Exuberance

Recently read a marvelous book, Exuberance: The Passion for Life, by Kay Redfield Jamison. Ms Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, is the expert on manic-depressive illness and also author of the stunning Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. Below you’ll find a few quotes from Exuberance that sent me soaring:

“I believe exuberance is incomparably more important than we acknowledge. If, as has been claimed, enthusiasm finds the opportunities and energy makes the most of them, a mood of mind that yokes the two of them is formidable indeed.”—KRJ

“The Greeks bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language—the word ‘enthusiasm’—en theos—a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.”—Louis Pasteur

“Exuberance is, at its quick, contagious. As it spreads pell-mell through a group, exuberance excites, it delights, and it dispels tension. It alerts the group to change and possibility.”—KRJ

(A brief Special Presentation, “Exuberance,” attached, provides a few more quotes in PowerPoint format—what else?)