Accepting Your Weaknesses Quotes

Accept yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, your truths, and know what tools you have to fulfill your purpose.

Do not love half lovers Do not entertain half friends Do not indulge in works of the half talented Do not live half a life and do not die a half death If you choose silence, then be silent When you speak, do so until you are finished Do not silence yourself to say something And do not speak to be silent If you accept, then express it bluntly Do not mask it If you refuse then be clear about it for an ambiguous refusal is but a weak acceptance Do not accept half a solution Do not believe half truths Do not dream half a dream Do not fantasize about half hopes Half a drink will not quench your thirst Half a meal will not satiate your hunger Half the way will get you no where Half an idea will bear you no results Your other half is not the one you love It is you in another time yet in the same space It is you when you are not Half a life is a life you didn't live, A word you have not said A smile you postponed A love you have not had A friendship you did not know To reach and not arrive Work and not work Attend only to be absent What makes you a stranger to them closest to you and they strangers to you The half is a mere moment of inability but you are able for you are not half a being You are a whole that exists to live a life not half a life

The Gethenians do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imaginations to accept. After all, what is the first question we ask about a newborn baby? ....there is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protected/ protective. One is respected and judged only as a human being. You cannot cast a Gethnian in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards 'him' a corresponding role dependant on your expetations of the interactions between persons of the same or oppositve sex. It is an appalling experience for a Terran

God can turn your biggest flaws into your biggest cause.

Is it a weakness not being able to hate? Or is it preparation for what is inevitable, the ability only to love.

You can be the most powerful witch in the land, but you will always have a weakness, and that will always make you believe you have no power when someone exploits it. There is no greater strength than the ability to understand and accept your own flaws.

You have two choices in life when it comes to truthful observations by others that anger you: You can be ashamed and cover it up by letting your pride take you in the extreme opposite direction, in order to make the point that they are wrong. Or, you can break down the walls of pride by accepting vulnerability as a strength, not a weakness. As you walk through your vulnerability, you will meet humility on the way to courage. From here, courage allows us to let go of shame and rise higher into the person we are meant to be, not the person that needs to be right. This is the road to confidence and self worth.

As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major's speech. Instead--she did not know why--they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. Whatever happened she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given to her, and accept the leadership of Napoleon. But still, it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled.

By accepting people you’re not condoning their weakness or agreeing with their opinion; you’re simply affirming their intrinsic worth.

Accepting help doesn't make you weak. It's like catching your breath so you can stand up again and help others. When one person is down, the other one is up.

These bits of paper are covered with lies. They poison your minds. And so long as they exist, you cannot hope to see the world as it truly is.(...)You turn to them for answers and salvation. (...) You rely more upon them than upon yourselves. This makes you weak and stupid. You trust in words. Drops of ink. Do you ever stop to think of who put them there? Or why? No. You simply accept their words without question. And what if those words speak falsely, as they often do? This is dangerous.

Find people who can handle your darkest truths, who don’t change the subject when you share your pain, or try to make you feel bad for feeling bad. Find people who understand we all struggle, some of us more than others, and that there’s no weakness in admitting it. Find people who want to be real, however that looks and feels, and who want you to be real, too. Find people who get that life is hard, and who get that life is also beautiful, and who aren’t afraid to honor both of those realities. Find people who help you feel more at home in your heart, mind and body, and who take joy in your joy. Find people who love you, for real, and who accept you, for real. Just as you are. They’re out there, these people. Your tribe is waiting for you. Don’t stop searching until you find them.

As you heal, you see yourself more realistically. You accept that you are a person with strengths and weaknesses. You make the changes you can in your life and let go of the things that aren’t in your power to change. You learn that every part of you is valuable. And you realize that all of your thoughts and feelings are important, even when they’re painful or difficult.

Are you angry with the bird because he can fly, or angry with the horse for her beauty, or angry with the bear because he has fearsome teeth and claws? Because he’s bigger than you are? Stronger too? Destroying all the things you hate won’t change any of that. You still won’t be a bear or a bird or a horse. Hating men won’t make you a man. Hating your womb or your breasts or your own weakness won’t make those things go away. You’ll still be a woman. Hating never fixed anything. It seems simple, but most things are. We just complicate them. We spend our lives complicating what we would do better to accept. Because in acceptance, we put our energies into transcendence.

Dealing with mental health can be lonely and scary and unfortunately there is still so much stigma around mental health which makes getting help even more difficult. That's why I want you to know that you have nothing to be ashamed of. Accepting help and treatment doesn't make you weak, it makes you strong and brave. Visit the resources I have listed for you below. It may feel scary and intimidating at first, especially if you have never done it before. But prioritizing your health is of utmost value. You are important and you deserve to feel loved and happy. You are not alone.

Historically, all ethics undoubtedly begin with religion; but I do not now deal with historical questions. I do not ask who was the first lawgiver. I only maintain that it is we, and we alone, who are responsible for adopting or rejecting some suggested moral laws; it is we who must distinguish between the true prophets and the false prophets. All kinds of norms have been claimed to be God-given. If you accept 'Christian' ethics of equality and toleration and freedom of conscience only because of its claim to rest upon divine authority, then you build on a weak basis; for it has been only too often claimed that inequality is willed by God, and that we must not be tolerant with unbelievers. If, however, you accept the Christian ethics not because you are commanded to do so but because of your conviction that it is the right decision to take, then it is you who have decided.

Realize your strengths, accept your weaknesses, but never become someone you don't recognize.

To be strong, you have to know your weaknesses, confront them, and ultimately accept them. A person isn’t strong because they lack weakness but because they don’t let it guide them.

Anyone who is of sound mind and body can sit down and think of twenty things in their life that could have gone differently. Where maybe they didn’t get a fair shake and where they took the path of least resistance. If you’re one of the few who acknowledge that, want to callous those wounds, and strengthen your character, its up to you to go back through your past and make peace with yourself by facing those incidents and all of your negative influences, and accepting them as weak spots in your own character. Only when you identify and accept your weaknesses will you finally stop running from your past. Then those incidents can be used more efficiently as fuel to become better and grow stronger.

You don’t have to keep living in a dystopia simply because you’re strong and noble enough to accept it.

Never take anyone for granted. Never apologize for being yourself. Never compare yourself with others. Never live for anyone’s approval. Never put down your friends. Never denigrate your enemies. Never applaud yourself. Never embrace your vices. Never shun your virtues. Never trust your fears. Never doubt your strengths. Never accept your weaknesses. Never squander your gifts. Never waste your potential.

This is the hardest rule. The one I still have to keep repeating. The one I accept, on an intellectual level, but still cannot truly believe. Your body is just a thing. Whether it’s strong or weak or beautiful or ugly is all in your head. In your mind.

The more doors you open to the mysteries, or sacred knowledge, the smaller you feel. And because you begin to feel smaller and smaller until your ego disappears, the more humble you become. Therefore, any man who behaves arrogantly with what little he knows, or claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing. Real greatness does not reside inside those who feel large. The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit?

Love wasn’t perfection. It wasn’t always roses and candy. Hell, it wasn’t even mostly roses and candy. Sometimes it was battling back fear that loomed like a leviathan, trying to find a way through misery, being grateful to have a companion who knew your strengths and weaknesses, and loved you not just in spite of them, but because of them. Love was acceptance. Love was bravery. Love was sticking it out.

Be vulnerable! It is not someone else’s responsibility to break down your walls to get to you. It is your responsibility to let them in. This is crucial. Be more vulnerable with people in your life today. Know that being vulnerable is not a weakness – vulnerability means you are strong and secure enough within yourself to walk outside without your armor on.

Accept yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, your truths, and connect with the tools you have to fulfill your purpose.

Do not despise your inner world. That is the first and most general piece of advice I would offer… Our society is very outward-looking, very taken up with the latest new object, the latest piece of gossip, the latest opportunity for self-assertion and status. But we all begin our lives as helpless babies, dependent on others for comfort, food, and survival itself. And even though we develop a degree of mastery and independence, we always remain alarmingly weak and incomplete, dependent on others and on an uncertain world for whatever we are able to achieve. As we grow, we all develop a wide range of emotions responding to this predicament: fear that bad things will happen and that we will be powerless to ward them off; love for those who help and support us; grief when a loved one is lost; hope for good things in the future; anger when someone else damages something we care about. Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger. But for that very reason we are often ashamed of our emotions, and of the relations of need and dependency bound up with them. Perhaps males, in our society, are especially likely to be ashamed of being incomplete and dependent, because a dominant image of masculinity tells them that they should be self-sufficient and dominant. So people flee from their inner world of feeling, and from articulate mastery of their own emotional experiences. The current psychological literature on the life of boys in America indicates that a large proportion of boys are quite unable to talk about how they feel and how others feel — because they have learned to be ashamed of feelings and needs, and to push them underground. But that means that they don’t know how to deal with their own emotions, or to communicate them to others. When they are frightened, they don’t know how to say it, or even to become fully aware of it. Often they turn their own fear into aggression. Often, too, this lack of a rich inner life catapults them into depression in later life. We are all going to encounter illness, loss, and aging, and we’re not well prepared for these inevitable events by a culture that directs us to think of externals only, and to measure ourselves in terms of our possessions of externals. What is the remedy of these ills? A kind of self-love that does not shrink from the needy and incomplete parts of the self, but accepts those with interest and curiosity, and tries to develop a language with which to talk about needs and feelings. Storytelling plays a big role in the process of development. As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves. As we grow older, we encounter more and more complex stories — in literature, film, visual art, music — that give us a richer and more subtle grasp of human emotions and of our own inner world. So my second piece of advice, closely related to the first, is: Read a lot of stories, listen to a lot of music, and think about what the stories you encounter mean for your own life and lives of those you love. In that way, you will not be alone with an empty self; you will have a newly rich life with yourself, and enhanced possibilities of real communication with others.

When I was younger, I used to think that loving someone meant being weak. I thought it meant giving yourself up and losing your identity, and becoming just an other to someone else. I thought that only those who weren’t strong enough to stand on their own needed someone to lean on. I never realized that love is as much about giving strength as accepting it, and that love doesn’t mean that you can’t stand on your own, but only that now you can fly.

You’re not fine. You’re not. And that’s OK. The first thing I want you to do is to finally tell yourself that it’s OK not to be OK. To accept that you’re feeling badly and that something isn’t right. Too many of us are in denial because we think that to admit there’s something wrong means we’re weak or broken or odd. I don’t know if it’s society, or just who we associate with, but we need to change our way of thinking. We are not weak. We are not broken. We are not odd.

