“
To light a candle is to cast a shadow...
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
“
You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise.
”
”
Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)
“
Physics depends on a universe infinitely centred on an equals sign.
”
”
Mark Z. Danielewski (House of Leaves)
“
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3))
“
For every bad thing in life, there are more good things to tip the balance.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Succubus on Top (Georgina Kincaid, #2))
“
But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power...It must follow knowledge, and serve need.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
“
Then, like magic, it seemed like the universe provided a solution. And I thought—okay, this is how. This will work. There’s hope—light at the end of the tunnel. A silver lining, you know?” Roy shook his head. “Fuck. I was so stupid. I was too proud to realize that there was no way it could ever happen. That there couldn’t be a happy ending for us. It was just a set-up. You see, the universe still had accounts to settle. And Susie and I, we were way overdrawn.
”
”
J.K. Franko (Tooth for Tooth (Talion #2))
“
But, if we consider, as physicists now claim, that everything is energy—everything we see, everything we think, everything we do—then it is just possible that this same law of conservation of energy applies to questions of morality. A conservation of moral energy, a maintenance of equilibrium… a balance exists and must be preserved. If an action is taken that disrupts that balance, then an action similar in kind and degree is required to restore equilibrium.
”
”
J.K. Franko (Eye for Eye (Talion #1))
“
Do you see how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls, the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole.
But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3))
“
Those who might be tempted to give way to despair should realize that nothing accomplished in this order can ever be lost, that confusion, error and darkness can win the day only apparently and in a purely ephemeral way, that all partial and transitory disequilibrium must perforce contribute towards the greater equilibrium of the whole, and that nothing can ultimately prevail against the power of truth.
”
”
René Guénon (The Crisis of the Modern World)
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It is not proven that Elizabeth's person equilibrium was set off balance by the slant of the office floor, nor could it be proven that it was Elizabeth who pushed the building off its foundations, but it is undeniable that they began to slip at about the same time.
”
”
Shirley Jackson (The Bird's Nest)
“
The wise man believes profoundly in silence, the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence - not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree, not a ripple upon the surface of the shinning pool - his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life. Silence is the cornerstone of character.
”
”
Charles Alexander Eastman
“
Nature's a balance. There's always a price. For every give, there's a take, and for every success, a sacrifice.
”
”
Martin Olson (Adventure Time: The Enchiridion Marcy's Super Secret Scrapbook!!!)
“
When you can cross the highwire without falling off, you are in a state of perfect balance, perfect grace. It is the same with obedience. When you submit, submit totally, you enter that same equilibrium, surrender and grace. This is the meaning of erotic.
”
”
Chloe Thurlow (A Girl's Adventures)
“
You wouldn't understand my works. You wouldn't have the faintest idea of what they were about. You wouldn't appreciate the points of reference. You're way behind. All of you. There's no point in sending you my works. You'd be lost. It's nothing to do with a question of intelligence. It's a way of being able to look at the world. It's a question of how far you can operate on things and not in things. I mean it's a question of your capacity to ally the two, to relate the two, to balance the two. To see, to be able to see! I'm the one who can see. That's why I can write my critical works. Might do you good...have a look at them...see how certain people can view...things...how certain people can maintain...intellectual equilibrium. Intellectual equilibrium. You're just objects. You just...move about. I can observe it. I can see what you do. It's the same as I do. But you're lost in it. You won't get me being...I won't be lost in it.
”
”
Harold Pinter (The Homecoming)
“
The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.
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Norbet Platt
“
Heaven and earth. Our reason has driven all away. Alone at last, we end up by ruling over a desert. What imagination could we have left for that higher equilibrium in which nature balanced history, beauty, virtue, and which applied the music of numbers even to blood-tragedy? We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the
office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer’s ink.
”
”
Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays)
“
Because balance doesn't exist, you're either operating under or over your energetic equilibrium. In other words, you're in the realm of being either underwhelmed or overwhelmed. Perfectionists reliably choose to operate over their equilibriums. For perfectionists, the risk of being underwhelmed is much scarier than the risk of being overwhelmed.
”
”
Katherine Morgan Schafler (The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power)
“
Functionally, a man is somewhat like a bicycle,” I told him. “A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it is going forward towards something. You have a good bicycle. Your trouble is you are trying to maintain your balance sitting still, with no place to go. It’s no wonder you feel shaky.
