Associate Appreciation Quotes

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The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve. Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people. As you grow, your associates will change. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you to stay where they are. Friends that don't help you climb will want you to crawl. Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream. Those that don't increase you will eventually decrease you. Consider this: Never receive counsel from unproductive people. Never discuss your problems with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how. Not everyone has a right to speak into your life. You are certain to get the worst of the bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. Don't follow anyone who's not going anywhere. With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it. Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life. Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships. If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights. "A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses." The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate - for the good and the bad. Note: Be not mistaken. This is applicable to family as well as friends. Yes...do love, appreciate and be thankful for your family, for they will always be your family no matter what. Just know that they are human first and though they are family to you, they may be a friend to someone else and will fit somewhere in the criteria above. "In Prosperity Our Friends Know Us. In Adversity We Know Our friends." "Never make someone a priority when you are only an option for them." "If you are going to achieve excellence in big things,you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.."..
Colin Powell
Soft and small voice communications with our associates make priceless friendships possible. I am appreciative of people who find no need to raise their voices as they try to impress or convince. It seems most people who argue and shout have ceased listening to what the small voice could powerfully contribute.
Marvin J. Ashton
We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty. Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers, or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord.
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
Associated with gratitude is virtue. I think they are related because he who is disposed to shun virtue lacks appreciation of life, its purposes, and the happiness and well-being of others.
Gordon B. Hinckley
I feel compelled to make another 'nonapology.' Many readers are likely to be concerned about my use of masculine pronouns in relation to God. I think I both understand and appreciate this concern. It is a matter to which I have given much thought. I have generally been a strong supporter of the women's movement and action that is reasonable to combat sexist language. But first of all, God is not neuter. He is exploding with life and love and even sexuality of a sort. So 'It' is not appropriate. Certainly I consider God androgynous. He is as gentle and tender and nurturing and maternal as any woman could ever be. Nonetheless, culturally determined though it may be, I subjectively experience His reality as more masculine than feminine. While He nurtures us, He also desires to penetrate us, and while we more often than not flee from His love like a reluctant virgin, He chases after us with a vigor in the hunt that we most typically associate with males. As CS Lewis put it, in relation to God we are all female. Moreover, whatever our gender or conscious theology, it is our duty---our obligation---in response to His love to attempt to give birth, like Mary, to Christ in ourselves and in others. "I shall, however, break with tradition and use the neuter for Satan. While I know Satan to be lustful to penetrate us, I have not in the least experienced this desire as sexual or creative---only hateful and destructive. It is hard to determine the sex of a snake.
M. Scott Peck (People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil)
The intentions of the cybernetic totalist tribe are good. They are simply following a path that was blazed in earlier times by well-meaning Freudians and Marxists - and I don't mean that in a pejorative way. I'm thinking of the earliest incarnations of Marxism, for instance, before Stalinism and Maoism killed millions. Movements associated with Freud and Marx both claimed foundations in rationality and the scientific understanding of the world. Both perceived themselves to be at war with the weird, manipulative fantasies of religions. And yet both invented their own fantasies that were just as weird. The same thing is happening again. A self-proclaimed materialist movement that attempts to base itself on science starts to look like a religion rather quickly. It soon presents its own eschatology and its own revelations about what is really going on - portentous events that no one but the initiated can appreciate. The Singularity and the noosphere, the idea that a collective consciousness emerges from all the users on the web, echo Marxist social determinism and Freud's calculus of perversions. We rush ahead of skeptical, scientific inquiry at our peril, just like the Marxists and Freudians.
Jaron Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget)
You want the approval of those with whom you come in contact. You want recognition of your true worth. You want a feeling that you are important in your little world. You don’t want to listen to cheap, insincere flattery, but you do crave sincere appreciation. You want your friends and associates to be, as Charles Schwab put it, “hearty in their approbation and lavish in their praise.” All of us want that. So let’s obey the Golden Rule, and give unto others what we would have others give unto us. How? When? Where? The answer is: All the time, everywhere.
Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends and Influence People)
Paradoxically, it is friendship that often offers us the real route to the pleasures that Romanticism associates with love. That this sounds surprising is only a reflection of how underdeveloped our day-to-day vision of friendship has become. We associate it with a casual acquaintance we see only once in a while to exchange inconsequential and shallow banter. But real friendship is something altogether more profound and worthy of exultation. It is an arena in which two people can get a sense of each other’s vulnerabilities, appreciate each other’s follies without recrimination, reassure each other as to their value and greet the sorrows and tragedies of existence with wit and warmth. Culturally and collectively, we have made a momentous mistake which has left us both lonelier and more disappointed than we ever needed to be. In a better world, our most serious goal would be not to locate one special lover with whom to replace all other humans but to put our intelligence and energy into identifying and nurturing a circle of true friends. At the end of an evening, we would learn to say to certain prospective companions, with an embarrassed smile as we invited them inside – knowing that this would come across as a properly painful rejection – ‘I’m so sorry, couldn’t we just be … lovers?
The School of Life (The School of Life: An Emotional Education)
Edward genially enough did not disagree with what I said, but he didn't seem to admit my point, either. I wanted to press him harder so I veered close enough to the ad hominem to point out that his life—the life of the mind, the life of the book collector and music lover and indeed of the gallery-goer, appreciator of the feminine and occasional boulevardier—would become simply unlivable and unthinkable in an Islamic republic. Again, he could accede politely to my point but carry on somehow as if nothing had been conceded. I came slowly to realize that with Edward, too, I was keeping two sets of books. We agreed on things like the first Palestinian intifadah, another event that took the Western press completely off guard, and we collaborated on a book of essays that asserted and defended Palestinian rights. This was in the now hard-to-remember time when all official recognition was withheld from the PLO. Together we debated Professor Bernard Lewis and Leon Wieseltier at a once-celebrated conference of the Middle East Studies Association in Cambridge in 1986, tossing and goring them somewhat in a duel over academic 'objectivity' in the wider discipline. But even then I was indistinctly aware that Edward didn't feel himself quite at liberty to say certain things, while at the same time feeling rather too much obliged to say certain other things. A low point was an almost uncritical profile of Yasser Arafat that he contributed to Interview magazine in the late 1980s.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
Interest did not naturally belong to such anecdotes. For the most part, only Chloe and I appreciated them, because of the subsidiary associations we attached to them. Yet these leitmotifs were important because they gave us the feeling that we were far from strangers to one another, that we had lived through things together, and remembered the joint meanings we had derived from them. However slight these leitmotifs were, they acted like cement. The language of intimacy they helped to create was a reminder that (without clearing our way through jungles, slaying dragons, or even sharing apartments) Chloe and I had created something of a world together.
Alain de Botton (On Love)
The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature. Though it may be allied to some of the elements in the appreciation of verse, it does not need any poets, other than the nameless artists who composed the language. It can be strongly felt in the simple contemplation of a vocabulary, or even in a string of names.
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays)
What is this thing called joy, and how is it possible that it can evoke such a wide range of feelings? How can the experience of joy span from those tears of joy at a birth to an irrepressible belly laugh at a joke to a serenely contented smile during meditation? Joy seems to blanket this entire emotional expanse. Paul Ekman, famed emotions researcher and longtime friend of the Dalai Lama, has written that joy is associated with feelings as varied as: pleasure (of the five senses) amusement (from a chuckle to a belly laugh) contentment (a calmer kind of satisfaction) excitement (in response to novelty or challenge) relief (following upon another emotion, such as fear, anxiety, and even pleasure) wonder (before something astonishing and admirable) ecstasy or bliss (transporting us outside ourselves) exultation (at having accomplished a difficult or daring task) radiant pride (when our children earn a special honor) unhealthy jubilation or schadenfreude (relishing in someone else’s suffering) elevation (from having witnessed an act of kindness, generosity, or compassion) gratitude (the appreciation of a selfless act of which one is the beneficiary)
Dalai Lama XIV (The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World)
we should never forget that all our associates are human beings and hunger for appreciation. It is the legal tender that all souls enjoy.
Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends and Influence People)
Epicurus founded a school of philosophy which placed great emphasis on the importance of pleasure. "Pleasure is the beginning and the goal of a happy life," he asserted, confirming what many had long thought, but philosophers had rarely accepted. Vulgar opinion at once imagined that the pleasure Epicurus had in mind involved a lot of money, sex, drink and debauchery (associations that survive in our use of the word 'Epicurean'). But true Epicureanism was more subtle. Epicurus led a very simple life, because after rational analysis, he had come to some striking conclusions about what actually made life pleasurable - and fortunately for those lacking a large income, it seemed that the essential ingredients of pleasure, however elusive, were not very expensive. The first ingredient was friendship. 'Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship,' he wrote. So he bought a house near Athens where he lived in the company of congenial souls. The desire for riches should perhaps not always be understood as a simple hunger for a luxurious life, a more important motive might be the wish to be appreciated and treated nicely. We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us. Epicurus, discerning our underlying need, recognised that a handful of true friends could deliver the love and respect that even a fortune may not. Epicurus and his friends located a second secret of happiness: freedom. In order not to have to work for people they didn't like and answer to potentially humiliating whims, they removed themselves from employment in the commercial world of Athens ('We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday affairs and politics'), and began what could best have been described as a commune, accepting a simpler way of life in exchange for independence. They would have less money, but would never again have to follow the commands of odious superiors. The third ingredient of happiness was, in Epicurus's view, to lead an examined life. Epicurus was concerned that he and his friends learn to analyse their anxieties about money, illness, death and the supernatural. There are few better remedies for anxiety than thought. In writing a problem down or airing it in conversation we let its essential aspects emerge. And by knowing its character, we remove, if not the problem itself, then its secondary, aggravating characteristics: confusion, displacement, surprise. Wealth is of course unlikely ever to make anyone miserable. But the crux of Epicurus's argument is that if we have money without friends, freedom and an analysed life, we will never be truly happy. And if we have them, but are missing the fortune, we will never be unhappy.
Alain de Botton
In our interpersonal relations we should never forget that all our associates are human beings and hunger for appreciation. It is the legal tender that all souls enjoy. Try leaving a friendly trail of little sparks of gratitude on your daily trips. You
Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People)
The associations get only richer and more intense when you realise that the very concept of truth - the cornerstone of philosophy and religion alike, let alone law - also rests heavily on the meaning of waking up. And you don't need a philosopher to appreciate it, because there are clues to its dependency in everyday phrases such as 'waking up to the truth', 'my eyes were opened' and even 'wake up and smell the coffee'. If such phrases hint that waking up and truth are bedfellows of some sort, you need only go back to the ancient Greek for corroboration. There you'll find that the word truth is 'aletheia', from which in English we get the word for 'lethargy'. But see how the Greek word is 'a-letheia' rather than letheia - that is truth is the opposite of lethargy. And what is opposite of lethargy, if not waking up?
Robert Rowland Smith (Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day)
is the head of a popular non-profit organization that helps children of currently incarcerated parents gain an appreciation for the justice system. Our sources tell us that this charity, Legal Buddies, was in some way associated with the charges brought forth this morning. Judge
Danielle Stewart (Chasing Justice (Piper Anderson, #1))
Fellow-feeling. . .is the most important factor in producing a healthy political and social life. Neither our national nor our local civic life can be what it should be unless it is marked by the fellow-feeling, the mutual kindness, the mutual respect, the sense of common duties and common interests, which arise when men take the trouble to understand one another, and to associate together for a common object. A very large share of the rancor of political and social strife arises either from sheer misunderstanding by one section, or by one class, of another, or else from the fact that the two sections, or two classes, are so cut off from each other that neither appreciates the other’s passions, prejudices, and, indeed, point of view, while they are both entirely ignorant of their community of feeling as regards the essentials of manhood and humanity.