When encountering your weaknesses you have four choices: 1. You can deny them (which is what most people do). 2. You can accept them and work at them in order to try to convert them into strengths (which might or might not work depending on your ability to change). 3. You can accept your weaknesses and find ways around them. 4. Or, you can change what you are going after.

The surest way to raise mentally healthy children is to cultivate loving, nurturing, and mutually respectful relationships with them. Loving means, first of all, accepting your child as a person. Every child has strengths and weaknesses, gifts and challenges. Loving means adjusting your expectations to fit your child, not trying to adjust your child to fit your expectations.

I can't see why you should want to dance with me now, when you never have before." The statement was more revealing than she had intended it to be. She cursed her own wayward tongue, while his speculative gaze wandered over her face. "I wanted to," he surprised her by murmuring. "However, there always seemed to be good reasons not to." "Why--" "Besides," Westcliff interrupted, reaching out to take her gloved hand, "there was hardly a point in asking when your refusal was a forgone conclusion." Deftly he pressed her hand to his arm and led her toward the mass of couples in the center of the room. "It was not a forgone conclusion." Westcliff glanced at her skeptically. "You're saying that you would have accepted me?" "I might have." "I doubt it." "I did just now, didn't I?" "You had to. It was a debt of honor." She couldn't help but laugh. "For what, my lord?" "The calf's head," he reminded her succinctly. "Well, if you hadn't served such a nasty object in the first place, I wouldn't have needed to be rescued!" "You wouldn't have need to be rescued if you didn't have such a weak stomach." "You're not supposed to mention body parts in front of a lady," she said virtuously. "Your mother said so." Westcliff grinned. "I stand corrected.

…I need to see you understand love is a strength, not a weakness. That putting your trust in someone you love doesn’t mean you can’t stand on your own two feet. It means you know how to share responsibility and accept help when it is needed.

I used to think, that when my old inner demons started creeping back into my life, that it was a sign of failure or moral weakness. But the saints have shown me that part of the human condition is to struggle with the same sins and suffering over and over again. Once I accepted the fact that I’d probably always have to be on guard against spiritual attacks related to food and my weight, I began to really recover.

I, too, have my code. As long as I love you, your will must be my will. If you believe that yielding to me would be weakness, that accepting my love would destroy you, I will not touch you. You must come to me with the whole of your will, or not at all.

If you currently travel abroad or plan to in the future, make sure you understand the cultural convention of the country that you are visiting. Particularly with regard to greetings. If someone gives you a weak hand-shake, don't grimace. If anyone takes your arm, don't wince. If you are in the Middle East and a person wants to hold your hand, hold it. If you are a man visiting Russia, don't be surprised when your male host kisses your cheek, rather than hand. All of these greetings are as natural as way to express genuine sentiments as an American handshake. I am honored when an Arab or Asian man offers to take my hand because I know that it is a sign of high respect and trust. Accepting these cultural differences is the first step to better understanding and embracing diversity.

Call attention to your strengths instead of pointing out your weaknesses.

Don’t make excuses; accept responsibility. You must take responsibility for how you respond to everything that happens in your life; whether you cause it or not. Making excuses is a weak response!

Remember, as you look at yourself, to look kindly, and also remember that you are not balancing a checkbook: anything you see that you don’t like, or that you want to change, is not a debit that you subtract from your virtues. When you learn to reflect on your strengths, it becomes easier to look at your weaknesses with acceptance and compassion. Keep your virtues at their full value and cherish them.

What did she mean, study like you’re going to die? She said she spit up blood, but is that for real? Is studying really worth dying for? I couldn’t accept it, and I guess that was one of my weak points.

Because I questioned myself and my sanity and what I was doing wrong in this situation. Because of course I feared that I might be overreacting, overemotional, oversensitive, weak, playing victim, crying wolf, blowing things out of proportion, making things up. Because generations of women have heard that they’re irrational, melodramatic, neurotic, hysterical, hormonal, psycho, fragile, and bossy. Because girls are coached out of the womb to be nonconfrontational, solicitous, deferential, demure, nurturing, to be tuned in to others, and to shrink and shut up. Because speaking up for myself was not how I learned English. Because I’m fluent in Apology, in Question Mark, in Giggle, in Bowing Down, in Self-Sacrifice. Because slightly more than half of the population is regularly told that what happens doesn’t or that it isn’t the big deal we’re making it into. Because your mothers, sisters, and daughters are routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied, harassed, threatened, punished, propositioned, and groped, and challenged on what they say. Because when a woman challenges a man, then the facts are automatically in dispute, as is the speaker, and the speaker’s license to speak. Because as women we are told to view and value ourselves in terms of how men view and value us, which is to say, for our sexuality and agreeability. Because it was drilled in until it turned subconscious and became unbearable need: don’t make it about you; put yourself second or last; disregard your feelings but not another’s; disbelieve your perceptions whenever the opportunity presents itself; run and rerun everything by yourself before verbalizing it—put it in perspective, interrogate it: Do you sound nuts? Does this make you look bad? Are you holding his interest? Are you being considerate? Fair? Sweet? Because stifling trauma is just good manners. Because when others serially talk down to you, assume authority over you, try to talk you out of your own feelings and tell you who you are; when you’re not taken seriously or listened to in countless daily interactions—then you may learn to accept it, to expect it, to agree with the critics and the haters and the beloveds, and to sign off on it with total silence. Because they’re coming from a good place. Because everywhere from late-night TV talk shows to thought-leading periodicals to Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Wall Street to Congress and the current administration, women are drastically underrepresented or absent, missing from the popular imagination and public heart. Because although I questioned myself, I didn’t question who controls the narrative, the show, the engineering, or the fantasy, nor to whom it’s catered. Because to mention certain things, like “patriarchy,” is to be dubbed a “feminazi,” which discourages its mention, and whatever goes unmentioned gets a pass, a pass that condones what it isn’t nice to mention, lest we come off as reactionary or shrill.

But I feel so helpless.” “That is usually the rule when you are taken advantage of. You can be the most powerful witch in the land, but you will always have a weakness, and that will always make you believe you have no power when someone exploits it. There is no greater strength than the ability to understand and accept your own flaws.” “Are

Why are you so weak, ma petite? This is not acceptable." She waved his concern aside. "Is it acceptable for you to play around with other women?" She didn't stop to think why it infuriated her, but it did. "I've been taking care of myself for five years, Gregori, without your assistance. I don't need you, and I don't want you. And if I do have to have you around, a few rules are going to be followed.

Most morality, thought Mma Ramotswe, was about doing the right thing because it had been identified as such by a long process of acceptance and observance. You simply could not create your own morality because your experience would never be enough to do so. What gives you the right to say that you know better than your ancestors? Morality is for everybody and this means that the views of more than one person are needed to create it. That was what made modern morality, with its emphasis on individuals and the working out of an individual person, so weak. If you gave people the chance to work out their morality, then they would work out the version which was easiest for them and which allowed them to do what suited them for as much of the time as possible. That, in Mma Ramotswe's view, was simple selfishness, whatever grand name one gave it.

Don’t strive to be a well-rounded leader. Instead, discover your zone and stay there. Then delegate everything else. Admitting a weakness is a sign of strength. Acknowledging weakness doesn’t make a leader less effective. Everybody in your organization benefits when you delegate responsibilities that fall outside your core competency. Thoughtful delegation will allow someone else in your organization to shine. Your weakness is someone’s opportunity. Leadership is not always about getting things done “right.” Leadership is about getting things done through other people. The people who follow us are exactly where we have led them. If there is no one to whom we can delegate, it is our own fault. As a leader, gifted by God to do a few things well, it is not right for you to attempt to do everything. Upgrade your performance by playing to your strengths and delegating your weaknesses. There are many things I can do, but I have to narrow it down to the one thing I must do. The secret of concentration is elimination. Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing. My competence in these areas defines my success as a pastor. A sixty-hour workweek will not compensate for a poorly delivered sermon. People don’t show up on Sunday morning because I am a good pastor (leader, shepherd, counselor). In my world, it is my communication skills that make the difference. So that is where I focus my time. To develop a competent team, help the leaders in your organization discover their leadership competencies and delegate accordingly. Once you step outside your zone, don’t attempt to lead. Follow. The less you do, the more you will accomplish. Only those leaders who act boldly in times of crisis and change are willingly followed. Accepting the status quo is the equivalent of accepting a death sentence. Where there’s no progress, there’s no growth. If there’s no growth, there’s no life. Environments void of change are eventually void of life. So leaders find themselves in the precarious and often career-jeopardizing position of being the one to draw attention to the need for change. Consequently, courage is a nonnegotiable quality for the next generation leader. The leader is the one who has the courage to act on what he sees. A leader is someone who has the courage to say publicly what everybody else is whispering privately. It is not his insight that sets the leader apart from the crowd. It is his courage to act on what he sees, to speak up when everyone else is silent. Next generation leaders are those who would rather challenge what needs to change and pay the price than remain silent and die on the inside. The first person to step out in a new direction is viewed as the leader. And being the first to step out requires courage. In this way, courage establishes leadership. Leadership requires the courage to walk in the dark. The darkness is the uncertainty that always accompanies change. The mystery of whether or not a new enterprise will pan out. The reservation everyone initially feels when a new idea is introduced. The risk of being wrong. Many who lack the courage to forge ahead alone yearn for someone to take the first step, to go first, to show the way. It could be argued that the dark provides the optimal context for leadership. After all, if the pathway to the future were well lit, it would be crowded. Fear has kept many would-be leaders on the sidelines, while good opportunities paraded by. They didn’t lack insight. They lacked courage. Leaders are not always the first to see the need for change, but they are the first to act. Leadership is about moving boldly into the future in spite of uncertainty and risk. You can’t lead without taking risk. You won’t take risk without courage. Courage is essential to leadership.

It’s possible to shatter a rock, and impossible to break water. Many people’s idea of the Self is like a rock. Something that must be formed, “set,” and unmovable. And yet, the Self is more like water—flowing, changing, navigating around the things in its path. Your fluidity is your power, not your weakness.

