To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our own dull facilities can comprehend only in the most primitive forms -- this knowledge, this feeling, is a the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of the devoutly religious men.
-- Albert Einstein

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
-- Albert Einstein

I wish I could make you understand. I am talking about new ideas. You sense the problem and then begin to think around it.  In a scientist's work, excitement and elation come from all sorts of sources, including success. There is no such thing as inspiration.  Insight and understanding come from long familiarity.
-- E. Teller

I don't know Who -- or what -- put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone -- or something -- and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that therefore, my life, in self surrender, had a goal.

From that moment I have known what it means "not to look back, " and "to have no thought for the 'morrow."

Led by Ariadne's thread of my answer through the labyrinth of Life, I came to a Time and Place where I realized that the Way leads to a triumph which is a catastrophe, and to a catastrophe which is a triumph, that the price for committing one's life would be reproach, and that the only elevation possible to man lies in the depths of humiliation. After that, the word "courage" lost its meaning, since nothing could be taken from me.
-- Dag Hammarskjold 1961

Let the beauty we love be what we do.  There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
-- Rumi

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy,
the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation),
there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which
kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

that the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one
that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision
raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents
and meetings and material assistance which no man could have
dreamed would come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can do,
begin it.

Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Begin it now.

-- Goethe

Looking back over the course of ones' own days and noticing how encounters and events that appeared at the time to be accidental became the crucial structuring features of an unintended life story through which the potentialities of one's character were fostered to fulfillment, one may find it difficult to resist the notion of the course of one's biography as comparable to that of a cleverly constructed novel,  wondering who the author of the surprising plot can have been.

-- Schopenhauer, from "Transcendent Speculation upon an Apparent Intention of the Fate of the Individual