"Willpower should be understood to be the strength of the mind, which makes it capable of meeting success or failure with equanimity.  It is not synonymous with certain success.  Why should one's attempts always be attended by success?  Success breeds arrogance and man's spiritual progress is thus arrested.  Failure, on the other hand, is beneficial, inasmuch as it opens his eyes to his limitations and prepares him to surrender himself.  Self surrender is synonymous with eternal happiness."

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Brutes gaze on sights, they are arrested by sounds; and what they see and what they hear are sights and sounds only. The intellectof man, on the contrary, energises as well as his eye or ear, and perceives in sights or sounds something beyond them. It seizes and unites what the senses present to it; it grasps and forms what need not be seen or heard except in detail. It discerns in lines and colors, or in tones, what is beautiful and what is not. It gives them a meaning, and invests them with an idea.

— John Henry Newman