No one wants to go to space with a jerk. But at some point, you just have to accept the people in your crew, stop wishing you were flying with Neil Armstrong, and start figuring out how your crewmates’ strengths and weaknesses mesh with your own. You can’t change the bricks, and together, you still have to build a w

Self-love is the practice of understanding, embracing, and showing compassion for yourself. Self-love involves nurturing your entire being – that means taking care of yourself on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels. When engaging in self-love, we also work to forgive ourselves, accept our flaws, and embrace our inner demons. Contrary to popular belief, self-love isn’t just a blind adoration of our strengths, it’s also an embrace of our weaknesses and shadows.

Find people who can handle your darkest truths, who don’t change the subject when you share your pain, or try to make you feel bad for feeling bad. Find people who understand we all struggle, some of us more than others, and that there’s no weakness in admitting it. In fact, few things take as much strength. Find people who want to be real, however that looks and feels, and who want you to be real, too. Find people who get that life is hard, and who get that life is also beautiful, and who aren’t afraid to honor both those realities. Find people who help you feel more at home in your heart, mind and body, and who take joy in your joy. Find people who love you, for real, and who accept you, for real. Just as you are. They’re out there, these people. Your tribe is waiting for you. Don’t stop searching until you find them. 9/30/16 Then her heart opened wider than it ever had before, and all she saw before her, everywhere she looked, were people to love.

Growing old is to be set free, Brother. It is aslow and long-simmering process that extracts from you what you are really made of. But it requires acceptance. You cannot put a flailing chicken in a boiling pot. You must accept the heat and the pain with serenity so that the full flavors of your life may be released. You may see this as decay, and it is. But it is also much more than that. As the body rots, so does the cage that traps us in our worldly concerns. When my legs became too weak to carry my body, I stopped pacing with worry. When my fingers became twisted, I stopped pointing blame. When I lost my sight, I stopped seeing illusions. It may be dark in the pot that I am simmering in, but I can see more clearly than I have ever seen in my life. I can see you, Brother, and I know who you are.

Hey. Remember what I said when Shigaraki made swiss cheese outta me? 'Stop trying to with this on your own.' But I had more to say. I needed to tell you that I got stabbed cuz my body moved on its own. You know, I always looked down on you cuz you were quirkless. You were s'posed to be beneath me... ...But I kept feeling like you were above me. I hated it. I couldn't bear to look at you. I couldn't accept you the way you were. So I kept you at arm's length and bullied you. I tried to act all superior by rejecting you... ...But I kept losing that fight. Ever since we got into U.A.... ...Nothing's worked out how I thought it would. Instead, this past year has forced me to understand your strength and my weakness. Now I don't expect this to change a thing between us, but I gotta speak... ...My truth. Izuku... I'm sorry for everything. There's nothing wrong with the path you've been walking down since inheriting One For All and following All Might's lead. But now... You're barely standing. And those ideals alone ain't enough to get you over the wall your facing. We're here to step in when you can't handle everything on your own. Because to live up to those ideals and surpass All Might... ...We gotta save you, the civilians at U.A., and the people on the streets. Because saving people is how we win. We get it." ~Katsuki Bakugo -aka- Great Explosion Murder God Dynamite

Social media has put an incredible pressure on the Facebook generation. We’ve made our lives so public to one another, and as a result we feel pressure to live up to a certain ideal version of ourselves. On social media, everyone is happy, and popular, and successful—or, at least, we think we need to look like we are. No matter how well off we are, how thin or pretty, we have our issues and insecurities. But none of that shows up online. We don’t like to reveal our weaknesses on social media. We don’t want to appear unhappy, or be a drag. Instead, we all post rose-colored versions of ourselves. We pretend we have more money than we do. We pretend we are popular. We pretend our lives are great. Your status update says I went to a totally awesome party last night! It won’t mention that you drank too much and puked and humiliated yourself in front of a girl you like. It says My sorority sisters are the best! It doesn’t say I feel lonely and don’t think they accept me. I’m not saying everyone should post about having a bad time. But pretending everything is perfect when it’s not doesn’t help anyone. The danger of these kinds of little white lies is that, in projecting the happiness and accomplishments we long for, we’re setting impossible standards for ourselves and others to live up to.

You can not fight "RACISM" when the "MIND" is weak. You can't fight "INJUSTICE" or "CORRUPTION" when you're not a true follower of your soul. You can't fight "OPPRESSION" when you "THINK" and "ACT" like the oppressor. You can't become a "CHANGE" when you keep on accepting the same old results.You can't become a valuable source in society when you devalued your brothers and sisters from distant lands. It is impossible to change America when you see foul practices at institutions and don't speak up because it is not affecting you. What affect others should affect you mentally and physically, be part of the "HUMAN RACE." Be your brother's/sister's keeper no matter what religion or race he or she is. Be the change that you want to see in America.

But what feels better, after a taxing day that pushes you to the brink of the strong person seen by everyone but yourself, a day that reinforces your belief that you are, in fact, weak and incapable? What feels better in that moment than to be held, to be loved, to bare yourself to someone else and know you're accepted? This is what I saw in Dominic's gaze as he stood before me, then – a single-minded, stalwart power behind his ever-deep eyes that said he needed more than words and perfunctory touches the likes of which most family members could just as easily provide.

and burdens of mature life, when they became aware of their own weakness, they lost their peace, they let go of their precious self-respect, and it became impossible for them to “believe.” That is to say it became impossible for them to comfort themselves, to reassure themselves, with the images and concepts that they found reassuring in childhood. Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, in spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no hope in the inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine, who are able to pick you up and set you back on your feet and make you feel good for three or four days—until you fold up and collapse into despair. Self-confidence is a precious natural gift, a sign of health. But it is not the same thing as faith. Faith is much deeper, and it must be deep enough to subsist when we are weak, when we are sick, when our self-confidence is gone, when our self-respect is gone. I do not mean that faith only functions when we are otherwise in a state of collapse. But true faith must be able to go on even when everything else is taken away from us. Only a humble man is able to accept faith on these terms, so completely without reservation that he is glad of it in its pure state, and welcomes it happily even when nothing else comes with it, and when everything else is taken away.

2-Make eye contact. When someone is speaking, keep your eyes on him or her at all times. If someone makes a comment, turn and face that person. 3-During discussions, respect other students’ comments, opinions, and ideas. When possible, make statements like, “I agree with John, and I also feel that…” or “I disagree with Sarah. She made a good point I feel that…” or “I think Victor made an excellent observation, and it made me realize…” 4-If you win or do well at something, do not brag. If you lose, do not show anger. Instead, say something like, “I really enjoyed the competition, and I look forward to playing you again,” or “good game,” or don’t say anything at all. To show anger or sarcasm, such as “I wasn’t playing hard anyway” or “You really aren’t that good,” shows weakness. 5-“When you cough or sneeze or burp, it is appropriate to turn your head away from others and cover your mouth with the full part of your hand. Using a fist is not acceptable. Afterward, you should say, “Excuse me.” 6- “Do not smack your lips, tsk, roll your eyes, or show disrespect with gestures.” 7-“Always say thank you when I give you something. 8-“Surprise others by performing random acts of kindness. Go our of your way to do something surprisingly kind and generous for someone at least once a month.” 9-“You will make every effort to be as organized as possible.” 10-"Quickly learn the name of other teachers in the school and greet them by saying things like, "Good morning Mrs. Graham," or "Good afternoon Ms. Ortiz. 11-"When we go on field trips, we will meet different people. When I introduce you to people, make sure that you remember their names. Then, when we are leaving, make sure to shake their hands and thank them, mentioning their names as you do so." 12-“If you approach a door and someone is following you, hold the door. If the door opens by pulling, pull it open, stand to the side, and allow the other person 13-to pass through it first, then you can walk through. If the door opens by pushing, hold the door open after you push through." "Be positive and enjoy life. Some things just aren't worth getting upset over. Keep everything in perspective and focus on the good in your life.

We have imagined that a white hospital train with a white Diesel engine has taken you through many a tunnel to a mountainous country by the sea. You are getting well there. But you cannot write because your fingers are so very weak. Moonbeams cannot hold even a white pencil. The picture is pretty, but how long can it stay on the screen? We expect the next slide, but the magic-lantern man has none left. Shall we let the theme of a long separation expand till it breaks into tears? Shall we say (daintily handling the disinfected white symbols) that the train is Death and the nursing home Paradise? Or shall we leave the picture to fade by itself, to mingle with other fading impressions? But we want to write letters to you even if you cannot answer. Shall we suffer the slow wobbly scrawl (we can manage our name and two or three words of greeting) to work its conscientious and unnecessary way across a post card which will never be mailed? Are not these problems so hard to solve because my own mind is not made up yet in regard to your death? My intelligence does not accept the transformation of physical discontinuity into the permanent continuity of a nonphysical element escaping the obvious law, nor can it accept the inanity of accumulating incalculable treasures of thought and sensation, and thought-behind-thought and sensation-behind-sensation, to lose them all at once and forever in a fit of black nausea followed by infinite nothingness. Unquote.

Acceptance does not mean much until it involves understanding. It is only as I understand the feelings and thoughts which seem so horrible to you, or so weak, or so sentimental, or so bizarre—it is only as I see them as you see them, and accept them and you, that you feel really free to explore all the hidden nooks and frightening crannies of your inner and often buried experience. This freedom is an important condition of the relationship. There is implied here a freedom to explore oneself at both conscious and unconscious levels, as rapidly as one can dare to embark on this dangerous quest. There is also a complete freedom from any type of moral or diagnostic evaluation, since all such evaluations are, I believe, always threatening. Thus the relationship which I have found helpful is characterized by a sort of transparency on my part, in which my real feelings are evident; by an acceptance of this other person as a separate person with value in his own right; and by a deep empathic understanding which enables me to see his private world through his eyes.

Dear God, I’m afraid of the things that I don’t understand. I’m even afraid of you, God. Please open my heart to your love. Show me how to understand and how to live with you each day. I don’t want to look weak, God, but the truth is I am weak because I don’t know you at all. Please come into my heart and allow me to push aside my pride and accept you totally into my life. Thank you for saving me. In Jesus’s name, I pray, amen.

The mystery is how a [theory] that is vulnerable to such obvious counterexamples survived for so long. I can explain it only by a weakness of the scholarly mind that I have often observed in myself. I call it theory-induced blindness: once you have accepted a theory and used it as a tool in your thinking, it is extraordinarily difficult to notice its flaws. If you come upon an observation that does not seem to fit the model, you assume that there must be a perfectly good explanation that you are somehow missing. You give the theory the benefit of the doubt, trusting the community of experts who have accepted it. Many scholars have surely thought at one time or another of stories such as [the above examples], and casually noted that these stories did not jibe with utility theory. But they did not pursue the idea to the point of saying, “This theory is seriously wrong because it ignores the fact that utility depends on the history of one’s wealth, not only on present wealth.” As the psychologist Daniel Gilbert observed, disbelieving is hard work, and System 2 is easily tired.

