It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening.

The ability to take misfortune and make something good come of it is a rare gift. Those who possess it are ..said to have resilience or courage.

Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.

Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk-the curiosity that leads to creativity belongs to this set. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement or support from outside to motivate behaviour, the second can wilt if not cultivated.

It is how people respond to stress that determines whether they will profit from misfortune or be miserable.

the self expands through acts of self forgetfulness.

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