The most rewarding thing for me has been this affirmation for me that people are basically good and smart, and if you give them a simple tool that allows them to exhibit that behavior, they'll prove it to you every single day.
In reality, everyone is good in bed. Close eyes. Shutdown brain. Pause as necessary. Restart brain. Open eyes. What's there to not be good at? Bed is the one place where laziness is rewarded.
Teachers are sort of faced with a thankless task, because no matter how good they are, unless they find a way to personally rationalize the rewards of their effort, nobody else is really going to do it for them en masse.
There is no real magic to being a good leader. But at the end of every week, you have to spend your time around the things that are really important: setting priorities, measuring outcomes, and rewarding them.
It's sort of good to see your vocation as a daily task and have fairly modest expectations for financial or reward in other coin - glory, love, whatever.
The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way.
Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.
Be it a trip to the dentist, getting an injection or even coming home with a good report card, my reward always had to be a book. I didn't care much for anything else.
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don't need religion.
To work without attachment is to work without the expectation of reward or fear of any punishment in this world or the next. Work so done is a means to the end, and God is the end.
The future rewards those who press on. I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I'm going to press on.
Asking me why I did or didn't do anything is generally pointless. How do I know? And asking me what I'll do in the future is even less rewarding.
Love works not for profit nor reward; yet God has ordained that great gain shall be the certain result of every labor of love.
I can't see what's wrong about assuming intelligence in your audience and what's bad news about being rewarded for assuming that.
It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.
I see the Jedi mission as giving up a normal life in exchange for protecting the innocent. It's a life of sacrifice. There are rewards, but also a certain degree of sterility.
I know it's a rare privilege, but if one can really tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it's more rewarding than anything I can imagine.
If feminism has receded in visibility and prestige, it is precisely because its vision of life's goals and rewards has become too narrow and elitist.
By definition, an actor's life is a recipe for regret. There are always roads you could have taken. But I've lived long enough to realise that each road has its own rewards.
Every day confirms my opinion on the superiority of a vicious life - and if Virtue is not its own reward I don't know any other stipend annexed to it.