”
”
Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded (The Psycho-Cybernetics Series))
“
She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement—for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. A rich and living peace.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
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both the American and the European approaches to foreign policy were the products of their own unique circumstances. Americans inhabited a nearly empty continent shielded from predatory powers by two vast oceans and with weak countries as neighbors. Since America confronted no power in need of being balanced, it could hardly have occupied itself with the challenges of equilibrium even if its leaders had been seized by the bizarre notion of replicating European conditions amidst a people who had turned their backs on Europe.
”
”
Henry Kissinger (Diplomacy)
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This is Nature - the balance of colossal forces... the mighty Cosmos in perfect equilibrium produces - this...sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted...why should he run about here and there, talking about the stars, disturbing the blades of grass?
from Lord Jim
”
”
Joseph Conrad
“
If you face something that you fear and recognize it for what is, you give it balance. You restore equilibrium.ʺ
”
”
Israel Regardie (A Garden of Pomegranates: Skrying on the Tree of Life)
“
This equilibrium was so hard-won.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
“
The infinite intelligence, which gave me this desire leads, guides, and reveals to me the perfect plan for the unfolding of my desire. I know the deeper wisdom of my subconscious is now responding, and what I feel and claim within is expressed in the without There is a balance, equilibrium, and equanimity.
”
”
Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind)
“
[A]s you will come to see, everything in life comes at a price. Nothing is free, not a single thing, tangible or intangible. There is an equilibrium at play all the time. For every gain, there is a loss of equal value. For every heart that is broken, one is sutured. It’s called balance, and it’s the only reason the universe doesn’t collapse onto itself at any given moment.
”
”
Richard Harris (A Father's Son)
“
She smelled of flowers and rain. A meadow beneath a storm. It was intoxicating, and before he could even ponder why he would think something so flighty, he pulled in lungfuls of it until he swayed slightly. His eyes sprang open, and his equilibrium balanced.
”
”
Micah Persell (Uncharted Waters)
“
Think of a wave: it washes onto the shore, and then it rolls back. Likewise, each of your activities has a backside of stillness. To be with people, you must be alone. To listen, you need silence. To exercise, you need rest. You do not need to inflict rest, silence, or aloneness. You can simply surrender to your existing urges for these essential actions.
”
”
Vironika Tugaleva
“
Pleasure and pain are co-located. In addition to the discovery of dopamine, neuro-scientists have determined that pleasure and pain are processed in overlapping brain regions, and work via an opponent processing mechanism. Another way to say this is pleasure and pain work like a balance. Imagine our brains contains a balance, a scale with a fulcrum in the centre. When nothing is on the balance it's level with the ground. When we experience pleasure, dopamine is released in our reward pathway and the balance tips to the side of pleasure. The more our balance tips and the faster it tips, the more pleasure we feel. But here's the important thing about the balance. It wants to remain level! that is, in equilibrium. It does not want to be tipped for very long, to one side or another. Hence, everytime the balance tips towards pleasure, powerful self-regulating mechanisms kick into action to bring it level again. These self-regulating mechanisms do not require conscious thought or an act of will, they just happen like a reflex.
”
”
Anna Lembke (Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence)
“
Deep sorrow does not come because one has violated a law, but only if one knows he has broken off the relationship with Divine Love. But there is yet another element required for regeneration, the element of repentance and reparation. Repentance is a rather dry-eyed affair; tears flow in sorrow, but sweat pours out in repentance. It is not enough to tell God we are sorry and then forget all about it. If we broke a neighbor's window, we would not only apologize but also would go to the trouble of putting in a new pane. Since all sin disturbs the equilibrium and balance of justice and love, there must be a restoration involving toil and effort. To see why this must be, suppose that every time a person did wrong he was told to drive a nail into the wall of his living room and every time that he was forgiven he was told to pull it out. The holes would still remain after the forgiveness. Thus every sin after being forgiven leaves “holes” or “wounds” in our human nature, and the filling up of these holes is done by penance, a thief who steals a watch can be forgiven for the theft, but only if he returns the watch.
