Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

Americans like to talk about (or be told about) Democracy but, when put to the test, usually find it to be an ‘inconvenience.’ We have opted instead for an authoritarian system disguised as a Democracy. We pay through the nose for an enormous joke-of-a-government, let it push us around, and then wonder how all those assholes got in there.

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace, guiding every one of my steps I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look, or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God’s love within me and around me.

The individual has always to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.

Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life.

I am not supportive of large multi-national corporations that made billions a year in profit and don’t pay a nickel in taxes, nor am I supportive of those corporations who throw American workers out on the street and then move to China or Mexico.

The weak are always anxious for justice and equality. The strong pay no heed to either.

You never realize how short a month is until you pay alimony.

If a guy pays you five dollars, you give him seven dollars worth of work.

Pay attention to where you are going because without meaning you might get nowhere.

Honesty pays dividends both in dollars and in peace of mind.

I didn’t want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.

Doing things for others always pays dividends.

If you start hustling then don’t pay a person what they deserve, pay them what they accept. That’s good business. Even if you’re not hustlin’ pay them what they accept because you can capitalize off of people.

After four hundred years of slave labor, we have some back pay coming, a bill owed to us that must be collected.

It is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts.

People pay a lot of money to go see shows now, they don’t wanna know about your technical problems, or if you’re not feeling good, they don’t wanna know we have a glitch. It’s their night, you better do something to earn that money.

We pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit Awards.

Frank Sinatra turns 100 this year and his music has been a major player in the soundtrack of my life. So it’s only right that I return the favor and pay it forward.

The essence of a successful business is really quite simple. It is your ability to offer a product or service that people will pay for at a price sufficiently above your costs, ideally three or four or five times your cost, thereby giving you a profit that enables you to buy and to offer more products and services.

One of the things you discover about being president is that there are all these rules and norms and laws and you got to pay attention to them.

It pays to know who your friends are but it also pays to know you ain’t got any friends.

Say not that honor is the child of boldness, nor believe thou that the hazard of life alone can pay the price of it: it is not to the action that it is due, but to the manner of performing it.

When bright young minds can’t afford college, America pays the price.

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit—and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.

We are so anxious to achieve some particular end that we never pay attention to the psycho-physical means whereby that end is to be gained. So far as we are concerned, any old means is good enough. But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

Honesty is the cornerstone of character. The honest man or woman seeks not merely to avoid criminal or illegal acts, but to be scrupulously fair, upright, fearless in both action and expression. Honesty pays dividends both in dollars and in peace of mind.

It bothers me that the average fan, the average sportswriter for that matter, pays so much attention to what’s in a box score. A box score does not properly represent the most important thing – team play. It shows some guy scoring 27 points, but it doesn’t show that my 27-point man let his guy score 30.

Everything shapes you to be the person you are today. Sometimes hard lessons pay off dividends.

Treat your enemies with courtesy, and you’ll see how valuable it really is. It costs little but pays a nice dividend: those who honor are honored. Politeness and a sense of honor have this advantage: we bestow them on others without losing a thing.

American businesses are struggling to pay outrageous, exploitive insurance bills for their employees, hampering our ability to compete globally.

Pay attention to your body. The point is everybody is different. You have to figure out what works for you.