Theodore Roosevelt
At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of us, one of the original instincts of our nature. As children, we none of us possess it. No uninstructed man or woman possesses it. Those whose lives are most exclusively passed amid the ever-changing wonders of sea and land are also those who are most universally insensible to every aspect of Nature not directly associated with the human interest of their calling. Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilised accomplishments which we all learn as an Art; and, more, that very capacity is rarely practised by any of us except when our minds are most indolent and most unoccupied. How much share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand little narratives of personal experience which pass every day by word of mouth from one of us to the other? All that our minds can compass, all that our hearts can learn, can be accomplished with equal certainty, equal profit, and equal satisfaction to ourselves, in the poorest as in the richest prospect that the face of the earth can show. There is surely a reason for this want of inborn sympathy between the creature and the creation around it, a reason which may perhaps be found in the widely-differing destinies of man and his earthly sphere. The grandest mountain prospect that the eye can range over is appointed to annihilation. The smallest human interest that the pure heart can feel is appointed to immortality.
Wilkie Collins
May I remind you that I’m paying you, very well”—she raised a brow, appreciating the ease of banter they’d shared since the outset of their association—“to carry my equipment and assist me in my work, not to offer opinions on my decisions.” “Ain’t no extra charge for them, ma’am. They’s free.” She shook her head at his broad smile.
Tamera Alexander (From a Distance (Timber Ridge Reflections, #1))
No," I said, "but I really appreciate your refusal to give in to breakfasty social conventions." He tilted his head at me, confused. "Hazel has developed an issue with the ghettoization of scrambled eggs," Mom said. "It's embarrassing that we all just walk through life blindly accepting that scrambled eggs are fundamentally associated with mornings.
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
An artistic life is closely associated with a spiritual life as both represent an attempt to withdraw into enforced solitude in order to experience a person’s innermost self and to imbue the personal spirit with will and energy, virtue and purity. Both an artist and a spiritual seeker must possess an appreciation for beauty, the courage to confront personal demons, intellectual integrity to express truth, the self-discipline to labor endlessly, and the capacity to endure hardships that might break or destroy other people. Through protracted self-examination of and extensive contemplation of the gifts of nature an artistic and spiritual person overcomes their sense of desperation and feelings of isolation and aloneness, realizes oneness with the universe, becomes enlightened and free, lives humbly in a state of grace, and faces the future with curiosity and optimism.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
This, then, is a story of Lincoln’s political genius revealed through his extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes. He possessed an acute understanding of the sources of power inherent in the presidency, an unparalleled ability to keep his governing coalition intact, a tough-minded appreciation of the need to protect his presidential prerogatives, and a masterful sense of timing. His success in dealing with the strong egos of the men in his cabinet suggests that in the hands of a truly great politician the qualities we generally associate with decency and morality—kindness, sensitivity, compassion, honesty, and empathy—can also
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
The dissolving, uniting forces combine what to us have been incompatible: attraction with repulsion, darkness with light, the erotic with the destructive.  If we can allow these opposites to meet they move our inner resonance to a higher vibratory plane, expanding consciousness into new realms.  It was exciting, through my explorations some of which I share in later chapters, to learn firsthand that the sacred marriage or coniunctio, the impulse to unite seeming opposites, does indeed seem to lie at the heart of the subtle body’s imaginal world. One important characteristic of the coniunctio is its paradoxical dual action.  The creative process of each sacred marriage, or conjoining of opposites, involves not only the unitive moment of joining together in a new creation or ‘third,’ but also, as I have mentioned, a separating or darkening moment.5 The idea that “darkness comes before dawn” captures this essential aspect of creativity.  To state an obvious truth we as a culture are just beginning to appreciate.  In alchemical language, when darkness falls, it is said to be the beginning of the inner work or the opus of transformation. The old king (ego) must die before the new reign dawns. The early alchemists called the dark, destructive side of these psychic unions the blackness or the nigredo.  Chaos, uncertainty, disillusionment, depression, despair, or madness prevails during these liminal times of  “making death.” The experiences surrounding these inner experiences of darkness and dying (the most difficult aspects were called mortificatio) may constitute our culture’s ruling taboo. This taboo interferes with our moving naturally to Stage Two in the individuating process, a process that requires that we pass through a descent into the underworld of the Dark Feminine realities of birthing an erotic intensity that leads to dying. Entranced by our happily-ever-after prejudiced culture, we often do not see that in any relationship, project or creative endeavor or idea some form of death follows naturally after periods of intense involvement.  When dark experiences befall, we tend to turn away, to move as quickly as possible to something positive or at least distracting, away from the negative affects of grieving, rage, terror, rotting and loss we associate with darkness and dying. As
Sandra Dennis (Embrace of the Daimon: Healing through the Subtle Energy Body: Jungian Psychology & the Dark Feminine)
The Moonstone is the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels. But it is something more important than that; it is the best of all the novels written by that man who among the novelists of the nineteenth century was in every way the most closely associated with Charles Dickens. You cannot appreciate Collins without taking Dickens into account; and the work of Dickens after 1850 would not be what it is but for the reciprocal influence of Collins.
T.S. Eliot
This, then, is a story of Lincoln’s political genius revealed through his extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes. He possessed an acute understanding of the sources of power inherent in the presidency, an unparalleled ability to keep his governing coalition intact, a tough-minded appreciation of the need to protect his presidential prerogatives, and a masterful sense of timing. His success in dealing with the strong egos of the men in his cabinet suggests that in the hands of a truly great politician the qualities we generally associate with decency and morality—kindness, sensitivity, compassion, honesty, and empathy—can also be impressive political resources.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
The king sighed. What I didn’t know then was that the princess rarely took an interest in, or asked for, anything. When she did, her requests carried more power. It’s a good approach to life, generally gets one what one wants. (So long as one doesn’t want too often.) I would come to appreciate this character trait over the course of my association with Princess Goob, for all too often we fairies are on the receiving end of demanding humans. Take Cinderella for example – with her gown, and her coach, and her glass slippers, and on and on. I mean, really! But I digress.
Gail Carriger (Fairy Debt: A Middle Grade Fantasy Comedy Short Story)
One of the hardest things to grasp about implicit bias and racism is that your beliefs and values do not always drive your behavior. These beliefs and values are stored in the highest, most complex part of your brain—the cortex. But other parts of your brain can make associations—distorted, inaccurate, racist associations. The same person can have very sincere anti-racist beliefs but still have implicit biases that result in racist comments or actions. Understanding sequential processing in the brain is essential to grasping this, as is appreciating the power of developmental experiences to load the lower parts of our brain with all kinds of associations that create our worldview.
Bruce D. Perry (What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing)
Joy cannot be confused with the mere absence sorrow, misinterpreted as experiencing minimal despair, or misunderstood as living without crippling trepidation. Bliss necessarily encompasses uncompromising acceptance of life’s defining permutations. Emotional harmony necessitates beholding the pleasant and unpleasant exigencies of life while expressing unstinting appreciation for the ordinary and the extraordinary events in our lives. Joyfulness transcends the variations in physical and emotional demands exerted upon us. Elation for life allows us to rise above environmental determinates and associated stresses that might otherwise vex our souls including death and other sorrowful events.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
Which philosophers would Alain suggest for practical living? Alain’s list overlaps nearly 100% with my own: Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Michel de Montaigne, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. * Most-gifted or recommended books? The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Essays of Michel de Montaigne. * Favorite documentary The Up series: This ongoing series is filmed in the UK, and revisits the same group of people every 7 years. It started with their 7th birthdays (Seven Up!) and continues up to present day, when they are in their 50s. Subjects were picked from a wide variety of social backgrounds. Alain calls these very undramatic and quietly powerful films “probably the best documentary that exists.” TF: This is also the favorite of Stephen Dubner on page 574. Stephen says, “If you are at all interested in any kind of science or sociology, or human decision-making, or nurture versus nature, it is the best thing ever.” * Advice to your 30-year-old self? “I would have said, ‘Appreciate what’s good about this moment. Don’t always think that you’re on a permanent journey. Stop and enjoy the view.’ . . . I always had this assumption that if you appreciate the moment, you’re weakening your resolve to improve your circumstances. That’s not true, but I think when you’re young, it’s sort of associated with that. . . . I had people around me who’d say things like, ‘Oh, a flower, nice.’ A little part of me was thinking, ‘You absolute loser. You’ve taken time to appreciate a flower? Do you not have bigger plans? I mean, this the limit of your ambition?’ and when life’s knocked you around a bit and when you’ve seen a few things, and time has happened and you’ve got some years under your belt, you start to think more highly of modest things like flowers and a pretty sky, or just a morning where nothing’s wrong and everyone’s been pretty nice to everyone else. . . . Fortune can do anything with us. We are very fragile creatures. You only need to tap us or hit us in slightly the wrong place. . . . You only have to push us a little bit, and we crack very easily, whether that’s the pressure of disgrace or physical illness, financial pressure, etc. It doesn’t take very much. So, we do have to appreciate every day that goes by without a major disaster.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
Going to school takes a lot of work. I know you stay up late studying, but if you can’t make it to work on time let me know now. Maybe I can schedule you for closing shifts.” Just as Kyle had done, Pete stared at Derrick like he was speaking a foreign language. “I appreciate you wanting to work with me,” the young associate said. “But it would cut into my time with Wendy.” Derrick had no idea who Pete was talking about. “Who’s Wendy?” “She’s my girlfriend. She doesn’t believe I take our relationship seriously, so I’ve been crashing at her place this past month, to be with her.” Derrick was more than perplexed. “You mean you’ve been tardy these past weeks because you’re staying up late with your girlfriend?” Pete nodded casually. “What can I say? She’s hot!” Derrick suppressed a groan.
David Lucero (Who's Minding the Store)
I appreciate how impossible it is to convey an adequate realization of the office of President. A few short paragraphs in the Constitution of the United States describe all his fundamental duties. Various laws passed over a period of nearly a century and a half have supplemented his authority. All of his actions can be analyzed. All of his goings and comings can be recited. The details of his daily life can be made known. The effect of his policies on his own country and on the world at large can be estimated. His methods of work, his associates, his place of abode, can all be described. But the relationship created by all these and more, which constitutes the magnitude of the office, does not yield to definition. Like the glory of a morning sunrise, it can only be experienced it cannot be told.
Calvin Coolidge (Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge)
Over a span of twenty years, Shakespeare churned out an impressively whopping thirty-eight plays, 154 love sonnets, and two epic narrative poems. While most people associate him with his plays, it was his sonnets that likely earned him admiration among his contemporaries. Yes, that’s right: In his lifetime, Shakespeare garnered more acclaim for his sonnets than he did for his plays. In England during the 1590s, writing plays was considered a bit hackish—a way to pay the bills—and not an intellectual pursuit. Writing sonnets was all the rage— and a way to gain literary prestige. These poems weren’t published for the plebeian public, but were written down and shared among the literati—and aristocrats looking for some intellectual cachet by becoming patrons to brilliant but perhaps financially strapped writers. So, while Shakespeare likely wrote nearly all of his love sonnets in the early to mid 1590s, they weren’t officially collected and published until 1609, well after the fad had passed. W. H. Auden said of Shakespeare’s sonnets: “They are the work of someone whose ear is unerring.” In today’s less poetry-friendly world, appreciation of these sonnets tends, sadly, to be relegated to classrooms, Valentine’s Day, and anniversaries. Which is too bad, because—though they do indeed rhyme—they are far superior to the ditties found in ninety-nine-cent greeting cards. In fact, they cover the whole gamut of love—the good, the bad, the erotic, and the ugly, including love triangles, being dumped, and jealousy. There is also speculation as to how autobiographical the sonnets are. The truth is that we know so little about Shakespeare’s private life.
