Finding flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Quotes VI

-What matters is the dosage.
-As the patterns turn into habits, they begin to have definite effects on the quality of life as a whole.
-The phrase "bread and circuses" to keep the populace contended during the long centuries of Roman Empire's decline.
-A society begins to rely heavily on leisure only when it has become incapable of offering meaningful productive occupation to its members.
-There are individuals who, confronted with the sterility of their jobs, escape productive responsibilities altogether to pursue a life of flow in leisure.
-If a society becomes too dependent on entertainment, it is likely that there will be less psychic energy left to cope creatively with the technological and economic challenges that will inevitably arise.
-If one's job is beyond redemption, the other solution is to make sure that free time at least will be a real opportunity for flow, for exploring the potential of the self and the environment. Luckily, the world is absolutely full of interesting things to do. Only lack of imagination, or lack of energy, stand in the way. Otherwise each of us could be a poet, or a musician, an inventor, or explorer, an amateur scholar, scientist, artist, or collector.
-A relationship that leads to order in consciousness instead of psychic entropy, has to meet at least two conditions: to find some compatibility between our goals and those of the other person; and being willing to invest attention in the other person's goals.
-Lack of true friends is often the main complaint of people confronting an emotional crisis in the second half of life.
-What can one do? As with other aspects of life, the important thing is to decide for oneself.
-There are more arguments in families that are emotionally close; when the family is in real trouble, parents and children avoid each other instead of arguing.
-The moods of the father affect the moods of the rest of the family, and the children's moods affect the mother, but the mother's moods have little discernible effect on the rest of the family.
-Rules and discipline are needed to avoid excessive waste of psychic energy in the negotiation of what can or cannot be done.
-It is possible to learn to like solitude, but it doesn't come easily.
-One can learn more about true preferences by listening to what people say others want, rather than to what they claim they want themselves.
-While we are repelled by differences, we are also fascinated by the strange and the exotic.
-Ideal communities, like ideal families, may never have really existed.
-Extroverts who are thought to be born not to be made, get a better deal in life all around.
-It is possible to be both extroverted and introverted at the same time.