”
”
Fulton J. Sheen (Peace of Soul: Timeless Wisdom on Finding Serenity and Joy by the Century's Most Acclaimed Catholic Bishop)
“
Success is not a summit to climb, It is an equilibrium where work and life are balanced
”
”
Kandarp Gandhi (Buddhist Banker : Money can’t buy happiness, Wisdom can.)
“
Assumptions are the most damaging enemies of our mind’s equilibrium...An assumption is an imaginary truth.
”
”
A.A. Alebraheem (5 Essential Dimensions: How to Balance Your Life for Health, Success and Content)
“
A market exchange has an equilibrium or stasis: you pay to balance the scale. But when you give a gift there is momentum, and the weight shifts from body to body.
”
”
Lewis Hyde (The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World)
“
The more that consciousness is influenced by prejudices, errors, fantasies, and infantile wishes, the more the already existing gap will widen into a neurotic dissociation and lead to a more or less artificial life far removed from healthy instincts, nature, and truth. The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium. This is what I call the complementary (or compensatory) role of dreams in our psychic make-up.
”
”
C.G. Jung (Man and His Symbols)
“
A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it is going forward towards something. You have a good bicycle. Your trouble is you are trying to maintain your balance sitting still, with no place to go.
”
”
Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded (The Psycho-Cybernetics Series))
“
Perhaps it is a matter of celestial balance," he reflected. "A sort of cosmic equilibrium. Perhaps the aggregate experience of Time is a constant and thus for our children to establish such vivid impressions of this particular June, we must relinquish our claims upon it." "So that they might remember, we must forget," Vasily summed up.
”
”
Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow)
“
I tend to imagine the self-regulating system like little gremlins hoping on the pain side of the balance to counteract the weight on the pleasure side. The gremlins represent the work of homeostasis, the tendency of any living system to maintain physiologic equilibrium. Once the balance is level, it keeps going, tipping an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain.
In the 1970s social scientists Richard Solomon and John Corbett called this reciprocal relationship between pleasure and pain "The Opponent Process Theory". Any prolonged or repeated departure from hedonic or adaptive neutrality has a cost. That cost is an after-reaction, that is opposite in value to the stimulus, or as the old saying goes: "What goes up, must come down".
”
”
Anna Lembke (Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence)
“
The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow . . .
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
“
I have coined the term 'bisociation' in order to make a distinction between the routine skills of thinking on a single 'plane', as it were, and the creative act, which, as I shall try to show, always operates on more than one plane. The former may be called single-minded, the latter a double-minded, transitory state of unstable equilibrium where the balance of both emotion and thought is disturbed.
”
”
Arthur Koestler (The Act of Creation)
“
The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth an light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole. But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3))
“
Delicate equilibrium of periodical filth between two moons balanced. Moons he said full and yellow as harvest moons her hips thighs. Outside outside of them always but. Yellow. Feet soles with walking like. Then know that some man that all those mysterious and imperious concealed. With all that inside of them shapes an outward suavity waiting for a touch to. Liquid putrefaction like drowned things floating like pale rubber flabbily filled getting the odor of honeysuckle all mixed up.
”
”
William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury)
“
Look! The beauty—but that is nothing—look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragile! And so strong! And so exact! This is Nature—the balance of colossal forces. Every star is so—and every blade of grass stands so—and the mighty Kosmos in perfect equilibrium produces—this. This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature—the great artist.
”
”
Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim)
“
Instead, when you have a symptom—when you feel cloudy, sad, sore, gassy, weepy, tired, or unnecessarily anxious—bring some wonder to it. Ask why and try to make the connections. Your body’s symptoms are telling you something about equilibrium. Your body is trying to tell you that it has lost balance. Stand back and appreciate the infinite complexity of your organism. Know that fear will only drive you to treat your body like a robotic machine that needs oil and gear changes. We are so much more than buttons and levers.
”
”
Kelly Brogan (A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives)
“
I believe that life is one-fourth genetic, one-fourth luck, one-fourth willpower, and one-fourth focus.” She stated, her conviction unwavering. “Being out of balance can completely screw up your equilibrium. I guess sometimes you have to overcompensate in the last two categories to keep your life on course while it’s careening down the side of the mountain.