William Shakespeare (Love Sonnets of Shakespeare (RP Minis))
People have several times confronted Mayer with the following question: 'When a large number of Jews were being controlled by possibly only two or three guards, why didn't they take the opportunity of taking these Germans with them?' Mayer has thought many times about this question and an associated one that derides the Jews for not fighting back and merely weakly accepting their fate. Should a Jew have killed two Germans, a minimum of two hundred of their fellow Jews would be exterminated by shooting or hanging. In either case, their workmates would be made to parade in front of the dead in order to break their spirit still further. How could a man live with himself when he considered that some of those two hundred might have survived the atrocities of the camp had it not been for his hatred boiling over and leading to more wastage of human life? The other factor, that people who were not present at the carnage cannot appreciate, is just how weak the slaves became due to vastly depleted sources of strength and spirit.
Colin Rushton (The Saboteur of Auschwitz: The Inspiring True Story of a British Soldier Held Prisoner in Auschwitz)
He seemed a little surprised that writers in America do not get together, do not associate with one another very much. In the Soviet Union writers are very important people. Stalin has said that writers are the architects of the human soul. We explained to him that writers in America have quite a different standing, that they are considered just below acrobats and just above seals. And in our opinion this is a very good thing. We believe that a writer, particularly a young writer, too much appreciated, is as likely to turn as heady as a motion-picture actress with good notices in the trade journals. And we believe that the rough-and-tumble critical life an American writer is subject to is very healthy for him in the long run. It seems to us that one of the deepest divisions between the Russians and the Americans or British, is in their feeling toward their governments. The Russians are taught, and trained, and encouraged to believe that their government is good, that every part of it is good, and that their job is to carry it forward, to back it up in all ways. On the other hand, the deep emotional feeling among Americans and British is that all government is somehow dangerous, that there should be as little government as possible, that any increase in the power of government is bad, and that existing government must be watched constantly, watched and criticized to keep it sharp and on its toes. And later, on the farms, when we sat at table with farming men, and they asked how our government operated, we would try to explain that such was our fear of power invested in one man, or in one group of men, that our government was made up of a series of checks and balances, designed to keep power from falling into any one person’s hands. We tried to explain that the people who made our government, and those who continue it, are so in fear of power that they would willingly cut off a good leader rather than permit a precedent of leadership. I do not think we were thoroughly understood in this, since the training of the people of the Soviet Union is that the leader is good and the leadership is good. There is no successful argument here, it is just the failure of two systems to communicate one with the other.
John Steinbeck (A Russian Journal)
When we have to pay a lot for something nice, we appreciate it to the full. Yet as its price in the market falls, passion has a habit of fading away. Why, then, do we associate a cheap price with lack of value? Our response is a hangover from our long preindustrial past. For most of human history, there truly was a strong correlation between cost and value: The higher the price, the better things tended to be, because there was simply no way both for prices to be low and for quality to be high. It is not that we refuse to buy inexpensive or cheap things. It's just that getting excited over cheap things has come to seem a little bizarre. How do we reverse this? The answer lies in a slightly unexpected area: the mind of a four-year-old. Children have two advantages: They don't know what they're supposed to like and they don't understand money, so price is never a guide to value for them. We buy them a costly wooden toy made by Swedish artisans who hope to teach lessons in symmetry and find that they prefer the cardboard box that it came in. If asked to put a price on things, children tend to answer by the utility and charm of an object, not its manufacturing costs. We have been looking at prices the wrong way. We have fetishised them as tokens of intrinsic value; we have allowed them to set how much excitement we are allowed to have in given areas, how much joy is to be mined in particular places. But prices were never meant to be like this: We are breathing too much life into them and thereby dulling too many of our responses to the inexpensive world. At a certain age, something very debilitating happens to children. They start to learn about "expensive" and "cheap" and absorb the view that the more expensive something is, the better it may be. They are encouraged to think well of saving up pocket money and to see the "big" toy they are given as much better than the "cheaper" one. We can't directly go backwards; we can't forget what we know of prices. However, we can pay less attention to what things cost and more to our own responses. We need to rethink our relationship to prices. The price of something is principally determined by what it cost to make, not how much human value is potentially to be derived from it.
Alain de Botton (The School of Life: An Emotional Education)
TAT: I find I'm still left wanting to know how to tell if my patient has false memory syndrome. What's the test? How do I determine if my patient is suffering from this syndrome? Freyd: What are the tests if some body is suffering from " repressed memory syndrome?" TAT: Well, I can give you several symptom clusters - dissociative, cognitive, affective, somatic effects they're well documented. But, I'm asking you the question. You're telling me, David, as a clinician: you must be aware of the possibility your patients may have false memory syndrome. Okay, how should I be aware of that? How am I going to know? How do I test for it? Freyd: David, I'm going to ask Dr. Paul McHugh to talk to you because he is a clinician and I have stated from the beginning that I am not. TAT: I appreciate that, Pamela. But here's my issue with you not knowing. If I was talking to the Executive Director of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, who presumably is also not a clinician, I'll bet he or she could give me the signs and symptoms of muscular dystrophy. But in the case of false memory syndrome, so far no one seems to be able to say. Treating Abuse Today, 3(4), pp. 26-33
David L. Calof
Where shall I put…?” A little maid stopped in the doorway, all but hidden behind a large bouquet of bright red carnations. Alas for my heart. Hazlit knew the sentiment associated with red carnations and had had them delivered anyway. He certainly wasn’t going to send the woman roses, for God’s sake. Carnations were durable, and they had a fresh, spicy scent that put Hazlit in mind of his hostess. She didn’t strike him as the type of lady to waste time decoding bouquets in any case. “On the sideboard, Millie.” Miss Windham’s lips turned up in a smile more sweet than any Hazlit had seen on her. “My youngest brother is temporarily returned to Town,” she said, taking the card from the bouquet. “Of all my siblings, Valentine is the one most likely to make the gallant gesture…” She fell silent while she read the card, her smile shifting to something heart-wrenchingly tentative. “This wasn’t necessary, Mr. Hazlit.” Regards, Hazlit. Not exactly poetry, but proof he’d upstaged at least her doting brother. “Perhaps not necessary, but a man can hope his small tokens are appreciated.” He glanced pointedly at the maid while he delivered that flummery, because the girl was lingering over the flowers unnecessarily. “That
Grace Burrowes (Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal (The Duke's Daughters, #2; Windham, #5))
{The final resolutions at Robert Ingersoll's funeral, quoted here} Whereas, in the order of nature -- that nature which moves with unerring certainty in obedience to fixed laws -- Robert G. Ingersoll has gone to that repose which we call death. We, his old friends and fellow-citizens, who have shared his friendship in the past, hereby manifest the respect due his memory. At a time when everything impelled him to conceal his opinions or to withhold their expression, when the highest honors of the state were his if he would but avoid discussion of the questions that relate to futurity, he avowed his belief; he did not bow his knee to superstition nor countenance a creed which his intellect dissented. Casting aside all the things for which men most sigh -- political honor, the power to direct the futures of the state, riches and emoluments, the association of the worldly and the well- to-do -- he stood forth and expressed his honest doubts, and he welcomed the ostracism that came with it, as a crown of glory, no less than did the martyrs of old. Even this self-sacrifice has been accounted shame to him, saying that he was urged thereto by a desire for financial gain, when at the time he made his stand there was before him only the prospect of loss and the scorn of the public. We, therefore, who know what a struggle it was to cut loose from his old associations, and what it meant to him at that time, rejoice in his triumph and in the plaudits that came to him from thus boldly avowing his opinions, and we desire to record the fact that we feel that he was greater than a saint, greater than a mere hero -- he was a thoroughly honest man. He was a believer, not in the narrow creed of a past barbarous age, but a true believer in all that men ought to hold sacred, the sanctity of the home, the purity of friendship, and the honesty of the individual. He was not afraid to advocate the fact that eternal truth was eternal justice; he was not afraid of the truth, nor to avow that he owed allegiance to it first of all, and he was willing to suffer shame and condemnation for its sake. The laws of the universe were his bible; to do good, his religion, and he was true to his creed. We therefore commend his life, for he was the apostle of the fireside, the evangel of justice and love and charity and happiness. We who knew him when he first began his struggle, his old neighbors and friends, rejoice at the testimony he has left us, and we commend his life and efforts as worthy of emulation.
Herman E. Kittredge (Ingersoll: A Biographical Appreciation (1911))
According to this view the present state of our warring capacities would not be a state of culture, but only a stage on the way. Opinions will, of course, be divided about this, for by culture one man will understand a state of collective culture, while another will regard this state merely as civilization8 and will expect of culture the sterner demands of individual development. Schiller is, however, mistaken when he allies himself exclusively with the second standpoint and contrasts our collective culture unfavourably with that of the individual Greek, since he overlooks the defectiveness of the civilization of that time, which makes the unlimited validity of that culture very questionable. Hence no culture is ever really complete, for it always swings towards one side or the other. Sometimes the cultural ideal is extraverted, and the chief value then lies with the object and man’s relation to it: sometimes it is introverted, and the chief value lies with subject and his relation to the idea. In the former case, culture takes on a collective character, in the latter an individual one. It is therefore easy to understand how under the influence of Christianity, whose principle is Christian love (and by counter-association, also its counterpart, the violation of individuality), a collective culture came about in which the individual is liable to be swallowed up because individual values are depreciated on principle. Hence there arose in the age of the German classicists that extraordinary yearning for the ancient world which for them was a symbol of individual culture, and on that account was for the most part very much overvalued and often grossly idealized. Not a few attempts were even made to imitate or recapture the spirit of Greece, attempts which nowadays appear to us somewhat silly, but must none the less be appreciated as forerunners of an individual culture.
C.G. Jung (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung Book 38))
To appreciate the asymmetry between the possibility effect and the certainty effect, imagine first that you have a 1% chance to win $1 million. You will know the outcome tomorrow. Now, imagine that you are almost certain to win $1 million, but there is a 1% chance that you will not. Again, you will learn the outcome tomorrow. The anxiety of the second situation appears to be more salient than the hope in the first. The certainty effect is also more striking than the possibility effect if the outcome is a surgical disaster rather than a financial gain. Compare the intensity with which you focus on the faint sliver of hope in an operation that is almost certain to be fatal, compared to the fear of a 1% risk. The combination of the certainty effect and possibility effects at the two ends of the probability scale is inevitably accompanied by inadequate sensitivity to intermediate probabilities. You can see that the range of probabilities between 5% and 95% is associated with a much smaller range of decision weights (from 13.2 to 79.3), about two-thirds as much as rationally expected. Neuroscientists have confirmed these observations, finding regions of the brain that respond to changes in the probability of winning a prize. The brain’s response to variations of probabilities is strikingly similar to the decision weights estimated from choices. Probabilities that are extremely low or high (below 1% or above 99%) are a special case. It is difficult to assign a unique decision weight to very rare events, because they are sometimes ignored altogether, effectively assigned a decision weight of zero. On the other hand, when you do not ignore the very rare events, you will certainly overweight them. Most of us spend very little time worrying about nuclear meltdowns or fantasizing about large inheritances from unknown relatives. However, when an unlikely event becomes the focus of attention, we will assign it much more weight than its probability deserves. Furthermore, people are almost completely insensitive to variations of risk among small probabilities. A cancer risk of 0.001% is not easily distinguished from a risk of 0.00001%, although the former would translate to 3,000 cancers for the population of the United States, and the latter to 30.
