Few things are sadder than encountering a person who knows exactly what he should do, yet cannot muster enough energy to do it. "He who desires but acts not," wrote Blake with his accustomed vigor, "Breeds pestilence.

Happiness does not simply happen to us. It's something that we make happen.

To be overcome with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance.

Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness.

The most important step in emancipating oneself from social controls is the ability to find rewards in the events of each moment.

Attention is psychic energy, and like physical energy, unless we allocate some part of it to the task at hand, no work gets done.

The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's own powers. This is not to say that we should abandon every goal endorsed by society; rather, it means that, in addition to or instead of the goals others use to bribe us with, we develop a set of our own.