Acceptance is a deceptive word. It suggests compliance, a consenting to my condition and to who I have become. This form of acceptance is often seen as weakness, submission. We say I accept my punishment. Or I accept your decision. But such assent, while passive in essence, does provide the stable, rocklike foundation for coping with a condition that will not go away. It is a powerful passivity, the Zen of Illness, that allows for endurance.

I’ve spent too many weeks worrying about accepting help from Wes, because I didn’t want to appear weak. And the whole time he’s only been desperate to show how much he loves me. The realization brings a groan from the depths of my chest. “What?” he asks, nuzzling my cheek. “I love you.” “But…?” He chuckles. “But I’m an idiot. Having your dick in my ass has never insulted my manhood. But letting you pay for my hospital bill made me feel crazy.

The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit?

So long as you believe yourself to be 'only human' you have accepted life in a prison cell whose door remains locked only by your own mind. By saying, 'well, I'm only human', you have blindly submitted to all the limitations, fears, pettiness, greed and hatreds which make the common person weak and fragile. Most never become aware that another way is possible. You are human, but much more, too. The much-moreness is the vast, brilliant freedom and power which has confined itself in your humanity. If you are willing (and not everyone is, which is also a perfectly valid choice), you can begin to explore your native powers and experience freedom within limitation. When you do this, you live fully while you are here and you are no longer afraid to die. When you are not afraid of death but seek to live in a state of always-discovering, this is when life is transformed and you accept your birthright to choose and create in extraordinary fashion.

if you don't first accept the gift as it is—if you change what you hear, or change what you learn—doesn't that make it weak somehow?" "Why should it?" Mr. Williams asked softly. "As I believe I've said to you before, the gift is not what you hear, or learn… the gift is being able to hear and learn. These things are yours from the moment they come and you can shape the tune, or the clay, or the painting, or whatever it is, because it belongs to you. It's what I've always done with my music.

The smile that curled his lips was as arrogant as it was beautiful. “You need to accept the fact that you’re Orange and that you’re always going to be alone because of it.” A measure of calm had returned to Clancy’s voice. His nostrils flared when I tried to turn the door handle again. He slammed both hands against it to keep me from going anywhere, towering over me. “I saw what you want,” Clancy said. “And it’s not your parents. It’s not even your friends. What you want is to be with him, like you were in the cabin yesterday, or in that car in the woods. I don’t want to lose you, you said. Is he really that important?” Rage boiled up from my stomach, burning my throat. “How dare you? You said you wouldn’t—you said—” He let out a bark of laughter. “God, you’re naive. I guess this explains how that League woman was able to trick you into thinking you were something less than a monster.” “You said you would help me,” I whispered. He rolled his eyes. “All right, are you ready for the last lesson? Ruby Elizabeth Daly, you are alone and you always will be. If you weren’t so stupid, you would have figured it out by now, but since it’s beyond you, let me spell it out: You will never be able to control your abilities. You will never be able to avoid being pulled into someone’s head, because there’s some part of you that doesn’t want to know how to control them. No, not when it would mean having to embrace them. You’re too immature and weak-hearted to use them the way they’re meant to be used. You’re scared of what that would make you.” I looked away. “Ruby, don’t you get it? You hate what you are, but you were given these abilities for a reason. We both were. It’s our right to use them—we have to use them to stay ahead, to keep the others in their place.” His finger caught the stretched-out collar of my shirt and gave it a tug. “Stop it.” I was proud of how steady my voice was. As Clancy leaned in, he slipped a hazy image beneath my closed eyes—the two of us just before he walked into my memories. My stomach knotted as I watched my eyes open in terror, his lips pressed against mine. “I’m so glad we found each other,” he said, voice oddly calm. “You can help me. I thought I knew everything, but you…” My elbow flew up and clipped him under the chin. Clancy stumbled back with a howl of pain, pressing both hands to his face. I had half a second to get the hell out, and I took it, twisting the handle of the door so hard that the lock popped itself out. “Ruby! Wait, I didn’t mean—!” A face appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Lizzie. I saw her lips part in surprise, her many earrings jangling as I shoved past her. “Just an argument,” I heard Clancy say, weakly. “It’s fine, just let her go.

[THE DAILY BREATH] When Jesus walked the Earth, He said again and again: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." For many years I misunderstood this message. The line: "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near" brought fear because to me it meant: "Repent or else you go to hell." But this is not what it means. Read the words again: "Repent" which means ask God for forgiveness, "because the kingdom of Heaven is at hand" which means peace is close to you. Ask for forgiveness because when you do so in all honesty, you bring Heaven in your life. When you open your heart and ask for forgiveness in all truth, you find Heaven: the healing you need, the love you deserve, the peace you want: all of these wait for you on the other side of you having a heart-to-heart, truthful relationship with Jesus. God's love for you is unconditional, but communication is possible only in truth. Turn your eyes from your pain, and look unto Jesus. Literally, focus your eyes on Him. Walk through the terror barrier that prevents you from opening your heart, and tell Him everything. Ask for forgiveness for everything you think you've done wrong, ask for help with your weaknesses - not from your mind or from your emotions, but from your spirit - and hide nothing because what you keep hidden will torment you until you bring it out to light. Carl Jung, the renowned psychiatrist said, "The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely." Do not be afraid. Tell God everything you fear to acknowledge, because He cannot heal what you conceal, and he will heal everything you reveal.

You are only as strong as your weakest link. And I was the weak link, but not because of what I could or couldn't remember - because I had been pushing everyone away, unwilling to accept the help I desperately needed and insisting the problem was mine (and mine alone) to solve.

I think they wanted me to be happy,” Mia told me, “but in a very shallow, let’s-not-get-too-deep kind of way.” Mia recalled that her parents accepted her happiness only about tangible, outer-world things they approved of, such as Christmas gifts, new clothes, or a good report card. Mia hid her true reactions because her parents often judged her feelings as excessive, weak, or oversensitive. Because of their rejection, Mia began to minimize and hide her feelings from herself too. She gradually lost her emotional freedom, her right to feel whatever she felt.

Exploring Self-Compassion Through Letter Writing PART ONE Everybody has something about themselves that they don’t like; something that causes them to feel shame, to feel insecure or not “good enough.” It is the human condition to be imperfect, and feelings of failure and inadequacy are part of the experience of living. Try thinking about an issue that tends to make you feel inadequate or bad about yourself (physical appearance, work or relationship issues, etc.). How does this aspect of yourself make you feel inside—scared, sad, depressed, insecure, angry? What emotions come up for you when you think about this aspect of yourself? Please try to be as emotionally honest as possible and to avoid repressing any feelings, while at the same time not being melodramatic. Try to just feel your emotions exactly as they are—no more, no less. PART TWO Now think about an imaginary friend who is unconditionally loving, accepting, kind, and compassionate. Imagine that this friend can see all your strengths and all your weaknesses, including the aspect of yourself you have just been thinking about. Reflect upon what this friend feels toward you, and how you are loved and accepted exactly as you are, with all your very human imperfections. This friend recognizes the limits of human nature and is kind and forgiving toward you. In his/her great wisdom this friend understands your life history and the millions of things that have happened in your life to create you as you are in this moment. Your particular inadequacy is connected to so many things you didn’t necessarily choose: your genes, your family history, life circumstances—things that were outside of your control. Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of this imaginary friend—focusing on the perceived inadequacy you tend to judge yourself for. What would this friend say to you about your “flaw” from the perspective of unlimited compassion? How would this friend convey the deep compassion he/she feels for you, especially for the discomfort you feel when you judge yourself so harshly? What would this friend write in order to remind you that you are only human, that all people have both strengths and weaknesses? And if you think this friend would suggest possible changes you should make, how would these suggestions embody feelings of unconditional understanding and compassion? As you write to yourself from the perspective of this imaginary friend, try to infuse your letter with a strong sense of the person’s acceptance, kindness, caring, and desire for your health and happiness. After writing the letter, put it down for a little while. Then come back and read it again, really letting the words sink in. Feel the compassion as it pours into you, soothing and comforting you like a cool breeze on a hot day. Love, connection, and acceptance are your birthright. To claim them you need only look within yourself.

Vulnerability is usually attacked, not with fists but with shaming. Many children learn quickly to cover up any signs of weakness, sensitivity, and fragility, as well as alarm, fear, eagerness, neediness, or even curiosity. Above all, they must never disclose that the teasing has hit its mark. Carl Jung explained that we tend to attack in others what we are most uncomfortable with in ourselves. When vulnerability is the enemy, it is attacked wherever it is perceived, even in a best friend. Signs of alarm may provoke verbal taunts such as “fraidy cat” or “chicken.” Tears evoke ridicule. Expressions of curiosity can precipitate the rolling of eyes and accusations of being weird or nerdy. Manifestations of tenderness can result in incessant teasing. Revealing that something caused hurt or really caring about something is risky around someone uncomfortable with his vulnerability. In the company of the desensitized, any show of emotional openness is likely to be targeted. The vulnerability engendered by peer orientation can be overwhelming even when children are not hurting one another. This vulnerability is built into the highly insecure nature of peer-oriented relationships. Vulnerability does not have to do only with what is happening but with what could happen — with the inherent insecurity of attachment. What we have, we can lose, and the greater the value of what we have, the greater the potential loss. We may be able to achieve closeness in a relationship, but we cannot secure it in the sense of holding on to it — not like securing a rope or a boat or a fixed interest-bearing government bond. One has very little control over what happens in a relationship, whether we will still be wanted and loved tomorrow. Although the possibility of loss is present in any relationship, we parents strive to give our children what they are constitutionally unable to give to one another: a connection that is not based on their pleasing us, making us feel good, or reciprocating in any way. In other words, we offer our children precisely what is missing in peer attachments: unconditional acceptance.

In human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear. Very few people learn this. What made Kate so effective was the fact that she had either learned it or had been born with the knowledge. Kate never hurried. If a barrier arose, she waited until it had disappeared before continuing. She was capable of complete relaxation between the times for action. Also, she was mistress of a technique which is the basis of good wrestling—that of letting your opponent do the heavy work toward his own defeat, or of guiding his strength toward his weaknesses.