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
C. M. Knaphle, Jr., of Philadelphia had tried for years to sell fuel to a large chain-store organization. But the chain-store company continued to purchase its fuel from an out-of-town dealer and haul it right past the door of Knaphle’s office. Mr. Knaphle made a speech one night before one of my classes, pouring out his hot wrath upon chain stores, branding them as a curse to the nation. And still he wondered why he couldn’t sell them. I suggested that he try different tactics. To put it briefly, this is what happened. We staged a debate between members of the course on whether the spread of the chain store is doing the country more harm than good. Knaphle, at my suggestion, took the negative side; he agreed to defend the chain stores, and then went straight to an executive of the chain-store organization that he despised and said: “I am not here to try to sell fuel. I have come to ask you to do me a favor.” He then told about his debate and said, “I have come to you for help because I can’t think of anyone else who would be more capable of giving me the facts I want. I’m anxious to win this debate, and I’ll deeply appreciate whatever help you can give me.” Here is the rest of the story in Mr. Knaphle’s own words: I had asked this man for precisely one minute of his time. It was with that understanding that he consented to see me. After I had stated my case, he motioned me to a chair and talked to me for exactly one hour and forty-seven minutes. He called in another executive who had written a book on chain stores. He wrote to the National Chain Store Association and secured for me a copy of a debate on the subject. He feels that the chain store is rendering a real service to humanity. He is proud of what he is doing for hundreds of communities. His eyes fairly glowed as he talked, and I must confess that he opened my eyes to things I had never even dreamed of. He changed my whole mental attitude. As I was leaving, he walked with me to the door, put his arm around my shoulder, wished me well in my debate, and asked me to stop in and see him again and let him know how I made out. The last words he said to me were: “Please see me again later in the spring. I should like to place an order with you for fuel.” To me that was almost a miracle. Here he was offering to buy fuel without my even suggesting it. I had made more headway in two hours by becoming genuinely interested in him and his problems than I could have made in ten years trying to get him interested in me and my product.
Dale Carnegie (How to win friends and Influence People)
The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. The people are made to transfer their allegiance from the old gods to the new under the pretense that the new gods really are what their sound instinct had always told them but what before they had only dimly seen. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed. The worst sufferer in this respect is, of course, the word “liberty.” It is a word used as freely in totalitarian states as elsewhere. Indeed, it could almost be said—and it should serve as a warning to us to be on our guard against all the tempters who promise us New Liberties for Old 5 —that wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people. Even among us we have “planners for freedom” who promise us a “collective freedom for the group,” the nature of which may be gathered from the fact that its advocate finds it necessary to assure us that “naturally the advent of planned freedom does not mean that all [sic] earlier forms of freedom must be abolished.” Dr. Karl Mannheim, from whose work6 these sentences are taken, at least warns us that “a conception of freedom modelled on the preceding age is an obstacle to any real understanding of the problem.” But his use of the word “freedom” is as misleading as it is in the mouth of totalitarian politicians. Like their freedom, the “collective freedom” he offers us is not the freedom of the members of society but the unlimited freedom of the planner to do with society what he pleases.7 It is the confusion of freedom with power carried to the extreme. In this particular case the perversion of the meaning of the word has, of course, been well prepared by a long line of German philosophers and, not least, by many of the theoreticians of socialism. But “freedom” or “liberty” are by no means the only words whose meaning has been changed into their opposites to make them serve as instruments of totalitarian propaganda. We have already seen how the same happens to “justice” and “law,” “right” and “equality.” The list could be extended until it includes almost all moral and political terms in general use. If one has not one’s self experienced this process, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of this change of the meaning of words, the confusion which it causes, and the barriers to any rational discussion which it creates. It has to be seen to be understood how, if one of two brothers embraces the new faith, after a short while he appears to speak a different language which makes any real communication between them impossible. And the confusion becomes worse because this change of meaning of the words describing political ideals is not a single event but a continuous process, a technique employed consciously or unconsciously to direct the people. Gradually, as this process continues, the whole language becomes despoiled, and words become empty shells deprived of any definite meaning, as capable of denoting one thing as its opposite and used solely for the emotional associations which still adhere to them.
Friedrich A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom)
During the Reformation and the Enlightenment, nature came to be understood in a mechanistic sense as bereft of any capacity for divine grace or revelation. We’ll explore this suggestion further in the next chapter. In order to appreciate the significance of this, we have to recognize that nature is a cultural construct. When we speak of nature, we are using language to describe the world around us with all its species, life-forms and landscapes. But nature is a concept whose meaning changes with different perceptions and ways of looking at the world. This means that supernatural is also a concept which has different meanings, for it refers to phenomena or experiences which do not seem to fit within our particular expectations of what nature is or should be. The term supernatural therefore depends on a certain concept of what natural is. For many people who are less determinately materialist than Dawkins, there may be an indeterminate region which is neither strictly natural nor strictly supernatural. A red rose may be natural, but when I am given one by the person I love, I experience a range of emotions, memories and associations which endow that rose with symbolic significance and make it, in some sense, supernatural. It transcends its natural biological functions to communicate something in the realms of beauty, hope and love.
Tina Beattie (The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason & the War on Religion)
Molesworth’s patron, Lord Shaftesbury. That word was politeness. Shaftesbury took a term associated with the world of jewelers and stonemasons (as in “polished” stones and marble) and elevated it to the highest of human virtues. Being polished or polite was more than just good manners, as we might say. Politeness for Shaftesbury encapsulated all the strengths of a sophisticated culture: its keen sense of understanding, its flourishing art and literature, its self-confidence, its regard for truth and the importance of intellectual criticism, and, most important, an appreciation of the humane side of our character. The motto of the Shaftesburys was “love, serve.” Kindness, compassion, self-restraint, and a sense of humor were, for Shaftesbury, the final fruits of a “polished” culture.
Arthur Herman (How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything In It)
Gifts that are most appreciated are often associated with the country, or even better, the specific location you are from. These kinds of gifts may include coffee table picture books of your city or national parks, or mugs, t-shirts, paperweights, and so on that display your company or school logo.
Matthew B. Christensen (Decoding China: A Handbook for Traveling, Studying, and Working in Today's China)
On Friday, 3 December1993, at a charity luncheon in aid of the Headway National Head Injuries Association, the Princess announced her withdrawal from public life. In a sometimes quavering, yet defiant, voice she appealed for ‘time and space’ after more than a decade in the spotlight. During her five-minute speech she made a particular point of the unrelenting media exposure: ‘When I started my public life 12 years ago, I understood that the media might be interested in what I did. I realized then that their attention would inevitably focus on both our private and public lives. But I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention would become; nor the extent to which it would affect both my public duties and my personal life, in a manner that has been hard to bear.’ As she later said: ‘The pressure was intolerable then, and my job, my work was being affected. I wanted to give 110 per cent to my work, and I could only give 50…I owed it to the public to say “Thank you, I’m disappearing for a bit, but I’ll come back.”’ Indicating that she would continue to support a small number of charities while she set about rebuilding her private life, the Princess emphasized: ‘My first priority will continue to be our children, William and Harry, who deserve as much love, care and attention as I am able to give, as well as an appreciation of the tradition into which they were born.’ While she singled out the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh for their ‘kindness and support’, Diana never once mentioned her estranged husband. In private, she was unequivocal about where the blame lay for her departure from the stage. ‘My husband’s side have made my life hell for the last year,’ she told a friend. When she reached the relative sanctuary of Kensington Palace that afternoon, Diana was relieved, saddened but quietly elated. Her retirement would give her a much-needed chance to reflect and refocus. If the separation had brought her the hope of a new life, her withdrawal from royal duties would give her the opportunity to translate that hope into a vibrant new career, one that would employ to the full her undoubted gifts of compassion and caring on a wider, international stage. A few months later, at a reception at the Serpentine Gallery, of which she was patron, the Princess was in fine form. She was relaxed, witty and happy among friends. The events of 1993 seemed a dim and dismal memory. As she chatted to the movie star Jeremy Irons he told her: ‘I’ve taken a year off acting.’ Diana smiled and replied: ‘So have I.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
Fewer and fewer families can afford a roof over their head. This is among the most urgent and pressing issues facing America today, and acknowledging the breadth and depth of the problem changes the way we look at poverty. For decades, we’ve focused mainly on jobs, public assistance, parenting, and mass incarceration. No one can deny the importance of these issues, but something fundamental is missing. We have failed to fully appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty. Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers, or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord.
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
Attitude creates actions create results create destiny. Dan Buettner, author of Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, has traveled the world studying the everyday living habits of people who are healthiest and live the longest of anyone on the planet. Of all the factors possibly influencing health, vitality, and longevity, Buettner and his team compiled a list of nine. These people (1) live an active life, (2) cultivate purpose and a reason to wake up every morning, (3) take time to de-stress (appreciation, prayer, etc.), (4) stop eating when they are 80 percent full, (5) eat a diet emphasizing vegetables, especially beans, (6) have moderate alcohol intake (especially dark red wine), (7) play an active role in a faith-based community, (8) place a strong emphasis on family, and (9) are part of like-minded social circles with similar habits. As Buettner points out, physiological factors like exercise and diet play a role—but not as big a role as you’d expect. A big part of it is factors that have to do with attitude, habits of behavior, and who they associate with. And while we’re talking about positivity, let me clear up a common misconception about positive outlook, right here and now. Cultivating positive outlook does not mean you are always happy. It does not mean life never gets you down. It does not mean you walk around with an idiotic grin on your face even when you’re hurting, and it doesn’t mean living in denial, ignoring the realities of pain and struggle, or checking your brain at the door. People who cultivate a genuinely positive outlook go through tough times, too; when we’re cut, we bleed red blood just like everyone else.
Jeff Olson (The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness)
The appreciation of birds, indeed the appreciation of all the phenomena of spring, cannot be dissociated from the accumulations of memory. The appearance of a familiar bird immediately awakens a train of forgotten associations, and this makes each spring transcend its predecessor. The interest accumulates and is compounded. The first yellow-throated warbler next year will be the more meaningful to me as it brings back that moment in the woods opposite Dyke. For one remembers clearly enough the fact of such a moment, but only an evocative sight or sound or smell can bring back the full emotion. The person who sees the bird for the first time cannot know what moves me.
Louis J. Halle
Although once upon a time meditation was considered something that only monks or hippies did, it’s starting to gain more mainstream acceptance. Many doctors, CEOs, celebrities, and politicians now appreciate the powerful impact meditation has on their mental, physical, and spiritual health. Research shows that meditation alters your brain waves, and over time, your brain physically changes. Studies have shown that regions of the brain associated with learning, memory, and emotion regulation actually begin to thicken after just a few months of meditation. Meditation
Amy Morin (13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success)
Both the head and the heart strengths are important to our being well-rounded people, though the heart strengths in general are more reliably associated with feelings of well-being and satisfaction.
Ryan M. Niemiec (The Power of Character Strengths: Appreciate and Ignite Your Positive Personality)
Faith is not discussed as an abstraction in the gospels. Jesus does not talk about it so much as respond to it in other people, for example, saying to a woman who has sought him for a healing, “thy faith hath made thee whole” (Matt. 9:22, KJV). And faith is not presented as a sure thing. Among Jesus’ disciples Peter is the one whose faith is most evident, always eager. Then, in the crisis of Jesus’ arrest and trial, Peter is the disciple who denies him three times. I do not know the man, he says, and weeps. The relentlessly cheerful and positive language about faith that I associate with the strong-arm tactics of evangelism fails to take this biblical ambiguity into account. I appreciate much more the wisdom of novelist Doris Betts’s assertion that faith is “not synonymous with certainty ... [but] is the decision to keep your eyes open.
