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“There is little sense in pitting a lesser sense of duty against a greater one. No leader could expect loyalty to hold under those circumstances.”
― C.S. Pacat, Captive Prince: Volume Two

“People talk about how strong families are, but no one warns that they can also be as fragile as glass left out in the snow. One wrong tap and they shatter into hundreds of irreparable pieces.”
― Ruth Cardello, Tycoon Takedown

“The worst possible way to build someone’s self-efficacy is to pump them up with you-can-do-it platitudes. At best, putative self-esteem–enhancing slogans and motivational talks do nothing. At worst, they actually further undermine resilience and effective coping. Why? Because self-esteem is the by-product of doing well in life—meeting challenges, solving problems, struggling and not giving up. You will feel good about yourself when you do well in the world. That is healthy self-esteem. Many people and many programs, however, try to bolster self-esteem directly by encouraging us to chant cheery phrases, to praise ourselves strongly and often, and to believe that we can do anything we set our mind to. The fatal flaw with this approach is that it is simply not true. We cannot do anything we want to in life, regardless of the number of times we tell ourselves how special and wonderful we are and regardless of how determined we are to make it”
― Karen Reivich, The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles

“At that moment there was no need of any scientific knowledge to understand his communication of reassurance. The soft pressure of his fingers spoke to me not through my intellect but through a more primitive emotional channel: the barrier of untold centuries which has grown up during the separate evolution of man and chimpanzee was, for those few seconds, broken down.

It was a reward far beyond my greatest hopes.”
― Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man