Sometimes, people you value the most may appreciate all the things you do for them. but that doesn't mean they value you as much you value them. you sacrifice for them and give them all the best because you want them to be happy and you believe they deserve it. You understand and accept them for everything that they are. There are times that you'll ran short and would fail to be at your best and they may take it againts you. you'll have your own share of your weaknesses and flaws and they may not understand you and accept you. You may have been lost at times and they may not look for you or care for you and that's okay. that's the thing about giving. you give without expecting, you give without regrets and you give whole heartedly and freely. For God will always bless you with more than what you give. and it's already fulfilling to see them somehow smile and became complete and still thankful because you did something good for them and that's all that matters.

Let there be no mistake in your mind as to the special character of the man who has come to Christ, and is a true Christian. He is not an angel, he is not a half-angelic being, in whom is no weakness, or blemish, or infirmity - he is nothing of the kind. He is nothing more than a sinner who has found out his sinfulness, and has learned the blessed secret of living by faith in Christ. What was the glorious company of the apostles and prophets? What was the noble army of martyrs? What were Isaiah, Daniel, Peter, James, John, Paul, Polycarp, Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Ridley, Latimer, Bunyan, Baxter, Whitefield, Venn, Chalmers, Bickersteth, M’Cheyne? What were they all, but sinners who knew and felt their sins, and trusted only in Christ? What were they, but men who accepted the invitation I bring you this day, and came to Christ by faith? By this faith they lived; in this faith they died. In themselves and their doings they saw nothing worth mentioning; but in Christ they saw all that their souls required. The invitation of Christ is now before you. If you never listened to it before, listen to it today. Broad, full, free, wide, simple, tender, kind, that invitation will leave you without excuse if you refuse to accept it. There are some invitations, perhaps, which it is wiser and better to decline. There is one which ought always to be accepted: that one is before you today. Jesus Christ is saying, “Come! Come unto Me.

That's precisely what's so extraordinary about you, you enjoy giving pleasure. Offering your body as an object of pleasure, giving pleasure unselfishly: that's what Westerners don't know how to do any more. They've completely lost the sense of giving. Try as they might, they no longer feel sex as something natural. Not only are they ashamed of their own bodies, which aren't up to porn standards, but for the same reasons they no longer feel truly attracted to the body of the other. It's impossible to make love without a certain abandon, without accepting, at least temporarily, the state of being in a state of dependency, of weakness. Sentimental adulation and sexual obsession have the same roots, both proceed from some degree of selflessness; it's not a domain in which you can find fulfilment without losing yourself. We have become cold, rational, acutely conscious of our individual existence and our rights; more than anything, we want to avoid alienation and dependence; on top of that we're obsessed with health and hygiene: these are hardly ideal conditions in which to make love.

Whatever you want," he said. "Will you please come here now?" I slipped a piece of protective tissue over my drawing and flipped the book closed. A piece of blue scratch paper slid out, the line I'd copied from Edward;s poetry book. "Hey. Translate for me, Monsieur Bainbridge." I set the sketchbook on my stool and joined him on the chaise. He tugged me onto his lap and read over his head. "'Qu'ieu sui avinen, leu lo sai.' 'That I am handsome, I know." "Verry funny." "Very true." He grinned. "The translation. That's what it says. Old-fashionedly." I thought of Edward's notation on the page, the reminder to read the poem to Diana in bed, and rolled my eyes. You're so vain.I bet you think this song is about you..."Boy and their egos." Alex cupped my face in his hands. "Que tu est belle, tu le sais." "Oh,I am not-" "Shh," he shushed me, and leaned in. The first bell came way too soon. I reluctantly loosened my grip on his shirt and ran my hands over my hair. He prompty thrust both hands in and messed it up again. "Stop," I scolded, but without much force. "I have physics," he told me. "We're studying weak interaction." I sandwiched his open hand between mine. "You know absolutely nothing about that." "Don't be so quick to accept the obvious," he mock-scolded me. "Weak interaction can actually change the flavor of quarks." The flavor of quirks, I thought, and vaguely remembered something about being charmed. I'd sat through a term of introductory physics before switching to basic biology. I'd forgotten most of that as soon as I'd been tested on it,too. "I gotta go." Alex pushed me to my feet and followed. "Last person to get to class always gets the first question, and I didn't do the reading." "Go," I told him. "I have history. By definition, we get to history late." "Ha-ha. I'll talk to you later." He kissed me again, then walked out, closing the door quietly behind him.

I am strange, my mind is tinted with the colors of madness, they fight in silent furor in their effort to possess each other, I am strange. I have approached a degree of love that is so unwise, In one world that it is wisdom in another, I am strange, I no longer have respect for hate, I'm stronger than hate. I'm contemptuous of both those who hate and those who destroy, I'm not a part of the world which hates and the world which destroys, I want a better world and not only do I want a better world, I seek to live a better life, that I might have a right to be a part of a better world, if I hate and destroy I have no right to speak of love, love is greater than hate, and I have chosen love above all else in the world. I am strange, I know a secret truth, I have a secret rendesvouz, and the wind touches against my window pane, come with me! it says, come with me, I am a force, you are a force. We are brothers. Though I am invisible, I cover the leaf when I unravel, no wall can hold me, nothing can withstand my will. What is your god? What is your desire? Come my brother, you are dear to me, I cannot come to you in full force, for you are too weak to contain me, I might lift you from the ground and frighten you, at this careless moment, I might drop you in my jaw that you want me to come to you, I cannot approach you in your weakness, I am too strong, come to me! as cautious as you will, I will accept you, for the spirit of man is more like myself than anything on earth. All the most I think I am the power for the spirit of man, for the spirit of man is strong, no power on earth is greater and no world can contain it, it will cover the breadth and the width of earth, for like I, the wind, an aroused spirit is greatly to be feared, but weapons of that you will cast invisible, only fools seek to harm the wind, only fools seek to harm the brother of the wind. Come spirit of man, I will take you to new worlds, I will take you to inner unseen worlds, greater in splendors than anything life contains, if you are fearful, you will die in your fear, but if you become as I you will be strong and do as I, I the wind come and go as I choose, and none can stop me.

There is a secret a person with great knowledge discovers along the path to truth. That is, the more doors you open to understanding the world, the smaller you feel. And because you begin to feel smaller and smaller until your ego disappears, the more humble you become. Therefore, any man who behaves arrogantly with what little he knows, or claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing. Real greatness does not reside inside those who feel large. The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit?

She stared at him, at his face. Simply stared as the scales fell from her eyes. "Oh, my God," she whispered, the exclamation so quiet not even he would hear. She suddenly saw-saw it all-all that she'd simply taken for granted. Men like him protected those they loved, selflessly, unswervingly, even unto death. The realization rocked her. Pieces of the jigsaw of her understanding of him fell into place. He was hanging to consciousness by a thread. She had to be sure-and his shields, his defenses were at their weakest now. Looking down at her hands, pressed over the nearly saturated pad, she hunted for the words, the right tone. Softly said, "My death, even my serious injury, would have freed you from any obligation to marry me. Society would have accepted that outcome, too." He shifted, clearly in pain. She sucked in a breath-feeling his pain as her own-then he clamped the long fingers of his right hand about her wrist, held tight. So tight she felt he was using her as an anchor to consciousness, to the world. His tone, when he spoke, was harsh. "Oh, yes-after I'd expended so much effort keeping you safe all these years, safe even from me, I was suddenly going to stand by and let you be gored by some mangy bull." He snorted, soft, low. Weakly. He drew in a slow, shallow breath, lips thin with pain, but determined, went on, "You think I'd let you get injured when finally after all these long years I at last understand that the reason you've always made me itch is because you are the only woman I actually want to marry? And you think I would stand back and let you be harmed?" A peevish frown crossed his face. "I ask you, is that likely? Is it even vaguely rational?" He went on, his words increasingly slurred, his tongue tripping over some, his voice fading. She listened, strained to catch every word as he slid into semi delirium, into rambling, disjointed sentences that she drank in, held to her heart. He gave her dreams back to her, reshaped and refined. "Not French Imperial-good, sound, English oak. You can use whatever colors you like, but no gilt-I forbid it." Eventually he ventured further than she had. "And I want at least three children-not just an heir and a spare. At least three-if you're agreeable. We'll have to have two boys, of course-my evil ugly sisters will found us to make good on that. But thereafter...as many girls as you like...as long as they look like you. Or perhaps Cordelia-she's the handsomer of the two uglies." He loved his sisters, his evil ugly sisters. Heather listened with tears in her eyes as his mind drifted and his voice gradually faded, weakened. She'd finally got her declaration, not in anything like the words she'd expected, but in a stronger, impossible-to-doubt exposition. He'd been her protector, unswerving, unflinching, always there; from a man like him, focused on a lady like her, such actions were tantamount to a declaration from the rooftops. The love she'd wanted him to admit to had been there all along, demonstrated daily right before her eyes, but she hadn't seen. Hadn't seen because she'd been focusing elsewhere, and because, conditioned as she was to resisting the same style of possessive protectiveness from her brothers, from her cousins, she hadn't appreciated his, hadn't realized that that quality had to be an expression of his feelings for her. Until now. Until now that he'd all but given his life for hers. He loved her-he'd always loved her. She saw that now, looking back down the years. He'd loved her from the time she'd fallen in love with him-the instant they'd laid eyes on each other at Michael and Caro's wedding in Hampshire four years ago. He'd held aloof, held away-held her at bay, too-believing, wrongly, that he wasn't an appropriate husband for her. In that, he'd been wrong, too. She saw it all. And as the tears overflowed and tracked down her cheeks, she knew to her soul how right he was for her. Knew, embraced, and rejoiced.