”
”
Michelle Pace (Crazy Love)
“
Sweet, voluptuous & sexy
But I'm hellacious as they get
Don't test me!
My equilibrium is off
I want balance
I want my love rocked back
To its origin
”
”
Jasira Monique (Woman On the Move: Unapologetic Poetry)
“
I'm scared to disturb the balance, though- that delicate equilibrium. Marshall and I can only exist in the narrow spaces where I'm not me and he is not him.
”
”
Brenna Yovanoff (Places No One Knows)
“
The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.
”
”
C.G. Jung (Man and His Symbols)
“
We can't be perfectly balanced as we navigate the pendulum swing of our days--we can only wobble toward what we need.
”
”
Madeleine Dore (I Didn't Do the Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt)
“
There seems to be a sense of balance or equilibrium that nature attempts to achieve with the usage of cycles, leading us to the concept of self-organization and spontaneous order.
”
”
Kat Lahr (Parallelism Of Cyclicality (Thought Notebook Journal #4))
“
Sometimes I think aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way.
”
”
William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying)
“
You are part of the universe after all – at times, you are in control; other times, you are bound to let go and flow by witnessing the magic of this world, that’s part of being alive.
”
”
Alyaa Sadek (Equilibrium)
“
Your sense of paralysis will be intensified if your family and friends are in the habit of pushing and cajoling you. Their nagging should statements reinforce the insulting thoughts already echoing through your head. Why is their pushy approach doomed to failure? It's a basic law of physics that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. Any time you feel shoved, whether by someone's hand actually on your chest or by someone trying to boss you around, you will naturally tighten up and resist so as to maintain your equilibrium and balance. You will attempt to exert your self-control and preserve your dignity by refusing to do the thing that you are being pushed to do. The paradox is that you often end up hurting yourself.
”
”
David D. Burns
“
The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium. This is what I call the complementary (or compensatory) role of dreams in our psychic make-up. It explains why people who have unrealistic ideas or too high an opinion of themselves, or who make grandiose plans out of proportion to their real capacities, have dreams of flying or falling. The dream compensates for the deficiencies of their personalities, and at the same time it warns them of the dangers in their present course. If the warnings of the dream are disregarded, real accidents may take their place. The victim may fall downstairs or may have a motor accident.
”
”
C.G. Jung (Man and His Symbols)
“
With every plus there must be a minus; with every tear there must be a smile; and for every skunk there must be a fragrant flower. We live our lives in fear of dying and we overlook the simple truth that living is all we can control. Never too high, never too low will get you stuck in the middle of the road. A sense of equilibrium is needed to see life as it is, not what you would like it to be.
”
”
Phil Wohl (BlueBalance)
“
The innate problem of humankind is the inability to find equilibrium. Equanimity and equilibrium. These are what humans cannot seem to attain. Honour without soul will lead to destruction. Soul without honour will lead to destruction. But humans cannot seem to understand this. Or understand the state of equilibrium in anything at all! All honour and no passion is death. All passion and no honour is death. This is why people always die. Because everyone is always running to either extreme end of the pendulum. Everybody wants to be all black or all white. Who is a balanced man? Bring him to me! I will have found a unicorn!
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
Equilibrium is basically when different forces achieve balance. They become equal or the same. People do this with energy. If you know this and you also know that you have power then you can choose the energy or the feeling of the room or of the group or whatever. Basically, you just feel the feelings really strongly and hold it no matter what is going on around you and no matter what anyone else around you feels like.
”
”
Rachel D. Greenwell (How To Wear A Crown: A Practical Guide To Knowing Your Worth)
“
Wherever life takes you, and however you might feel, have no doubt that it is all on purpose. These states and feelings give value and meaning to your own journey of discovering the harmony that is right for you.
”
”
Alyaa Sadek
“
We constantly search for that elusive holy grail quaintly described by magazines as ‘work/life balance’. But anyone who sincerely believes that such an equilibrium might be possible has not begun to understand the logic of capitalism.
”
”
The School of Life (The Sorrows of Work (Essay Books))
“
Bush and Vail understood that the doomsday cycle is not inevitable, and that the best chance for sustainable, renewable creativity and growth comes from bringing an organization to the top-right quadrant: separate phases connected by a balanced, dynamic equilibrium.
