In the new workplace, with its emphasis on flexibility, teams and a strong customer orientation, this crucial set of emotional competencies is becoming increasingly essential for excellence in every job in every part of the world,

We are being judged by a new yardstick: not just how smart we are, or by our training and expertise, but also by how we handle ourselves and each other.

Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.

Teachers need to be comfortable talking about feelings. This is part of teaching emotional literacy - a set of skills we can all develop, including the ability to read, understand, and respond appropriately to one's own emotions and the emotions of others.

For the high achievers, studying gave them the pleasing, absorbing challenge o flow 40 percent of the hours they spent at it. But for low achievers, studying produced flow only 16 percent of the time; more often that not, it yielded anxiety, with the demands outreaching their abilities

Life without passion would be a dull wasteland of neutrality, cut off and isolated from the richness of life itself.