Where is everybody?” “Hiding,” she said. “Except for Doolittle. He was excused from the chewing-out due to having been kidnapped. He’s napping now like he doesn’t have a care in the world. I got to hear all sorts of interesting stuff through the door.” “Give.” She shot me a sly smile. “First, I got to listen to Jim’s ‘it’s all my fault; I did it all by myself’ speech. Then I got to listen to Derek’s ‘it’s all my fault and I did it all by myself’ speech. Then Curran promised that the next person who wanted to be a martyr would get to be one. Then Raphael made a very growling speech about how he was here for a blood debt. It was his right to have restitution for the injury caused to the friend of the boudas; it was in the damn clan charter on such and such page. And if Curran wanted to have an issue with it, they could take it outside. It was terribly dramatic and ridiculous. I loved it.” I could actually picture Curran sitting there, his hand on his forehead above his closed eyes, growling quietly in his throat. “Then Dali told him that she was sick and tired of being treated like she was made out of glass and she wanted blood and to kick ass.” That would do him in. “So what did he say?” “He didn’t say anything for about a minute and then he chewed them out. He told Derek that he’d been irresponsible with Livie’s life, and that if he was going to rescue somebody, the least he could do is to have a workable plan, instead of a poorly thought-out mess that backfired and broke just about every Pack law and got his face smashed in. He told Dali that if she wanted to be taken seriously, she had to accept responsibility for her own actions instead of pretending to be weak and helpless every time she got in trouble and that this was definitely not the venue to prove one’s toughness. Apparently he didn’t think her behavior was cute when she was fifteen and he’s not inclined to tolerate it now that she’s twenty-eight.” I was cracking up. “He told Raphael that the blood debt overrode Pack law only in cases of murder or life-threatening injury and quoted the page of the clan charter and the section number where that could be found. He said that frivolous challenges to the alpha also violated Pack law and were punishable by isolation. It was an awesome smackdown. They had no asses left when he was done.” Andrea began snapping the gun parts together. “Then he sentenced the three of them and himself to eight weeks of hard labor, building the north wing addition to the Keep, and dismissed them. They ran out of there like their hair was on fire.” “He sentenced himself?” “He’s broken Pack law by participating in our silliness, apparently.” That’s Beast Lord for you. “And Jim?” “Oh, he got a special chewing-out after everybody else was dismissed. It was a very quiet and angry conversation, and I didn’t hear most of it. I heard the end, though—he got three months of Keep building. Also, when he opened the door to leave, Curran told him very casually that if Jim wanted to pick fights with his future mate, he was welcome to do so, but he should keep in mind that Curran wouldn’t come and rescue him when you beat his ass. You should’ve seen Jim’s face.” “His what?” “His mate. M-A-T-E.” I cursed. Andrea grinned. “I thought that would make your day. And now you’re stuck with him in here for three days and you get to fight together in the Arena. It’s so romantic. Like a honeymoon.” Once again my mental conditioning came in handy. I didn’t strangle her on the spot.

My throat raw with emotion, I said, “I thought love was supposed to be weak knees and butterflies in your stomach and a terrible longing that could never be quenched.” Eeny shook her head, chuckled, came over and embraced me. “No, child,” she said gently, patting my back. “That’s romance. Romance is built on doubt. Love is solid. Constant. If you’re not careful, you might mistake it for bein’ boring because it’s so reliable. Love is warm and deep and comfortable, just right, so you float in it peacefully without ever being scalded or frozen, like a perfect, relaxing bubble bath. “But it’s also fierce and strong and demands all the best parts of you, the parts that are giving and honest and true. Love makes you a better person. It makes you want to be a better person. You know it’s love when you feel comfortable just as you are, when you feel seen and understood, when you know you could tell all your darkest truths and they’d be accepted without judgement.” Eeny pulled away and gently smoothed a hand over my hair. “Love isn’t butterflies, boo. It isn’t weak knees. It’s a pride of lions. It’s a pack of wolves. It’s ‘I’ve got your back even if it costs me my own life,’ because unlike romance that fizzles at the first sign of trouble, love will fight to the death. When it’s love, you’ll go to war to avenge even the slightest offense. And you’ll be justified. “Because of all the marvelous and terrible things we can experience in this life, love is the only one that will last beyond it.

When encountering your weaknesses you have four choices: 1. You can deny them (which is what most people do). 2. You can accept them and work at them in order to try to convert them into strengths (which might or might not work depending on your ability to change). 3. You can accept your weaknesses and find ways around them. 4. Or, you can change what you are going after. Which solution you choose will be critically important to the direction of your life. The worst path you can take is the first.

One of my greatest concerns for the young women of the Church is that they will sell themselves short in dating and marriage by forgetting who they really are--daughters of a loving Heavenly Father. . . . Unfortunately, a young woman who lowers her standards far enough can always find temporary acceptance from immature and unworthy young men. . . . At their best, daughters of God are loving, caring, understanding, and sympathetic. This does not mean they are also gullible, unrealistic, or easily manipulated. If a young man does not measure up to the standards a young woman has set, he may promise her that he will change if she will marry him first. Wise daughters of God will insist that young men who seek their hand in marriage change before the wedding, not after. (I am referring here to the kind of change that will be part of the lifelong growth of every disciple.) He may argue that she doesn't really believe in repentance and forgiveness. But one of the hallmarks of repentance is forsaking sin. Especially when the sin involves addictive behaviors or a pattern of transgression, wise daughters of God insist on seeing a sustained effort to forsake sin over a long period of time as true evidence of repentance. They do not marry someone because they believe they can change him. Young women, please do not settle for someone unworthy of your gospel standards. On the other hand, young women should not refuse to settle down. There is no right age for young men or young women to marry, but there is a right attitude for them to have about marriage: "Thy will be done" . . . . The time to marry is when we are prepared to meet a suitable mate, not after we have done all the enjoyable things in life we hoped to do while we were single. . . . When I hear some young men and young women set plans in stone which do not include marriage until after age twenty-five or thirty or until a graduate degree has been obtained, I recall Jacob's warning, "Seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand" (Jacob 4:10). . . . How we conduct ourselves in dating relationships is a good indication of how we will conduct ourselves in a marriage relationship. . . . Individuals considering marriage would be wise to conduct their own prayerful due diligence--long before they set their hearts on marriage. There is nothing wrong with making a T-square diagram and on either side of the vertical line listing the relative strengths and weaknesses of a potential mate. I sometimes wonder whether doing more homework when it comes to this critical decision would spare some Church members needless heartache. I fear too many fall in love with each other or even with the idea of marriage before doing the background research necessary to make a good decision. It is sad when a person who wants to be married never has the opportunity to marry. But it is much, much sadder to be married to the wrong person. If you do not believe me, talk with someone who has made that mistake. Think carefully about the person you are considering marrying, because marriage should last for time and for all eternity.

When I ask you to listen to me and you start to give me advice, you have not done what I asked. When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way,
 you are trampling on my feelings. When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem. Listen! All I ask is that you listen. Not talk or do—just hear me. I can do for myself. I’m not helpless. Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless. When you do something for me that I can, and need to do for myself,
 you contribute to my fear and weakness. But when you accept as a simple fact that I am feeling what I feel no matter how irrational it might be,
 then I can get on with understanding what is behind this feeling. Perhaps that is why prayer works for so many people. God is silent and He doesn’t give advice or try to fix things. He just listens and lets you work it out for yourself. So, please listen and just hear me. And if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn. Then I’ll listen to you.

One word that has been poorly defined by dictionaries and priests is the word 'meek'. The word has been defined in several ways: righteous, humble, teachable, and patient under suffering, long suffering willing to follow gospel teachings; an attribute of a true disciple. This is not completely true. There is a secret a person with great knowledge discovers along the path to truth. That is, the more doors you open to the mysteries, or sacred knowledge, the smaller you feel. And because you begin to feel smaller and smaller until your ego disappears, the more humble you become. Therefore, any man who behaves arrogantly with what little he knows, or claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing. Real greatness does not reside inside those who feel large. The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit?

The ancient Greeks had an appropriate metaphor for this: the rider and the horse. The horse is our emotional nature continually impelling us to move. This horse has tremendous energy and power, but without a rider it cannot be guided; it is wild, subject to predators, and continually heading into trouble. The rider is our thinking self. Through training and practice, it holds the reins and guides the horse, transforming this powerful animal energy into something productive. The one without the other is useless. Without the rider, no directed movement or purpose. Without the horse, no energy, no power. In most people the horse dominates, and the rider is weak. In some people the rider is too strong, holds the reins too tightly, and is afraid to occasionally let the animal go into a gallop. The horse and rider must work together. This means we consider our actions beforehand; we bring as much thinking as possible to a situation before we make a decision. But once we decide what to do, we loosen the reins and enter action with boldness and a spirit of adventure. Instead of being slaves to this energy, we channel it. That is the essence of rationality. As an example of this ideal in action, try to maintain a perfect balance between skepticism (rider) and curiosity (horse). In this mode you are skeptical about your own enthusiasms and those of others. You do not accept at face value people’s explanations and their application of “evidence.” You look at the results of their actions, not what they say about their motivations. But if you take this too far, your mind will close itself off from wild ideas, from exciting speculations, from curiosity itself. You want to retain the elasticity of spirit you had as a child, interested in everything, while retaining the hard-nosed need to verify and scrutinize for yourself all ideas and beliefs. The two can coexist. It is a balance that all geniuses possess.

The American system of jurisprudence recognizes a wide range of factors, predispositions, prejudices, and experiences that might cloud our judgment, or affect our objectivity—sometimes even without our knowing it. It goes to great, perhaps even extravagant, lengths to safeguard the process of judgment in a criminal trial from the human weaknesses of those who must decide on innocence or guilt. Even then, of course, the process sometimes fails. Why would we settle for anything less when interrogating the natural world, or when attempting to decide on vital matters of politics, economics, religion, and ethics? — If it is to be applied consistently, science imposes, in exchange for its manifold gifts, a certain onerous burden: We are enjoined, no matter how uncomfortable it might be, to consider ourselves and our cultural institutions scientifically—not to accept uncritically whatever we’re told; to surmount as best we can our hopes, conceits, and unexamined beliefs; to view ourselves as we really are. Can we conscientiously and courageously follow planetary motion or bacterial genetics wherever the search may lead, but declare the origin of matter or human behavior off-limits? Because its explanatory power is so great, once you get the hang of scientific reasoning you’re eager to apply it everywhere. However, in the course of looking deeply within ourselves, we may challenge notions that give comfort before the terrors of the world.