Kathleen Norris (Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith)
Ending a conversation by showing appreciation for the interchange You emanate poise and self-confidence when you bid adieu by expressing your gratitude and praising your partner in some way. This is accomplished in much the same way as using a compliment to forward a conversation, and the same rule applies: Be genuine. Done sincerely, offering gratitude will produce a wave of goodwill and a positive association with your name.
Debra Fine (The Fine Art of Small Talk: How to Start a Conversation, Keep It Going, Build Networking Skills and Leave a Positive Impression!)
The Renaissance was not a civilization of small shopkeepers and artisans, nor of a well-to-do, half-educated middle class, but rather the jealously gaurded possession of a highbrow and Latinized elite. This consisted mainly of those classes of society which were associated with the humanistic and Neeplatonic movement - a uniform and, on the whole, like-minded intelligentsia such as, for example, the clergy, taken as a totality, had never been. The important works of art were intended for this circle. The broader masses either had no knowledge at all of them or appreciated them inadequately and from a non-artistic point of view, finding their own aesthetic pleasure in inferior products. This was the origin of that unbridgeable gulf between an educated minority and an uneducated majority which had never been known before to this extent and which was to be such a decisive factor in the whole future development of art.
Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art: Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque)
Instead of a coup d’état, MacMahon’s associates risked a general election—a daunting prospect given the amount of opposition that they now faced. With little appreciation for the nature of that opposition, they put off the elections for many months, during which they embarked on a series of actions that amounted to mass arm-twisting—prosecuting newspapers, threatening owners of republican meeting places, dismissing “unreliable” local officials, and forbidding circulation of opposition circulars and propaganda while conducting their own massive propaganda campaign. Their actions, which betrayed more than a whiff of desperation, merely united the previously fragmented opposition, of which Gambetta now took command.
Mary McAuliffe (Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends)
In general, the Fascist and Nazi regimes had no serious difficulty establishing control over public services. They largely protected civil servants’ turf from party intrusion and left their professional identity intact. Civil servants were frequently in broad sympathy with fascist regimes’ biases for authority and order against parliament and the Left, and they appreciated enhanced freedom from legal restraint. Eliminating Jews sometimes opened up career advancement. The police were the key agency, of course. The German police were very quickly removed from the normative state and brought under Nazi Party control via the SS. Himmler, supported by Hitler against rivals and the Ministry of the Interior, which traditionally controlled the police, ascended in April 1933 from political police commander of Bavaria (where he set up the first concentration camp at Dachau) to chief of the whole German police system in June 1936. This process was facilitated by the disgruntlement many German police had felt for the Weimar Republic and its “coddling of criminals,” and by the regime’s efforts to enhance police prestige in the eyes of the public. By 1937, the annual congratulatory “Police Day” had expanded from one day to seven. Initially the SA were deputized as auxiliary Exercising Power police in Prussia, but this practice was ended on August 2, 1933, and the police faced no further threat of dilution from party militants. They enjoyed a privileged role above the law as the final arbiters of their own form of unlimited “police justice.” While the German police were run more directly by Nazi Party chiefs than any other traditional state agency, the Italian police remained headed by a civil servant, and their behavior was little more unprofessional or partisan than under previous governments. This is one of the most profound differences between the Nazi and Fascist regimes. The head of the Italian police for most of the Fascist period was the professional civil servant Arturo Bocchini. There was a political police, the OVRA, but the regime executed relatively few political enemies. Another crucial instrument of rule was the judiciary. Although very few judges were Nazi Party members in 1933, the German magistracy was already overwhelmingly conservative. It had established a solid track record of harsher penalties against communists than against Nazis during the 1920s. In exchange for a relatively limited invasion of their professional sphere by the party’s Special Courts and People’s Court, the judges willingly submerged their associations in a Nazi organization and happily accepted the powerful role the new regime gave them.71 The Italian judiciary was little changed, since political interference had already been the norm under the liberal monarchy. Italian judges felt general sympathy for the Fascist regime’s commitment to public order and national grandeur.
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
of everything that escaped others, and given you great joy and appreciation of the smallest beauties in life. As your sensitivity encountered a bigger world, it also probably gave rise to new “unreasonable” fears and phobias. Fears can increase at this age for many reasons. First, there is simple conditioning: Whatever was around when you were overaroused became associated with overarousal and so became something more to be feared. Second, you may have realized just how much was going to be expected of you, how little your hesitations would be understood.
Elaine N. Aron (The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You)
Uncomplicated Systems Of giftcity - A Background The sort of present you give can have an enduring impression on the receiver. Gift will make a person feel special so it is important that when selecting a gift, you must always keep the receiver in mind. Gift has the power to keep up it for a long time and to develop relationship that is powerful. Particularly in the corporate world, a a happy customer or a partner that is satisfied can have an enormous impact on the business. Thus, when picking corporate gift, one must be attentive and be diplomatic as well. Firms organises occasions and events to market their services and products. During such occasions, corporate gifts Singapore can play an enormous part in attracting more customers and keep up the old ones. Companies can emboss the presents reach to more individuals and they give away to further their advertisement with company emblems. Inexpensive gift item like pencils mugs bags etc are perfect for such giveaways they not only promote the company but also bring more customers company may also organize Corporate Gifting such as jewellery branded goods electronics and gadgets etc for significant occasions giveaways to high achievers for the company or business associates. Some of the things proposed by Giftcitysingapore are leather goods, branded wristwatches, kitchenwares, gadgets and electronic good etc are perfect for corporate gifts. Such expensive items can be given on particular company's occasion and occasions. Depending on the occasion and recipients corporate gifts can be chosen. One should also keep in your mind not to tarnish the company's persona with affordable presents for special occasions when choosing corporate gifts. Latest gadgets and electronic devices makes wonderful gifts for family members and friends, the exact same thought can be used on corporate gift ideas. Everyone will appreciate being gifted with the most recent gadget in the industry. Present city website has also implied that electronic devices and gadgets are perfect corporate gifts. Gadgets and electronic devices even have practical use consequently most firms regularly give away such expensive gifts to valued employees and clients.
giftcitysingapore
As Jimmy Boggs used to remind us, revolutions are made out of love for people and for place. He often talked about loving America enough to change it. “I love this country,” he used to say, “not only because my ancestors’ blood is in the soil but because of what I believe it can become.” Shea Howell, Oakland University rhetoric professor and former director of Detroit Summer, has helped hundreds of students and community organizers appreciate what Jimmy meant: Love isn’t just something you feel. It’s something you do every day when you go out and pick up the papers and bottles scattered the night before on the corner, when you stop and talk to a neighbor, when you argue passionately for what you believe with whoever will listen, when you call a friend to see how they’re doing, when you write a letter to the newspaper, when you give a speech and give ’em hell, when you never stop believing that we can all be more than we are. In other words, Love isn’t about what we did yesterday; it’s about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after. Taking King seriously also requires a paradigm shift in how we address the three main questions of philosophy: What does it mean to be a human being? How do we know? How shall we live? It means rejecting scientific rationalism (based on the Cartesian body-mind dichotomy), which recognizes as real only that which can be measured and therefore excludes the knowledge that comes from the heart or from relationships between people. It means that we must be willing to see with our hearts and not only with our eyes. King was assassinated before he could begin to develop strategies and praxis to implement this revolutionary/evolutionary perspective for our young people, our cities, and our country. After his death many of his closest associates were too overwhelmed or too busy taking advantage of the new opportunities for advancement within the system to keep his vision and his practice alive. We will never know how King would have developed had he lived to see the twenty-first century. What we do know is that in the forty years since his assassination, our communities have been turned into wastelands by the Hi-Tech juggernaut and the export of, first, factory and, now, computer jobs overseas so that global corporations can make more of a profit with cheaper labor. We have witnessed and shared the suffering of countless numbers of young people in our inner cities,
Grace Lee Boggs (The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century)
When pursued it becomes clear that this separation between one's self and the Church usually stems from deep unresolved pain or dissatisfaction rooted in early religious upbringing. Sometimes it arises from a contemporary image of the Church as authoritarian, chauvinistic, hypocritical, or unforgiving in nature. Though thirsting spiritually for a relationship, some find it too threatening or the prospects too unsatisfying to have to return to a painful image or experience associated with God and the religious realm. This group ay actually scorn the Church because it is not intellectually acceptable to live with a reality that can only be accepted on faith. "To believe in something non-verifiable,' they say, 'is to be weak in one's thinking.' A point comes on the spiritual journey, however, when a healing of one's early religious experience must occur in order for wholeness to be realized. This healing requires a transformation of the person and of the traditional religious images, symbols, and words. Such transformation allows for a new way to experience these traditions and, therefore, a whole new appreciation of spirituality, It's coming full circle to wholeness.
Janet O. Hagberg (The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith)
If we are to make the ordinary man aware of the spiritual uity out of which asll the separate activities of our civilization have arisen, it is necessary in the first place to look at Western civilization as a whole and to treat it wit the same objective appreciation and respect which the humanists of the past devoted to the civilization of antiquity. This does not seem much to ask; yet there have always been a number of reasons which stood in the way of its fulfillment. In the first place, there has been the influence of modern nationalism, which has led every European people to insist on what distinguished it from the rest, instead of what united it with them. It is not necessary to seek for examples in the extremism of German racial nationalists and their crazy theories, proving that everything good in the world comes from men with Germanic blood. Leaving all these extravagances out of account, we still have the basic fact that modern education in general teaches men the history of their country and the literature of their own tongue, as though these were complete wholes and not part of a greater unity. In the second place, there has been the separation between religion and culture, which arose partly from the bitterness of the internal divisions of Christendom and partly from a fear lest the transcendent divine values of Christianity should be endangered by any identification or association of them with the relative human values of culture. Both these factors have been at work, long before our civilization was actually secularized. They had their origins in the Reformation period, and it was Martin Luther in particular who stated the theological dualism of faith and works in such a drastic form as to leave no room for any positive conception of a Christian culture, such as had hitherto been taken for granted. And in the third place, the vast expansion of Western civilization in modern times has led to a loss of any standard of comparison or any recognition of its limits in time and space. Western civilization has ceased to be one civilization amongst others: it became civilization in the absolute sense. It is the disappearance or decline of this naive absolutism and the reappearance of a sense of the relative and limited character of Western civilization as a particular historic culture, which are the characteristic features of the present epoch.
Christopher Henry Dawson (Understanding Europe (Works of Christopher Dawson))
When we think of success, we often associate those who are successful with the things they do rather than the things they don’t, and focus is found in the latter.
Mensah Oteh
While the squire pulled out a flat weed she was beside herself with pity for humanity. This short, this fearful loveliness, in which men and women, heroic and baffled, struggling to wisdom, age as they struggle; wrestle upwards and drop into the ground. This marriage, this association, with matter, what a high-handed experiment, but what admirable victims! Man, with his eye on death, draws his foot from the womb. There is not time for anything, yet there is time for everything. No sooner appreciate love than skin withers, no sooner grow wise than we are unfit for wisdom. Learning to live and defeated by death. Discovery succeeds discovery, and nothing accumulates. We live haunted. We grasp and grasp; what we hold dissolves, our very hands dissolve.
Enid Bagnold (The Squire)
Your associations play a crucial part of your success equation. Study them closely because they will help or hinder you from reaching your potential.
Mensah Oteh (Unlocking Life's Treasure Chest: Wisdom keys to keep you inspired, encouraged, motivated and focused)
Your environment and the associations you keep will affect how you think, feel, and act, and ultimately the results you get.
Mensah Oteh (The Good Life: Transform your life through one good day)
If you wish to be successful, you have be willing to invest the time, energy, and money necessary to associate with the right people.
