All writers of confessions from Augustine on down, have always remained a little in love with their sins.

The truth is -- we are always highly motivated when something means a great deal to us. If I fell into a deep lake and I didn't know how to swim, I would become highly motivated in an instant. Climbing from the lake would mean more to me than anything else in the world. My effort would be no less than astounding and I would suddenly become one of the most excited and enthusiastic persons imaginable.

Suffering _ how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

it is the general rule of the moral universe that those men prosper who do their work with all their hearts, while those are almost certain to fail who go to their labour leaving half their hearts behind them.

All professions have some element of theater to them.

Don't differentiate between "This is a job" and "This is what I'm doing for fun." It's all simultaneous.