My throat raw with emotion, I said, “I thought love was supposed to be weak knees and butterflies in your stomach and a terrible longing that could never be quenched.” Eeny shook her head, chuckled, came over and embraced me. “No, child,” she said gently, patting my back. “That’s romance. Romance is built on doubt. Love is solid. Constant. If you’re not careful, you might mistake it for bein’ boring because it’s so reliable. Love is warm and deep and comfortable, just right, so you float in it peacefully without ever being scalded or frozen, like a perfect, relaxing bubble bath. “But it’s also fierce and strong and demands all the best parts of you, the parts that are giving and honest and true. Love makes you a better person. It makes you want to be a better person. You know it’s love when you feel comfortable just as you are, when you feel seen and understood, when you know you could tell all your darkest truths and they’d be accepted without judgement.” Eeny pulled away and gently smoothed a hand over my hair. “Love isn’t butterflies, boo. It isn’t weak knees. It’s a pride of lions. It’s a pack of wolves. It’s ‘I’ve got your back even if it costs me my own life,’ because unlike romance that fizzles at the first sign of trouble, love will fight to the death. When it’s love, you’ll go to war to avenge even the slightest offense. And you’ll be justified. “Because of all the marvelous and terrible things we can experience in this life, love is the only one that will last beyond it.

You’ve said, “You can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution as long as you like and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in chemistry and it will be refuted tomorrow.” How does your approach to the world as a scientist affect and influence the way you approach politics? Nature is tough. You can’t fiddle with Mother Nature, she’s a hard taskmistress. So you’re forced to be honest in the natural sciences. In the soft fields, you’re not forced to be honest. There are standards, of course; on the other hand, they’re very weak. If what you propose is ideologically acceptable, that is, supportive of power systems, you can get away with a huge amount. In fact, the difference between the conditions that are imposed on dissident opinion and on mainstream opinion is radically different. For example, I’ve written about terrorism, and I think you can show without much difficulty that terrorism pretty much corresponds to power. I don’t think that’s very surprising. The more powerful states are involved in more terrorism, by and large. The United States is the most powerful, so it’s involved in massive terrorism, by its own definition of terrorism. Well, if I want to establish that, I’m required to give a huge amount of evidence. I think that’s a good thing. I don’t object to that. I think anyone who makes that claim should be held to very high standards. So, I do extensive documentation, from the internal secret records and historical record and so on. And if you ever find a comma misplaced, somebody ought to criticize you for it. So I think those standards are fine. All right, now, let’s suppose that you play the mainstream game. You can say anything you want because you support power, and nobody expects you to justify anything. For example, in the unimaginable circumstance that I was on, say, Nightline, and I was asked, “Do you think Kadhafi is a terrorist?” I could say, “Yeah, Kadhafi is a terrorist.” I don’t need any evidence. Suppose I said, “George Bush is a terrorist.” Well, then I would be expected to provide evidence—“Why would you say that?” In fact, the structure of the news production system is, you can’t produce evidence. There’s even a name for it—I learned it from the producer of Nightline, Jeff Greenfield. It’s called “concision.” He was asked in an interview somewhere why they didn’t have me on Nightline. First of all, he says, “Well, he talks Turkish, and nobody understands it.” But the other answer was, “He lacks concision.” Which is correct, I agree with him. The kinds of things that I would say on Nightline, you can’t say in one sentence because they depart from standard religion. If you want to repeat the religion, you can get away with it between two commercials. If you want to say something that questions the religion, you’re expected to give evidence, and that you can’t do between two commercials. So therefore you lack concision, so therefore you can’t talk. I think that’s a terrific technique of propaganda. To impose concision is a way of virtually guaranteeing that the party line gets repeated over and over again, and that nothing else is heard.

Ordinary unconsciousness is always linked in some way with denial of the Now. The Now, of course, also implies the here. Are you resisting your here and now? Some people would always rather be somewhere else. Their “here” is never good enough. Through self-observation, find out if that is the case in your life. Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear. If you take any action — leaving or changing your situation — drop the negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity. Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it. If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your here and now, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longer survive. This is called surrender. Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free. Or is there something that you “should” be doing but are not doing it? Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it fully. Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully and consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity.

His tousled hair glittered like pagan gold as he pressed her to her back and dragged his open mouth over her flat stomach. Evie shook her head with groggy denial even as he bent her knees and pushed them upward. "Too tired," she said thickly, "I---wait, Sebastian---" His tongue searched her salty-damp flesh with assuaging licks, persisting until her protests died away. The gentle ministrations of his mouth lulled her into peace, her heartbeat slowing to measured beats. After long, patient minutes, he drew the swollen bud of her clitoris in his mouth and began to suckle and nibble. She jerked at the delicate aggression of his mouth. He drove her higher, his tongue flicking and swirling in a deliberate pattern, his arms clamping around her thighs. It seemed her body was no longer her own, that she existed only to receive this torment of pleasure. Sebastian... she could not voice his name, and yet he seemed to hear her silent plea, and in response he did something with his mouth that launched her into a series of incandescent climaxes. Every time she thought it was over, another ripple of sensation went through her until she was so exhausted that she begged him to stop. Sebastian rose over her, his eyes glittering in his shadowed face. She moved to welcome him, opening her legs, sliding her arms around the powerful length of his back. He nudged inside her swollen flesh, filling her completely. As his mouth came to her ear, she could hardly hear his whisper over the thumping of her heart. "Evie," came his dark voice, "I want something from you... I want you to come one more time." "No," she said weakly. "Yes. I need to feel you come around me." Her head rolled in a slow, negative shake across the pillow. "I can't... I can't..." "Yes, you can. I'll help you." His hand drifted along her body to the place where they were joined. "Let me deeper inside you... deeper..." She moaned helplessly as she felt his fingertips on her sex, skillfully manipulating her spent nerves. Suddenly she felt him sliding even farther as her excited body opened to accept him. "Mmm..." he crooned. "Yes, that's it... ah, love, you're so sweet..." He settled between her bent knees, into the cradle of her hips, driving hard and sure inside her. She encompassed him with her arms and legs, and buried her face in his hot throat, and cried out one last time, her flesh pulsing and tightening to bring him to shattering fulfillment. He shook in her arms, and clenched his hands into the warm spill of her hair as he gave himself over to her completely, worshipping her with every part of his body and spirit.

Before the troops left Rome, the consul Varro made a number of extremely arrogant speeches. The nobles, he complained, were directly responsible for the war on Italian soil, and it would continue to prey upon the country's vitals if there were any more commanders on the Fabian model. He himself, on the contrary, would bring it to an end on the day he first caught sight of the enemy. His colleague Paullus spoke only once before the army marched, and in words which though true were hardly popular. His only harsh criticism of Varro was to express his surprise about how any army commander, while still at Rome, in his civilian clothes, could possibly know what his task on the field of battle would be, before he had become acquainted either with his own troops or the enemy's or had any idea of the lie and nature of the country where he was to operate--or how he could prophesy exactly when a pitched battle would occur. As for himself, he refused to recommend any sort of policy prematurely; for policy was moulded by circumstance, not circumstance by policy. . . . [T]o strengthen [Paullus'] determination Fabius (we are told) spoke to him at his departure in the following words. 'If, Lucius Aemilius, you were like your colleague, or if--which I should much prefer--you had a colleague like yourself, anything I could now say would be superfluous. Two good consuls would serve the country well in virtue of their own sense of honour, without any words from me; and two bad consuls would not accept my advice, nor even listen to me. But as things are, I know your colleague's qualities and I know your own, so it is to you alone I address myself, understanding as I do that all your courage and patriotism will be in vain, if our country must limp on one sound leg and one lame one. With the two of you equal in command, bad counsels will be backed by the same legal authority as good ones; for you are wrong, Paullus, if you think to find less opposition from Varro than from Hannibal. Hannibal is your enemy, Varro your rival, but I hardly know which will prove the more hostile to your designs; with the former you will be contending only on the field of battle, but with the latter everywhere and always. . . . [I]t is not the enemy who will make it difficult and dangerous for you to tread, but your fellow-countrymen. Your own men will want precisely what the enemy wants; the wishes of Varro, the Roman consul, will play straight into the hands of Hannibal, commander-in-chief of the Carthaginian armies. You will have two generals against you; but you will stand firm against both, if you can steel yourself to ignore the tongues of men who will defame you--if you remain unmoved by the empty glory your colleague seeks and the false infamy he tries to bring upon yourself. . . . Never mind if they call your caution timidity, your wisdom sloth, your generalship weakness; it is better that a wise enemy should fear you than that foolish friends should praise. Hannibal will despise a reckless antagonist, but he will fear a cautious one. Not that I wish you to do nothing--all I want is that your actions should be guided by a reasoned policy, all risks avoided; that the conduct of the war should be controlled by you at all times; that you should neither lay aside your sword nor relax your vigilance but seize the opportunity that offers, while never giving the enemy a chance to take you at a disadvantage. Go slowly, and all will be clear and sure. Haste is always improvident and blind.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick. Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived. Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness. Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

As a parent, your counter-dependence can set you up to feel, on some level, deeply uncomfortable with the dependence that is naturally built into your relationship with your child. Your own needs were thwarted as a child, and now a small being has lots of needs that you are required to fulfill. You may feel, on some deep or even unconscious level, that this is an unfair bind to be placed in. And now that we’re talking about this openly, I want to assure you that your feeling makes a lot of sense and is valid. You are indeed in an unfair bind. On top of that, society tells you (by seldom airing any negative feelings about parenting) that your feeling of being in an unfair bind is not how a parent is supposed to feel. In addition to the bind, your fear of relying on others may make it difficult for you to ask for help and accept help. All parents get overwhelmed and exhausted at times, and need support and assistance. If relying on other caretakers makes you feel vulnerable or weak or selfish, you will find yourself running on empty.

