Eric Fromm: "The need for . . . an object of devotion is deeply rooted in the conditions of human existence.

With every moment of your time, every decision about how you spend your energy and your money, you are making a statement about what really matters to you.

You can talk all you want about having a strategy for your life, understanding motivation, and balancing aspirations with unanticipated opportunities. But ultimately, this means nothing if you do not align those with where you actually expend your time, money, and energy. In other words, how you allocate resources is where the rubber meets the road.

When the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerers and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards -- their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble -- the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.

And a cool four thousand, Pip!" I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in insisting on its being cool.

we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you than the ninety and nine which you had to work for, and money won at faro or in stocks snuggles into your heart in the same way.

No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

The condition of your soul will determine the condition of your life. Because it determines how you think, what you feel, and what you choose to do.

You know, if you love something, you should love it regardless of whether it costs five dollars or 500 or 5,000 dollars. Unfortunately, that's not the way our culture works, and we do collectively buy into this idea that things that are more expensive probably have more value.

Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.

The most expensive jewels are not found around our necks, but in our hearts.