We are the sum of our behaviours; excellence therefore is not an act but a habit. -- Aristotle.

What I didn't understand was that the value of some new acquisition wasn't the difference between its retail price and what I paid for it. It was the value I derived from it. Stuff is an extremely illiquid asset. Unless you have some plan for selling that valuable thing you got so cheaply, what difference does it make what it's "worth?" The only way you're ever going to extract any value from it is to use it. And if you don't have any immediate use for it, you probably never will. -- Paul Graham

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. -- Cited by Randy Pausch

Well, if you talk about programming to a group of programmers who use the same language, they can become almost evangelistic about the language. They form a tight-knit community, hold to certain beliefs, and follow certain rules in their programming. It’s like a church with a programming language for a Bible. -- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).

Opportunities that present themselves to you are the consequence -- at least partially -- of being in the right place at the right time. They tend to present themselves when you're not expecting it -- and often when you are engaged in other activities that would seem to preclude you from pursuing them. And they come and go quickly -- if you don't jump all over an opportunity, someone else generally will and it will vanish. -- Marc Andreessen (http://blog.pmarca.com/)

What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights us is so great! ... When we win it's with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. ... Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. -- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Man Watching.

It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings. –Ann Landers

All progress takes place outside the comfort zone. ~Michael John Bobak

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret. ~Earl Nightingale