Mensah Oteh (Unlocking Life's Treasure Chest: Wisdom keys to keep you inspired, encouraged, motivated and focused)
Develop a strong thirst for positive associations and learning from others, because the right people can take you further than you can go on your own.
Mensah Oteh (The Good Life: Transform your life through one good day)
Be cautious when associating with those who have little or no value or appreciation for time.
Mensah Oteh
Thus it would be a serious mistake to understand the images of Revelation as timeless symbols. Their character conforms to the contextuality of Revelation as a letter to the seven churches of Asia. Their resonances in the specific social, political, cultural and religious world of their first readers need to be understood if their meaning is to be appropriated today. They do not create a purely self-contained aesthetic world with no reference outside itself, but intend to relate to the world in which the readers live in order to reform and to redirect the readers’ response to that world. However, if the images are not timeless symbols, but relate to the ‘real’ world, we need also to avoid the opposite mistake of taking them too literally as descriptive of the ‘real’ world and of predicted events in the ‘real’ world. They are not just a system of codes waiting to be translated into matter-of-fact references to people and events. Once we begin to appreciate their sources and their rich symbolic associations, we realize that they cannot be read either as literal descriptions or as encoded literal descriptions, but must be read for their theological meaning and their power to evoke response.
Richard Bauckham (The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology))
9 Surefire Signs Your Colleagues Are Toxic Resigned specialist Greg Baer, M.D. once oversaw one of the busiest eye-surgery hones in the nation. However regardless of every one of his achievements and riches, he felt unfilled and miserable which prompted his close suicide. In his look for enduring satisfaction, he took in the extraordinary rule that have prompted the respectable mission of The Real Love® Company which he established: “We educate the genuine significance of adoration, supplanting annoyance and perplexity with peace and trust in singular lives and connections.” Presently a fruitful writer, speaker and business visionary for about two decades, the book that truly got my consideration is Real Love in the Workplace: Eight Principles for Consistently Effective Leadership in Business. In his second standard of “Individuals Behave Badly Because They Don’t Feel Loved,” Dr. Baer says that an absence of bona fide cherish in individuals, particularly those in administration parts, prompts an unfortunate quest for power and control over others. “When we can control the conduct of other individuals, we encounter an impression of energy that quickly gives us a snapshot of alleviation from our deplorable feeling of sadness.” He includes, “The vast majority of us mishandle control each day, yet we don’t remember it since this conduct is so regular in our way of life. Dangerous work practices to know. With a specific end goal to recognize the harsh practices of energy that upsets steadfast laborers and transforms the working environment into a smothering, fear-based weight cooker, Dr. Baer records a few dangerous practices that we may as of now know about, however don’t commonly connect with the power he discusses. It’s a great opportunity to give careful consideration – do any of these look commonplace? 1. Chatter. At the point when individuals discuss others behind their backs, says Dr. Baer, they’re in a position to hurt them and apply control over their notorieties. While you’re tattling companions or associates won’t let it be known, they appreciate that sentiment control and ought to be managed quickly. 2. Withholding data. Dr. Baer cautions of such a person who controls or accumulates data: “You’ve had the experience of requiring data from somebody who delighted in keeping it from you, or who distributed out one piece at any given moment. Your disappointment gave the other individual a sentiment control.” 3. Spilling privileged insights. Dr. Baer expresses, “Huge numbers of us want to share insider facts, in light of the fact that in those minutes we control the discussion.” As soon as you hear the words “Need to hear a mystery?” leave a colleague’s mouth, that is a reasonable cautioning sign you’re working with a dangerous individual. 4. Manhandle of expert. Focus on your administrator. Many mishandle their positional specialist to scare individuals into doing what they need, or to concur with them notwithstanding when the group knows there’s a superior game-plan. A few chiefs neglect to appoint intentionally to control every one of the choices, even the littlest ones. Dr. Baer says, “That approach is wasteful and a misuse of administration, however it gives the supervisor a sentiment (control). 5. Smothering inventiveness. At the point when chiefs pound the immense thoughts originating from their workers that will enhance an item or the business in some respect, it gives them a genuine feeling of energy, at the cost of withdrawing and demotivating their representatives. 6. Feedback. Dr. Baer states, “Discovering deficiency with others is such a simple hobby, and for those with a requirement for control, each twisted incurred is a wellspring of awesome fulfillment.
Businessplans
Associating with Benjamin was fraught with considerable difficulties, though on the surface these seemed insignificant in view of his consummate courtesy and willingness to listen. He always was surrounded by a wall of reserve, which could be recognized intuitively and was evident to another person even without Benjamin’s not infrequent efforts to make that area noticeable. These efforts consisted above all in a secretiveness bordering on eccentricity, a mystery-mongering that generally prevailed in everything relating to him personally, though it sometimes was breached unexpectedly by personal and confidential revelations. There were primarily three difficult requirements. The first was respect for his solitude; this was easy to observe, for it was dictated by a natural sense of limits. I soon realized that he appreciated this respect, a sine qua non for associating with him, and that it heightened his trust. The observance of the second requirement was particularly easy for me: his utter aversion to discussing the political events of the day and occurrences of the war. Some reviewers of the Briefe expressed astonishment at the fact that the published letters contain no reference to the events of the First World War (which, after all, so decisively influenced our generation) and blamed the editors (I was the one responsible for this period) for an incomprehensible omission or, worse, censorship. The fact of the matter is that in those years anyone who wished to have a closer association with Benjamin either had to share this attitude (as I did) or respect it. ...The third requirement, that of overlooking his secretiveness, often demanded a real effort, because there was something surprising, even ludicrous, about such secretiveness in someone as sober, as melancholy as Benjamin. He did not like to give the names of friends and acquaintances if he could avoid it. When circumstances of his life were mentioned, there frequently was attached an urgent request for absolute secrecy; more often than not this made very little sense. Gradually, but even then only partially, this secretiveness (which by that time others had noticed as well) began to dissipate, and Benjamin began to speak of people without the accompanying stamp of anonymity, at least when he had initiated the discussion. It was in keeping with this aversion that he tried to keep his acquaintances separate; for a time this was more effective with me, who came from another environment—Zionist youth—than it was with those from the same sphere as he, namely members of the German-Jewish intelligentsia. Only occasionally did it turn out that we had mutual acquaintances, such as the poet Ludwig Strauss or the philosopher David Baumgardt. Other friends and acquaintances of his I did not meet until years later, from 1918 on, some of them only after 1945. In short, then, to associate with Benjamin took a great deal of patience and consideration—qualities that were by no means natural to my temperament and that, to my own surprise, I was able to muster only in my association with him.
Gershom Scholem
The founding fathers of the European Union did not hesitate to speak about their aim, i.e. a European Federation. In 1950, in the establishment of the “Steel and Coal Community”, they suggested that economic interdependence associated with the establishment of a High Authority would lead to a European Federation. Robert Schuman (1886-1963), a Frenchman born in Luxemburg, deeply influenced by his background in the French-German border and a first-hand witness of the calamities of ethnic divisions effected by World War II, through his internationally renowned Schuman Plan (May 09, 1950) deservedly considered amongst the founding fathers of the EU, seemed to be precisely aware of where this endeavour would eventually lead to: “The pooling of coal and steel production will immediately assure the establishment of common bases for economic development as a first step for the European Federation… By pooling basic industrial production and setting-up a new High Authority whose decisions will be binding on France, Germany and other member countries, these proposals will bring to reality the first solid groundwork for a European Federation vital to the preservation of world peace” [Schuman, R. 1950, 1]. In the establishment of the ‘Coal and Steel Community’, Schuman appreciated that the High Authority would function “as a first (mean) for the European Federation” [1950, 1].
Endri Shqerra (European Identity: The Death of National Era?)
Strategic moves, therefore, contain two elements: the planned course of action and the associated actions that make this course credible. We will try to give you a better appreciation of both aspects by making two passes through the ideas.
Avinash K. Dixit (The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life)
And we're cheerful, too. You can count on that.' Obligingly she smiled in a neighbourly way at him. 'It will be a relief to leave Earth with its repressive legislation. We were listening OH the FM to the news about the McPhearson Act.' 'We consider it dreadful,' the adult male said. 'I have to agree with you,' Chic said. 'But what can one do?' He looked around for the mail; as always it was lost somewhere in the mass of clutter. 'One can emigrate,' the adult male simulacrum pointed out. 'Um,' Chic said absently. He had found an unexpected heap of recent-looking bills from parts suppliers; with a feeling of gloom and even terror he began to bills from parts suppliers; with a feeling of gloom and even terror he began to sort through them. Had Maury seen these? Probably. Seen them and then pushed them away immediately, out of sight. Frauenzimmer Associates functioned better if it was not reminded of such facts of life. Like a regressed neurotic, it had to hide several aspects of reality from its percept system in order to function at all. This was hardly ideal, but what really was the alternative? To be realistic would be to give up, to die. Illusion, of an infantile nature was essential for the tiny firm's survival, or at least so it seemed to him and Maury. In any case both of them had adopted this attitude. Their simulacra -- the adult ones -- disapproved of this; their cold, logical appraisal of reality stood in sharp contrast, and Chic always felt a little naked, a little embarrassed, before the simulacra; he knew he should set a better example for them. 'If you bought a jalopy and emigrated to Mars,' the adult male said, 'We could be the famnexdo for you.' 'I wouldn't need any family next-door,' Chic said, 'if I emigrated to Mars. I'd go to get away from people. 'We'd make a very good family next-door to you,' the female said. 'Look,' Chic said, 'you don't have to lecture me about your virtues. I know more than you do yourselves.' And for good reason. Their presumption, their earnest sincerity, amused but also irked him. As next-door neighbours this group of sims would be something of a nuisance, he reflected. Still, that was what emigrants wanted, in fact needed, out in the sparsely-populated colonial regions. He could appreciate that; after all, it was Frauenzimmer Associates' business to understand. A man, when he emigrated, could buy neighbours, buy the simulated presence of life, the sound and motion of human activity -- or at least its ​mechanical nearsubstitute to bolster his morale in the new environment of unfamiliar stimuli and perhaps, god forbid, no stimuli at all. And in addition to this primary psychological gain there was a practical secondary advantage as well. The famnexdo group of simulacra developed the parcel of land, tilled it and planted it, irrigated it, made it fertile, highly productive. And the yield went to the it, irrigated it, made it fertile, highly productive. And the yield went to the human settler because the famnexdo group, legally speaking, occupied the peripheral portions of his land. The famnexdo were actually not next-door at all; they were part of their owner's entourage. Communication with them was in essence a circular dialogue with oneself; the famnexdo, it they were functioning properly, picked up the covert hopes and dreams of the settler and detailed them back in an articulated fashion. Therapeutically, this was helpful, although from a cultural standpoint it was a trifle sterile.
Philip K. Dick (The Simulacra)
Pour faire le menage, il faut aimer ce qui est beau. L'intelligence est de tirer de chaque situation le meilleur de ce qu'elle peut vous offrir. Dans le zen, qui evite les gestes inutiles, le fer a repasser n'existe pas. Le wabi sabi est un concept esthetique zen, developpe par les maitres de the du XVIeme siecle, qui valorise la beaute de l'imperfection, le gout pour les choses qui ont vieilli, pour la patine des objets. Nettoyer, c'est aussi un moyen de garder le contact avec notre environnement, de le respecter, de reveler sa beaute et sa dimension spirituelle et purifier notre esprit a travers ces objets auxquels nous sommes associes. C'est aussi les soigner, les respecter. L'importance des objets dans la culture japonaise revele l'amour de la beaute et du travail bien fait. Nous pouvons purifier notre esprit a travers les objets que nous possedons. Faire son menage, c'est etre autonome, c'est se connecter a sa propre realite, c'est vivre sa vie. Le menage est une facon de mediter sur le sens de la vie, de "remettre ses pendules a l'heure", de reprendre en main les renes de son destin. Le zen apprend que la meditation en mouvement pendant le travail manuel a beaucoup plus de valeur que la meditation dans les postures statiques. Apprenons a vivre l'instantpresent dans la joie et a apprecier le bonheur qui nous est accessible.