Once, on the road, Prim met a meditating sage who had spent most of his life on top of a flat rock. They had black bread and shared some ajash, as was custom. The sage was thankful, as the road was not very frequently traveled in those days and he was very near the point of starvation. During his conversation, he was delighted to learn of Prim’s extensive mastery of Empty Palms and the fifty five earthly purities. Delighted, and as payment for his meal, he taught Prim the meaning of watchfulness. This was the old breathing and cold-atum technique often used by warrior monks in those days. It ran through the following methodology: Build a tower, and make it impregnable. Make every stone so tightly sealed that no insect can squeeze through, no grain of sand can make it inside. Your tower must have no windows or doors. It must not accept passage by friend or foe. No weapon, no act of violence, and not one mote of love may penetrate its stony interior. “Why build the tower this way?” said Prim? “It will make you invincible,” said the sage, “This is the way of Ya-at slave monks. Their skin is like iron, and so are their hearts. They are inured to death and fear. Grief shall never find them, and neither shall weakness.” Prim thought a moment, and came upon a realization, for she was wise, obedient, and an excellent daughter. “If a man built a tower this way, he would quickly starve, no matter how strong he became.” The sage was even more delighted. “Yes,” he said, “There is a better way, and I will teach it to you: Once you have built your tower, you must deconstruct it, brick by brick, stone by stone. You must do it meticulously and carefully, so that while you leave no physical trace of it remaining, your tower is still built in your mind and your heart, ready to spring anew at a moment’s notice. You can enjoy the fresh air, and eat fine meals, and enjoy a good drink with your friends, but all the while your tower remains standing. You are both prisoner and warden. This is the hardest way, but the strongest.” Prim saw the wisdom in this, and quickly made to return to the road, but the sage stopped her before she left. “As you to your earlier remark,” the sage said, “The man who builds his tower but cannot take it apart again – that man is at the pinnacle of his strength. But that man will surely perish.” – Prim Masters the Road

Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man’s mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

When we were first born, Spirit was our predominate guide, but as we ‘matured,’ our society quickly cured us of that. I learned later in my studies that any negative moaning I have about my life is only an affirmation of weakness and makes all those around me not want to be there. Life is nothing more than a dance with God; we just need to follow His lead and quit stepping on His toes. We must be able to release the things we hold dearest in order to truly have. I believe you must know the feeling of hunger before you can truly taste and enjoy food, you can only recognize authenticity by experiencing fraud, and you can only experience true love after enduring heartache. Your level of awareness will increase as you experience the rawness of life on your path to becoming more. God never gives you more than you can handle. He is perfect in His teaching. Know that what comes around goes around, and what you’re unable to forgive and let go will stay around. We need to control what we think, what we say, and how we feel. It’s our thoughts that produce our words, and our words lead to our actions. Our actions over time become habits, which form our character. Our character is what unfolds into our reality. Life is not about a future someone, it’s about ‘becoming’ someone and enjoying every step along the way. There’s no need to wait—significance is available right now. If you had to carry your mental seeds of desired reality around with you, growing to an additional nine pounds concentrated in your belly for nine months, and actually give birth to them, they too would become pretty obvious. The problem with most is they don’t care enough to endure the process, so they wind up aborting their dreams before they have a chance to be born. As you begin to do things to close the gap toward your ideal, you will find that life speeds up. Things quicken, and the closer you get to your goal, the faster it comes for you. The ultimate goal is to condition your body and mind so you can manifest ideals instantly—to think like God thinks. Yearning destroys your ability to have. It’s the carrot dangling just beyond your nose that you will never taste. When you’re obsessed with something you become out of balance and this imbalance creates a barrier between you and what you want. You become too emotionally attached to accept it. We must know the price of our obsessions and refuse to pay it. If Spirit cannot overcome ego and move away from the ways of the world, we will be destined to repeat it. We will die only to perpetuate death. In the beginning of my spiritual quest, I felt left out, alone, and cold. Wandering around in the darkness of my human nature, I came upon a door, and on the door was the word heaven. I knocked on the door but no one answered. I returned back every day, hoping to get someone to hear me and let me in. I became increasingly frustrated, finding myself angrily pounding on the door, but it wouldn’t open. Exhausted, I finally fell to my knees at the foot of the door and prayed, “Please, God, let me in!” The door immediately cracked open. I realized I had been knocking from the inside.

In a physician's office in Kearny Street three men sat about a table, drinking punch and smoking. It was late in the evening, almost midnight, indeed, and there had been no lack of punch. The gravest of the three, Dr. Helberson, was the host—it was in his rooms they sat. He was about thirty years of age; the others were even younger; all were physicians. "The superstitious awe with which the living regard the dead," said Dr. Helberson, "is hereditary and incurable. One needs no more be ashamed of it than of the fact that he inherits, for example, an incapacity for mathematics, or a tendency to lie." The others laughed. "Oughtn't a man to be ashamed to lie?" asked the youngest of the three, who was in fact a medical student not yet graduated. "My dear Harper, I said nothing about that. The tendency to lie is one thing; lying is another." "But do you think," said the third man, "that this superstitious feeling, this fear of the dead, reasonless as we know it to be, is universal? I am myself not conscious of it." "Oh, but it is 'in your system' for all that," replied Helberson; "it needs only the right conditions—what Shakespeare calls the 'confederate season'—to manifest itself in some very disagreeable way that will open your eyes. Physicians and soldiers are of course more nearly free from it than others." "Physicians and soldiers!—why don't you add hangmen and headsmen? Let us have in all the assassin classes." "No, my dear Mancher; the juries will not let the public executioners acquire sufficient familiarity with death to be altogether unmoved by it." Young Harper, who had been helping himself to a fresh cigar at the sideboard, resumed his seat. "What would you consider conditions under which any man of woman born would become insupportably conscious of his share of our common weakness in this regard?" he asked, rather verbosely. "Well, I should say that if a man were locked up all night with a corpse—alone—in a dark room—of a vacant house—with no bed covers to pull over his head—and lived through it without going altogether mad, he might justly boast himself not of woman born, nor yet, like Macduff, a product of Cæsarean section." "I thought you never would finish piling up conditions," said Harper, "but I know a man who is neither a physician nor a soldier who will accept them all, for any stake you like to name." "Who is he?" "His name is Jarette—a stranger here; comes from my town in New York. I have no money to back him, but he will back himself with loads of it." "How do you know that?" "He would rather bet than eat. As for fear—I dare say he thinks it some cutaneous disorder, or possibly a particular kind of religious heresy." "What does he look like?" Helberson was evidently becoming interested. "Like Mancher, here—might be his twin brother." "I accept the challenge," said Helberson, promptly. "Awfully obliged to you for the compliment, I'm sure," drawled Mancher, who was growing sleepy. "Can't I get into this?" "Not against me," Helberson said. "I don't want your money." "All right," said Mancher; "I'll be the corpse." The others laughed. The outcome of this crazy conversation we have seen.

1. ‘ I hate people who collect things and classify things and give them names and then forget all about them. That’s what people are always doing in art.They call a painter an impressionist or a cubist or something and then they put him in a drawer and don’t see him as a living individual painter any more. But I can see they’re beautiful arranged.’ 2. ’ Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?... Why do you keep on using these stupid words-nasty, nice, proper, right? Why are you so worried about what’s proper?...why do you take all the life out of life? Why do you kill all the beauty?’ 3. ‘ Because I can’t marry a man to whom I don’t feel I belong in all ways. My mind must be his, my heart must be his, my body must be his. Just as I must feel he belongs to me. ‘ 4.’ The only thing that really matters is feeling and living what you believe-so long as it’s something more than belief in your own comfort.’ 5. 'It’s weird. Uncanny. But there is a sort of relationship between us. I make fun of him, I attack him all the time, but he senses when I’m ‘soft’. When he can dig back and not make me angry. So we slip into teasing states that are almost friendly. It’s partly because I’m so lonely, it’s partly deliberate (I want make him relax, both for his own good and so that one dat he may make a mistake), so it’s part weakness, and part cunning, and part charity. But there’s a mysterious fourth part I can’t define. It can’t be friendship, I loathe him. Perhaps it’s just knowledge. Just knowing a lot about him. And knowing someone automatically makes you feel close to him. Even when you wish he was on another planet.’ 6.’ You must MAKE, always. You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you’re going to paint. The most terrible form. If you feel something deeply, you’re not ashamed to show your feeling.’ 7. ‘ The women I’ve loved have always told me I’m selfish. It’s what makes them love me. And then be disgusted with me...But what they can’t stand is that I hate them when they don’t behave in their own way. ‘ 8. ‘ I love honesty and freedom and giving. I love making , I love doing, I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart. ‘ 9. ‘ I don’t know what love is...love is something that comes in different clothes, with a different way and different face, and perhaps it takes a long time for you to accept it, to be able to call it love.’ 10. ‘ All this business, it’s bound up with my bossy attitude to life. I’ve always known where I’m going, how I want things to happen. And they have happened as I have wanted, and I have taken it for granted that they have because I know where I’m going. But I have been lucky in all sorts of things. I’ve always tried to happen to life; but it’s time I let life happen to me. ‘ 11. ‘I said, what you love is your own love. It’s not love, it’s selfishness. It’s not me you think of, but what you feel about me.’ 12. ‘ The power of women! I’ve never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We’re so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we’re stronger then they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can’t stand ours.

Responsibility;...the importance of habits,...- a willingness to fail, a willingness to begin again - that are essential to resilience...the single most important habit to build if you want to e resilient: the habit of taking responsibility for your life...The more responsibility people take, the more resilient they are likely to be. The less responsibility people take - for their actions, for their lives, for their happiness - the more likely it is that life will crush them. At the root of resilience is the willingness to take responsibility for results...Life is unfair. You are not responsible for everything that happens to you. You are responsible for how you react to everything that happens to you...The first word out of the mouth of the complainer is always "they"...as soon as we say "I am responsible for...", we take control of something...acceptance of responsibility is a powerful cure for pain. Even when seemingly powerless, the resilient person finds a way to grab hold of something - no matter how small at first - to be responsible for...If you take responsibility for anything in your life, know that you'll feel fear. That fear will manifest itself in many ways: fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of hurt...Every worthy challenge will inspire some fear...Fear is a cor emotion. A life without fear is an unhealthy life...Proper fear is part of the package of responsible, adult living...Focus not on wiping out your anxiety, but on directing your anxiety to worthy ends. Focus not on reducing your fear, but on building your courage - because, as you take more and more responsibility for your life, you'll need more and more courage...Fear is a motivator. It can propel you...Fear works. Fear can make human beings do amazing things. Fear can help you to see your world clearly in a way that you never have before. Fear become destructive when it drives us to do things that are unwise or unhelpful. Fear becomes destructive when it begins to cloud our vision. But like most emotions, fear is destructive only when it runs wild. Embrace the fear that comes from accepting responsibility, and use it to propel yourself to become the person you choose to be...Excellence is difficult. An excuse is seductive. It promises to end hardship, failure, and embarrassment. Excellence requires pain. An excuse promises that you'll be pain-free...Excuses protect you, but they exact a heavy cost. You can't live a full life while you wear them...People who think you weak will offer you an excuse. People who respect you will offer you a challenge...All of these injuries have a hard truth in common. In the long term, the obstacle that stands between us and healing is often not the injury we have received, but ourselves: our decision to keep the injury alive and open long after it should have become a hard-won scar. It is not things which trouble us, but the judgments we bring to bear upon things...In truth, it's not the trauma that's most harmful. The harm comes when we make trauma an excuse to avoid the activities, the relationships, and the purpose that are its only lasting cure.