might have celebrated our good fortune insteadOne can never change the past, only the hold it has on you and while nothing in your life is reversible, you can reverse it nevertheless.

One wouldn't want to have the same dilemmas at 50 as one had at 15. And indeed I don't. I have a very different take on life.

In exile, I have tried to profit by the past and prepare for the future.

As years passed away I have formed the habit of looking back upon that former self as upon another person, the remembrance of whose emotions has been a solace in adversity and added zest to the enjoyment of prosperity.

Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.

I always tell people I'm grateful for my cancer diagnosis because it was the greatest gift because it completely changed my life. I was able to stop and let my whole life and world just crash over me like a wave. And I stood there and went, 'Wow.' And for the first time, I stopped everything. I had to.

As much as you plan your career and plan your life, there are events that will change everything 180 degrees, I’ve had multiple events like that. I always wanted to be a doctor and now I’m in the theater business. But these defining moments in your life are really what builds your character.

Cancer and its aftermath changed my outlook in a profound way. I've become less of a hermit, and I travel more.

When I reflect on the losses I've experienced, I've come to believe that those experiences were transformative, that they shaped who I am.

I do think that the birth of my daughter was sort of a rebirth for me. It made me look at life in a completely new way. And that made me appreciate life in a way I don't think I ever had before.

I look back and think of all the times I've had to let things go in the past, and how traumatic it seemed while it was happening, but how my understanding of it changed as time passed - and oftentimes things that seem really difficult and traumatic in the short term seem a lot less difficult and traumatic in the long term. So I remind myself of that.

Though we cannot totally change our nature, we may in great measure correct it by reflection and philosophy; and some philosophy is a very necessary companion in this world, where, even to the most fortunate, the chances are greatly against happiness.

The more you get past pain, the more it goes from coal to diamond.

The day it all changed. The day I stated never to take anything for granted. The day I learned to take charge of my life. It was the day I was diagnosed with cancer.

There is one thing you know for sure, one fact that never fails to comfort you: the worst day of your life wasn't in there, in that mess. And it will do you good to remember the best day of your life wasn't in there, either. But another person brought you closer to those borders than you had been, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Every experience empowers you twice: First when you enter into it with a whole heart, and again when you leave it with a whole heart.

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.

This process of change since my stroke has been very gradual. It is going on all the time... It is partly a physical transformation. The body itself is undergoing great changes. My problem before was that I was living largely from the head; and then after the stroke I got down into the heart.

I was heading in a self destructive direction. My priority wasn't together, wasn't in order. So me getting locked up was actually a blessing for me. It helped for me to see the light. Once you get the rug snatched from under you - I had my career and family snatched from me, and I was forced to just sit there in that box for three years and think about what I did and how selfish I was, it made me really see things with new eyes, like, hold up, why was I doing that? What the hell was I thinking about? I gotta change. Something's got to give. I can't ever come back in this place again.

If you look back on your life and where you started from it's like looking back down a mountain back to the desert floor. It's like now I can't believe I had whatever it takes or perceived whatever it took to get here.

What was once your pain, will be your home.

There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.

During really difficult times in my life when I start questioning why I am struggling with something, I often turn to books to understand myself better.

Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.