Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable. 

C.S. Lewis. A GRIEF OBSERVED.

It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which asked the question "What is reality?", to someday get an answer. This was the hope of most of my readers, too. Years passed. I wrote over thirty novels and over a hundred stories, and still I could not figure out what was real. One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." That's all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven't been able to define reality any more lucidly.
Philip K. Dick. How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later.

We all...must find some balance in accepting less than perfection and yet having some beauty.

Francis Schaffer. LETTERS.

If the devil can hinder us from taking the supreme climb and getting rid of wrong traditions about God, he will do so; but if we keep true to God, God will take us through an ordeal which will bring us out into a better knowledge of Himself.

Oswald Chambers. MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST. The Supreme Climb (meditation on Genesis 22:2). 

After all, real things are not simple. They look simple but they are not.

C.S. Lewis. MERE CHRISTIANITY.

"Farewell, King under the Mountain!" he said. "this is a bitter adventure, if it must end so; and not a mountain of gold can amend it. Yet I am glad that I have shared in your perils--that has been more than any Baggins deserves."
"No!" said Thorin. "There is more in you of good than you know...Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

J.R.R. Tolkien. THE HOBBIT.

A senior manager at Cisco once suggested to me that there are two types of challenges in organizations — capacity problems and complexity problems.
Capacity problems are those that require more, fewer or different resources.
Complexity problems require new thinking and a creative approach.

Ron Ashkenas on the HBR Blog Network.

Convenience combined with low cost-per-unit of production has robbed us, I think, of the proper mindset that goes into the making something new. The general rule of thumb is that it takes more time to produce something than it does to enjoy it....As someone who has been constantly moving from the consumer mindset to the producer mindset, I’m discovering the difficulties of changing my expectations with regards to time. It’s like looking into the wrong end of the telescope: what should be NOW and IMMEDIATE looks so far away. ...Distilling the stuff of raw experience into something that stands out is supposed to take a long time. There’s no getting around it. You might get lucky and find some great shortcuts, or stumble upon something that can serve as the vehicle for your grand idea, but when it comes to making your own, special, unique part of it…it’s going to take a while. A long while.

David Seah. Time to Greatness.

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Wikipedia. PARETO PRINCIPLE.

There is a strange paradox I have observed: the more structure, the greater chance of spontaneity. 

It was vital for me, not to understand everything, but to have the right questions. 

Jane Vella. LEARNING TO LISTEN, LEARNING TO TEACH.

...there seems to be only one business at hand: that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.

Annie Dillard. An Expedition to the Pole.