T. D. Jakes Quotes

The end of all you’re your actions is to seek the applause of shopkeepers, while you neglect what is most important to you—energy, energy!

We wrap ourselves up in social media and fame and forget what matters.

I'm just - like, I'm just very over the whole superficial life and world we live in.

Our society is all about focusing on the externals, "These people like me, I'm successful because of these people, they view me as being good" and we need to take that vision and instead of expanding it outwards we need to look inside ourselves.

We are so defined by how people see us. We're a very materialistic culture. We're a very image-driven culture. What if that goes away and you are left with, God help us, what, indeed, is your essential self?

In the hierarchy, the artist faces outward. Meeting someone new he asks himself, What can this person do for me? How can this person advance my standing? In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can't look is that place he must: within.

Is a little experience too much to pay for learning to know oneself?

Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.

A man must thank his defects, and stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so largely on his forces as tolame him; a defect pays him revenues on the other side.

Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, the formation of that self demands our utmost care and attention.

It is more important to know who you are than where you are going, for where you are going will change as the world around you changes.

Until you are willing to accept total and complete responsibility for every aspect of your life, your life will keep sending you experiences designed to get your attention.

Sometimes we are so busy being the hammer or the anvil, that we forget who really needs the shaping.

If you would improve, submit to be considered wihout sense and foolish with respect to externals. Wish to be considered to know nothing; and if you shall seem to someone to be a person of importance, distrust yourself.

I've looked in the mirror every day for 20 years. It's the same face.

I would lose myself too much if I thought of myself as the audience.

My feelings are Yevgeny Kafelnikov should take his prize money when he is done here and go and buy some perspective.

Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts. Only lost souls need to search for it outside themselves.

Being liked for the way you looked is worse than not being liked at all.

There is no quality that we respond to in another that we lack. It might be hidden behind some bad behavior or an old, outdated shadow belief that says we are the exact opposite of what we are seeing in the other person. But I promise you that if you are attracted to a quality in someone else, no matter how great, it also exists inside of you.

I have so many great things going on in my life that I don't need to pay attention to some writer.

There was a time when I was way too reliant upon other people's opinions and perspective of me. And I guess over time came to see how unhealthy that was. I mean it's almost like a sign of mental illness to base your self-worth on the opinions of complete strangers.

Yet how hard most people work for mere dust and ashes and care, taking no thought of growing in knowledge and grace, never having time to get in sight of their own ignorance.

Pay attention to what you're paying attention to.

In my early 40s I started to feel that I had neglected the spiritual side of my life. It had always been there, but I'd neglected it. In fashion, that's really easy because we live in the future, and we can place too much importance on material things.