Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. - William Somerset Maugham

Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of character to throw up a career after half an hour’s meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more intense significance. And it required still more character never to regret the sudden step.
I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life. Is to do what you most want, to live under the conditions that please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life; and is it success to be an eminent surgeon with ten thousand a year and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on what meaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge to society, and the claim of the individual. But again I held my tongue, for who am I to argue with a knight?

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.