Dominique Loreau (Faire le ménage chez soi, faire le ménage en soi: Pour soigner son corps et son esprit)
Self-esteem has two aspects: (1) a secure conviction that one’s fundamental purposes are worthwhile and (2) confidence in one’s ability to realize these purposes. So, self-esteem is a kind of self-confidence— confidence in the value of one’s basic ambitions and confidence in one’s ability to realize these aims. Self-esteem is a primary good because in its absence none of our practical aims will seem worthwhile or we won’t attempt to achieve those things we regard as valuable. Apathy, depression, and despair may take over. Rawls views self-esteem as a natural primary good (rather than a social one), because society, and in particular the state, has no mechanism for distributing self-esteem directly. There are, however, social bases of self-esteem that a basic structure can support (or undermine). One’s sense of self-worth is socially supported when those one admires appreciate and affirm one’s values and achievements. We will usually develop and maintain a sense of self-worth provided we belong to at least one association or community within which our activities are publicly affirmed. What should we expect in an unjust society? In an unjust society, there may also be a variety of communities and associations with their own ideals, and these forms of group affiliation may also develop among those who are severely disadvantaged. Moreover, the cultural traits that characterize some of these communities and associations may have been cultivated in response to, or otherwise shaped by, the unjust institutional arrangements.
Tommie Shelby (Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform)
Don’t worry about your schedule, your business, your family, or your friends. Just focus with me and really open your mind. In your mind’s eye, see yourself going to the funeral of a loved one. Picture yourself driving to the funeral parlor or chapel, parking the car, and getting out. As you walk inside the building, you notice the flowers, the soft organ music. You see the faces of friends and family you pass along the way. You feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known, that radiates from the hearts of the people there. As you walk down to the front of the room and look inside the casket, you suddenly come face-to-face with yourself. This is your funeral, three years from today. All these people have come to honor you, to express feelings of love and appreciation for your life. As you take a seat and wait for the services to begin, you look at the program in your hand. There are to be four speakers. The first is from your family, immediate and also extended—children, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents who have come from all over the country to attend. The second speaker is one of your friends, someone who can give a sense of what you were as a person. The third speaker is from your work or profession. And the fourth is from your church or some community organization where you’ve been involved in service. Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives? Before you read further, take a few minutes to jot down your impressions. It will greatly increase your personal understanding of Habit 2.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 30th Anniversary Edition (The Covey Habits Series))
There is a madness about wilderness. The "savage and dreary" wilderness... Are we more enlightened in proclaiming that such places no longer disturb us, or have we lost touch with some fundamental paradox? Wilderness activists frequently insist that their aim is to reeducate the West into an unequivocal appreciation of the beauty of "natural" wilderness. Such a goal is puzzling, for it is unlikely that any human culture has unparadoxically embraced all its known regions of landscape. There is a concerted effort to clean up the imagination of wilderness and to remove any gloom associated with it. In the past this was achieved by literally clearing away the forests, swamps and jungles or by cultivating the deserts. Now it is being fantasized away by insisting that the oppressiveness and fear traditionally inspired by wilderness were biased and wrong.
Peter Bishop
I'm not sure if you've appreciated the synchronicity, or maybe it's just irony, of the geographical association of Gardner's birth—near Palmyra—and death in Susquehanna, with the origins of the Mormon religion. It all happened on hallowed Mormon ground my friend—hallowed ground.
John Aubrey (Enoch's Thread)
Brave applies a two-pronged strategy to this problem. It has created a new browser designed to work seamlessly with its tokens. The browser blocks all ads by default and, with sophisticated analytics, collates and anonymizes data from users that indicate how much time they spend looking at certain content. That way it can come up with a useful record of the amount of time we all spend at Internet sites without identifying us. As a user of the Brave browser, you are offered the potential to earn BATs for selectively turning off the ad blocker to view ads; tokens are delivered to an integrated wallet that you uniquely control. You can in turn use those tokens to reward publishers of content that you appreciate—in effect, tipping them with donations. Meanwhile, to place ads with publishers of content on the system, advertisers must first acquire BATs and then pay those tokens to publishers, with the price for those ads dictated by the attention metrics associated with the latter’s content.
Michael J. Casey (The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything)
As disappointed and unhappy as he was, Ron said, “Sam, I know you’re going to think that things are falling apart, and a lot of other people are going to think they’re falling apart, but you’ve got such a strong field organization here, and such loyalty from the associates and the managers in those stores out there, and such loyal customers, and the company is so sound in its operating philosophies, that I think you’ll just move right down the road.” I appreciated his expressing that confidence in us. I know he meant it, and I’ll never forget it.
Sam Walton (Sam Walton: Made In America)
If we went to Les Agarves, which is twice the cost, but about as gourmet as we can get without actually being in France, that would qualify as a special evening out. Ronnie will do it on an anniversary or on a birthday, but I know his true opinion of it is that it’s not worth it. I’ve come to believe his taste buds can’t reach gourmet level so he can’t appreciate the difference. For him, then, it makes little sense. But it’s not only the food that is exquisite; it’s the ambience and the service. You feel you’re special, even if only for one night, one dinner. Ronnie likes to make it seem that only women want this. Sometimes I wonder if that’s not true. It’s certainly true when it comes to his friends or most of the husbands of my girlfriends. It’s almost as if there’s something unmanly about elegance. They’d rather associate themselves with Clint Eastwood than Cary Grant or George Clooney. Eastwood can be tough, virile and dangerous, and be grimy at the same time, except, of course, in a movie like The Bridges of Madison County, but men don’t talk about that film.
Andrew Neiderman (Lost in His Eyes: Romantic suspense)
brown hair, bright brown soulful eyes, and one of those trendy barely beards. He had always appreciated the association with the Savior and would hate to give it up, even if only in his own mind, because of a clashing career choice. The server reappeared with a frosty mug in each hand. “Two Fearless beers.” “We’re going to go with large filets,” Tom said with the satisfaction of a man on an unconstrained expense account. “Medium-rare for mine. And a Caesar salad to start.” “Same here,” Lars said. Carla nodded without taking notes, then disappeared. Tom resumed his pitch while Lars relaxed. “You’re an honors graduate from
Tim Tigner (The Price of Time (Watch What You Wish For #1))
brown hair, bright brown soulful eyes, and one of those trendy barely beards. He had always appreciated the association with the Savior and would hate to give it up, even if only in his own mind, because of a clashing career choice. The server reappeared with a frosty mug in each hand. “Two Fearless beers.
Tim Tigner (The Price of Time (Watch What You Wish For #1))
Intuitive Eating was associated with the following benefits (Ricciardelli 2016): • Greater body appreciation and satisfaction • Positive emotional functioning • Greater life satisfaction • Unconditional self-regard and optimism • Psychological hardiness • Greater motivation to exercise, when focus is on enjoyment rather than guilt or appearance Furthermore, IE was inversely related to: disordered eating, dieting, poor interoceptive awareness, and internalization of the thin ideal.
Evelyn Tribole (Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach)
To counter the effects of too-early learning, here are some things you can do: Where possible, choose schools that are developmentally sensitive in their curriculum and appropriate for your child. Some kids will do really well as big fish in small ponds. It gives them the confidence to tackle the currents without being afraid of being swept away. They get to grow strong and feel strong. So what if there are bigger fish in bigger ponds? Help your children find the right curricular environments for them. Relax and take a long view, even if no one else around you is. Most kids who learn to read at five aren’t better readers at nine than those who learn to read at six or seven. Bill remembers vividly the mild panicky feeling he and Starr had when their daughter was five years old and some of her friends were starting to read. Even though they knew that kids learn to read much easier at age seven than at age five, and that pushing academics too early was harmful and produced no lasting benefit, Bill and Starr wondered if they were jeopardizing their child’s future by letting her fall behind her peers. They briefly considered pulling her out of her nonacademic kindergarten. But they stuck to their guns and left her in a school that did not push and did not give her any homework until the fourth grade. Despite an unrushed start, she received her PhD in economics from the University of Chicago at the age of twenty-six and is a successful economist. Bill loves telling that story, not to brag (okay, just a little), but to emphasize that it is difficult to buck the tide even when you know the current is carrying you the wrong way. Remember that any gains from rushing development will wash out. Parents often tell Bill that their third grader is doing fourth- or fifth-grade math—but he never hears twenty-six-year-olds brag that they’re more successful than most twenty-eight-year-olds. Don’t go overboard on AP classes. You are doing your child no favors if you let her take more APs at the cost of her mental health and sleep. There’s a reason why kids get more out of Moby-Dick in college than in high school. When we consider the enormous differences in the maturation of their prefrontal cortex—and the associated development in their capacity for abstraction and emotional maturity—it should come as no surprise that the majority of students will understand and appreciate novels written for adults better when they’re older. The same is true for complex scientific theories and data, quantitative concepts, and historical themes, which are easier for most kids to grasp when they are college aged. This isn’t to say that some students aren’t ready for college-level courses when they’re fifteen. The problem is that when this becomes the default for most students (I’ll never get into college if I don’t have five AP classes) it’s destructive.
William Stixrud (The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives)
Narcissistic Disorder The basic premise of this personality disorder is an inflated sense of self worth. This trait is often emphasized by a need to be appreciated and admired although someone with this disorder usually is unable to have any empathy for others; no matter what their situation. People with this disorder will often be fond of overly grand gestures and will assume they are the most important part of anyone’s life; even if you met them just five minutes ago. There are very few scenarios where this inflated sense of self worth is appropriate in modern society. Surprisingly, under this façade there is usually a very fragile self esteem which needs the consistent bolstering of ego that their behavior attracts. People with this disorder will often appear to be snobbish, disdainful or simply patronizing and condescending. They are likely to give out opinions on the failings of others at the drop of a hat without acknowledging their own shortcomings. The belief that they should be the most important person in any room can lead to issues when dealing with relationships at home or at work; this will be particularly noticeable if someone else is praised and you are not. In situations such as these, it is common for someone with this disorder to react angrily or impatiently; making it very difficult to build a long term relationship. The Symptoms Again, in order for someone to be diagnosed with this condition they will need to display at least five of the following symptoms and to have had these issues for at least one year. •   A sufferer has a hugely inflated opinion of their own self worth. They will usually inflate their achievements and skills to ensure they are the best in the room. They are unlikely to be able to substantiate any of these claims. •   They often indulge in a fantasy world where they have unlimited success, power, money and love. This indulgence can occur at any time. •   They will have a belief that they are very special and that there are only a few other people in the world which are on the same level as them. This belief means they will often try to associate with these people and no one else; as these are the only people who will understand them. •   The belief that they are special necessitates them to expect and demand your praise and adulation at all times of the day. They expect to be admired simply for being who they are. This belief extends to expecting others to provide them with favorable treatment and to know their expectations without being told them. •   This feeling of their own self worth will cause many people with this disorder to take advantage of others in order to achieve their own goal. They are unlikely to see this as exploitation; instead, it is just others doing what they should to satisfy their needs. •   It is usual for someone with this personality disorder to lack empathy towards others, particularly those who they feel are beneath them; which is almost everyone. •   Envy is a common trait in people with this disorder. They are liable to be envious of anyone who has something they do not and they will believe others are envious of them; because of their importance. •   People who suffer from this illness will often come across as arrogant, haughty or even rude. This disorder occurs in more men than women and current estimates suggest that the disorder is present in approximately six percent of the population. Symptoms associated with this disorder will always be present, even when a child; but the constantly evolving personality is likely to mask this and it is not usually possible to diagnose the condition until the late teens or early twenties.
