I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

Marge Piercy, “To Be of Use”

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play.

But our merriment must be of that kind, and it is, in fact, the merriest kind, which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

In case he who should act were to judge himself according to the result, he would never get to the point of beginning.

Even though the result may give joy to the whole world, it cannot help the hero.

For he would get to know the result only when the whole thing was over, and it was not by this he became a hero, but he was such for the fact that he began.

Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

For responsibility is by its nature something intensive and not extensive. It can be divided among many, but it is not thereby diminished in degree.

On the other hand, when by the ordinary processes of arithmetical division one number is divided by another, the result is only a small part of the original amount. It is always a lessening process.

But the idea of responsibility cannot be expressed in any such quantitative terms. Dividends can be divided into separate parts, but responsibility cannot.

Responsibility can never be conceived in the light of a magnitude. It belongs to the class of things which, when divided, each part is equal to the whole.

Responsibility in this respect is like pleasure which, when shared, is not lessened, as Bacon long ago pointed out. The same quality we find in the rewards of honor, or of fame it may be, which come to the many who have served in a common cause and rejoice in a common victory.

Thus the glory of the whole is each one's share. It can be divided among many without loss. So, also, the appreciation of beauty in nature or in art shows no diminishing returns, although the number who experience the joy of it may be increased without limit.

This, also, is the characteristic feature of responsibility. Parents share the responsibility, and complete responsibility and no half measure of it rests upon each.

The director of a bank or an insurance company shares the responsibility of his position with his colleagues on the same board; but the shared responsibility is not less than the whole.

John Grier Hibben, “On Responsibility”

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole.

Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life”

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.

Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love