Does not the history of the world show that there would have been no romance in life if there had been no risks?

Even though I have never had an abrupt conversion experience, religion has been real to me and closely knitted to life. In fact the two cannot be separated; religion for me is life.

As we meditate on Christ's life, we find strength for our own.

Truth be told, most of us are faking our way through life. We pick only those battles we are sure to win, only those adventures we are sure to handle, only those beauties we are sure to rescue.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

Attempt something so impossible that unless God is in it, it's doomed to failure.

Gather in your resources, rally all your faculties, marshal all your energies, focus all your capacities upon mastery of at least one field of endeavor.

But strength alone though of the Muses bornIs like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchersDelight it; for it feeds upon the burrsAnd thorns of life; forgetting the great endOf poesy, that it should be a friendTo soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.

Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.

I'm getting to a point where everything is becoming streamlined in my life. I'm learning how to stand onstage for two hours and play in front of thousands of people as if I am completely in the moment every moment.

Self-pity is... a sinkhole from which no rescuing hand can drag you because you have chosen to sink.

My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.