Carol Franklin (Mental Health: Personalities: Personality Disorders, Mental Disorders & Psychotic Disorders (Bipolar, Mood Disorders, Mental Illness, Mental Disorders, Narcissist, Histrionic, Borderline Personality))
How to tell if your heart chakra is blocked If your heart chakra has been blocked it will open doors to emotions like envy, rage, fear of rejection, sorrow and resentment towards others and yourself. The rising expression is by grudging against somebody or something. It nurtures their negative feelings, cutting them off from opportunities to attain inner peace and love, when one holds onto hurt. When your Heart Chakra is open you: • Are comfortable in your relationships • Give and receive love easily • Feel a sense of heartfelt gratitude for how wonderful your life is •       Appreciate others and feel compassion for yourself and others without feeling sorry for anyone. How to tell if your throat chakra is blocked  This chakra's blockage manifests in a peculiar way. Affected people will have trouble telling their facts, will find it hard to stay focused and pay attention and will often risk being judged by others. These manifestations may further impede their ability to see things clearly around them, and how they really are. Physical manifestations of the misalignment of this chakra are sore throat, thyroid gland issues, stiffness of the shoulder and neck and headaches. When your Throat Chakra is open you: • Voice the truth honestly • Imagine people listening to you • Know that you are genuinely understood and respected. How to tell if your third-eye chakra is blocked  Third-eye chakra blockage manifests through troubles to trust your inner voice and access your intuition, recall important facts or learn new skills. What is typical of this chakra-if the lower ones are misaligned-is center, sacral chakra, solar plexus, and core chakra, it is most probable that this one will also be unbalanced. Such equilibrium will lead you to behave dismissively, be more judgmental and become yourself. There is also a wide range of physical manifestations associated with blockage of the third-eye chakra, including dizziness, fatigue and brain health problems. Psychological symptoms include fear, depression and moral judgment. When your Third Eye Chakra is open you: • Trust and act with confidence •       Have a strong sense of your own inner truth and listen to it and follow it as it guides you along the path of your life.
Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
When we accept that humans are animals without resorting to claims of superiority, we can appreciate and value those of us that genetic inheritance or mutation have affected, from conjoined twins to people with Angelman syndrome. Disability or ageing are not seen as threatening aberrations from the essential existence of a human but as normal occurrences among organisms, which is not to say that we do nothing to ease associated suffering or to better their lives, but that we don’t see these individuals as diverging from a superior definition of being human.
Melanie Challenger (How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human)
When we accept that humans are animals without resorting to claims of superiority, we can appreciate and value those of us that genetic inheritance or mutation have affected, from conjoined twins to people with Angelman syndrome. Disability or ageing are not seen as threatening aberrations from the essential existence of a human but as normal occurrences among organisms, which is not to say that we do nothing to ease associated suffering or to better their lives, but that we don’t see these individuals as diverging from a superior definition of being human. Nobody is expected to conform to some median of what an adult human might be or to be measured against the maximal state of human capacities. But this wasn’t the path taken by humanism. Instead, secular forms of salvation sought to pick a difference in nature and turn it into a justification. But if there is something in our biology that makes us the most or even the only important animal, how do we stop the use of biological traits as the basis of how we treat one another? It
Melanie Challenger (How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human)
Domestic creatures don’t need to live by their wits. It behooves them to be accepting of their lot, not uppity. Cows and goats don’t seem very alert to their surroundings; they don’t have to be. And neither do the people who keep them. Archaeologist Colin Groves writes, “Humans have undergone a reduction in environmental awareness in parallel to domestic species and for exactly the same reason.” He explains that domestication is a kind of partnership in which “each partner is, to a degree, sheltered by its association with the other.” Groves says security has cost us a certain dulling of senses, explaining that brain changes have caused in humans “the decline of environmental appreciation.
Carl Safina (Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel)
One way to put the question that I want to answer here is this: why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable? Part of the answer, no doubt, is that in those days everyone believed, and so the alternatives seemed outlandish. But this just pushes the question further back. We need to understand how things changed. How did the alternatives become thinkable? One important part of the picture is that so many features of their world told in favour of belief, made the presence of God seemingly undeniable. I will mention three, which will play a part in the story I want to tell. (1) The natural world they lived in, which had its place in the cosmos they imagined, testified to divine purpose and action; and not just in the obvious way which we can still understand and (at least many of us) appreciate today, that its order and design bespeaks creation; but also because the great events in this natural order, storms, droughts, floods, plagues, as well as years of exceptional fertility and flourishing, were seen as acts of God, as the now dead metaphor of our legal language still bears witness. (2) God was also implicated in the very existence of society (but not described as such-this is a modern term-rather as polls, kingdom, church, or whatever). A kingdom could only be conceived as grounded in something higher than mere human man action in secular time. And beyond that, the life of the various associations which made up society, parishes, boroughs, guilds, and so on, were interwoven with ritual and worship, as I mentioned in the previous chapter. One could not but encounter counter God everywhere. (3) People lived in an “enchanted” world. This is perhaps not the best expression; it seems to evoke light and fairies. But I am invoking here its negation, Weber’s expression “disenchantment” as a description of our modern condition. This term has achieved such wide currency in our discussion of these matters, that I’m going to use its antonym to describe a crucial feature of the pre-modern condition. The enchanted chanted world in this sense is the world of spirits, demons, and moral forces which our ancestors lived in. People who live in this kind of world don’t necessarily believe in God, certainly not in the God of Abraham, as the existence of countless “pagan” societies shows. But in the outlook of European peasants in 1500, beyond all the inevitable ambivalences, the Christian God was the ultimate guarantee that good would triumph or at least hold the plentiful forces of darkness at bay.
Charles Taylor (A Secular Age)
When I graduated from college, I sought out the cheapest rooms or apartments I could find. One of these put me next to a freeway interchange in Oakland California. The experience of living there, biking everywhere and reading the book The Power Broker by Robert Caro, changed my life and made me appreciate all the issues associated with transportation. I saw exactly how and why the freeway interchange gutted my neighborhood and how the main obstacle and danger to bicycling in urban areas was cars and drivers. This was the early 1990s when many people were waking up to these same issues. I participated in some of the first Critical Mass rides in San Francisco and the East Bay and started giving them my transportation cartoons for flyers and posters. I also discovered the (now defunct) “Auto-Free Times” and Alliance for a Paving Moratorium in Arcata, California and started sending them cartoons as well. By 1994 it had become a major theme in my work. (2015 interview with Microcosm Publishing)
Andy Singer
The Bukharin pamphlet was published in the United States in 1920 by the Contemporary Publishing Association, one of the early underground publishing organizations of the Communist Party. It stated: All these considerations explain the program of the Communists with regard to their attitude to religion and to the church. Religion must be fought, if not by violence, at all events, by argument. The church must be separated from the state.… There is a poison called opium. When it is smoked sweet visions appear. You feel as if you were in paradise, but its action tells on the health of the smoker. His health is gradually ruined, and little by little he becomes a meek idiot. The same applies to religion. There are people who wish to smoke opium, but it would be absurd if the state maintained at its expense—that is to say, at the expense of the people—opium dens and special men to serve them. For this reason the church must be—and already is—treated in the same way. Priests, bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, abbots and the rest of the lot must be refused state maintenance. Let the believers, if they wish it, feed the holy fathers at their own expense on the fat of the land, a thing which they, the priests, greatly appreciate. To say this was a hard, distasteful, cynical view of religion would be an obvious understatement. Nonetheless, it was fully consistent with the long-accepted communist view of religion: Religion was a seductive drug, a poison, an opiate that when smoked produces sweet visions, hallucinations, turning the junkie into a “meek idiot.” The priests were like the dealers; they peddle the junk to hook the addicts who sit stupidly in the pews.
Paul Kengor (The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration)
A commitment to awareness, then—a commitment to thinking as a way of life—is both a source and an expression of positive self-esteem. But often we associate positive self-esteem only with the final result—with knowledge, success, the admiration and appreciation of others—and miss the cause: all the choices that, cumulatively, add up to what we call a commitment to awareness, the will to understand. Thus we can deceive ourselves about the actual sources of positive self-esteem.
Nathaniel Branden
What the current aura of disenchantment means for the future of American and world politics is uncertain. Will members of the public turn their backs on politics and turn to aesthetic appreciation, enjoying the comforts of religion, or building Shangri-las in their own minds?20 The post–World War II record-low voter turnout in the 2014 midterm elections might be one indication that Americans are washing their hands of even the most basic expressions of political engagement. But there are other indications that the legions of discontented do not reject the idea of progress as such and will not retreat from politics; instead what we are seeing is a rejection of liberal universalist visions of progress and the political programs associated with them. In a 2013 address before the Federal Assembly, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared that “attempts to push supposedly more progressive development models onto other nations actually resulted in regression, barbarity and extensive bloodshed.”21 Putin’s military incursions in Russia’s near (and not- so-near) abroad aside, increasing numbers of Westerners seem to agree with the sentiment of his remarks, punishing establishment politicians as “globalists” and rewarding inward-looking populists. From Brexiteers bucking the European Union to America-firsters looking to make their country “great again,” from supporters of the National Front in France to loyalists of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands or the Freedom Party of Austria, nationalists are on the ascent, seeking progress for themselves and their compatriots on their own terms.
Matthew W. Slaboch (A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics)
If Ward is right, Lewis has crafted each novel in the light of the atmosphere associated with one of the planets in the medieval tradition. This does not necessarily mean that this symbolism determines the plot of each novel, or the overall series; it does, however, help us understand something of the thematic identity and stylistic tone of each individual novel. Ward’s analysis is generally agreed to have opened up important new ways of thinking about the Narnia series, although further discussion and evaluation will probably lead to modification of some of its details. There is clearly more to Lewis’s imaginative genius than his earlier interpreters appreciated. If Ward is right, Lewis has used themes drawn from his own specialist field of medieval and Renaissance literature to ensure the coherency of the Chronicles of Narnia as a whole, while at the same time giving each book its own distinct identity.
Alister E. McGrath (C. S. Lewis: A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet)
You do need to be visible. Your boss does need to like you. This is not proof of a heartless world; it’s just human nature. Hard work doesn’t pay off if your boss doesn’t know whom to reward for it. Would you expect a great product to sell with zero marketing? Probably not. So what’s a good balance? Every Friday send your boss an email summarizing your accomplishments for the week—nothing fancy, but quickly relating the good work you’re doing. You might think they know what you’re up to, but they’re busy. They have their own problems. They’ll appreciate it and begin to associate you with the good things they’re hearing (from you, of course). And when it’s time to negotiate for that raise (or to refresh your résumé), you can just review the emails for a reminder of why exactly you’re such a good employee.
Eric Barker (Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong)
It is hard to appreciate now, but there was once a time before mobile phones and text messages when people communicated with each other by sticking notes to refrigerators using magnets. It got to be so commonplace that it became the secondary purpose of fridges themselves. Families would leave dinner instructions, teenagers would explain their whereabouts, and unhappy wives would initiate divorces, all using short Heminway-esque messages affixed at eye level using coloured magnetic letters. In fact there was a widespread panic in the refrigeration industry when text messages became popular. And then, when free texts became available, the National Association of Subzero Appliances (the other NASA, as they called themselves) brought a case to the Supreme Court, citing an infringement of their right to earn a livelihood.
Ronan Hession (Leonard and Hungry Paul)