”
”
Safi Bahcall (Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries)
“
It is not proven that Elizabeth’s personal equilibrium was set off balance by the slant of the office floor, nor could it be proven that it was Elizabeth who pushed the building off its foundations, but it is undeniable that they began to slip at about the same time.
”
”
Shirley Jackson (The Magic of Shirley Jackson)
“
First, the achievement of the revolutionary generation was a collective enterprise that succeeded because of the diversity of personalities and ideologies present in the mix. Their interactions and juxtapositions generated a dynamic form of balance and equilibrium, not because any of them was perfect or infallible, but because their mutual imperfections and fallibilities, as well as their eccentricities and excesses, checked each other in much the way that Madison in Federalist 10 claimed that multiple factions would do in a large republic.
”
”
Joseph J. Ellis (Founding Brothers)
“
When you reach our age, Vasily, it all goes by so quickly. Whole seasons seem to pass without leaving the slightest mark on our memory.” “How true…, “ agreed the concierge (as he sorted through an allotment of tickets). “But surely, there is comfort to be taken from that,” continued the Count. “For even as the weeks begin racing by in a blur for us, they are making the greatest of impressions upon our children. When one turns seventeen and begins to experience that first period of real independence, one’s senses are so alert, one’s sentiments so finely attuned that every conversation, every look, every laugh may be writ indelibly upon one’s memory. And the friends that one happens to make in those impressionable years? One will meet them forever after with a welling of affection.”… “Perhaps it is a matter of celestial balance,” he reflected. “A sort of cosmic equilibrium. Perhaps the aggregate experience of Time is a constant and thus for our children to establish such vivid impressions of this particular June, we must relinquish our claims upon it.” “So that they might remember, we must forget,” Vasily summed up. “Exactly!” said the Count. “So that they might remember, we must forget. But should we take umbrage at that fact? Should we feel short-changed by the notion that their experiences for the moment may be richer than ours? I think not. For it is hardly our purpose at this late stage to log a new portfolio of lasting memories. Rather, we should be dedicating ourselves to ensuring that they taste freely of experience. And we must do so without trepidation. Rather than tucking in blankets and buttoning up coats, we must have faith in them to tuck and button on their own. And if they fumble with their newfound liberty, we must remain composed, generous, judicious. We must encourage them to venture out from under our watchful gaze, and then sigh with pride when they pass at last through the revolving door of life…
”
”
Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow)
“
he confessed that he could not understand how he had learned to ride a bicycle—a veritable feat of balance, equilibrium, and coordinated motor function—without once having had to use his reason. How could his body think by itself? How could it figure out the complicated motions that it had to execute so as not to fall flat on his face? These simple activities, in which you actually had to stop thinking to fully accomplish them, would fascinate him for his entire life, and even though he loved sports when he was a boy, he avoided all forms of physical exertion when he became a man.
”
”
Benjamín Labatut (The MANIAC)
“
The infinite intelligence which gave me this desire leads, guides, and reveals to me the perfect plan for the unfolding of my desire. I know the deeper wisdom of my subconscious is now responding, and what I feel and claim within is expressed in the without. There is a balance, equilibrium, and equanimity.
”
”
Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind)
“
Arren was silent, pondering this. Presently the mage said, speaking softly, “Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that’s the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the Balance of the Whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale’s sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat’s flight, all they do is done within the Balance of the Whole. But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the Balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility. Who am I—though I have the power to do it—to punish and reward, playing with men’s destinies?” “But then,” the boy said, frowning at the stars, “is the Balance to be kept by doing nothing? Surely a man must act, even not knowing all the consequences of his act, if anything is to be done at all?” “Never fear. It is much easier for men to act than to refrain from acting. We will continue to do good and to do evil. . . . But if there were a king over us all again and he sought counsel of a mage, as in the days of old, and I were that mage, I would say to him: My lord, do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3))
“
It is important to recall at the outset that by a cognitive equilibrium (which is analogous to the stability of a living organism) we mean something quite different from mechanical equilibrium (a state of rest resulting from a balance between antagonistic forces) or thermodynamic equilibrium (rest with destruction of structures). Cognitive equilibrium is more like what Glansdorff and Prigogine call ‘dynamic states’; these are stationary but are involved in exchanges that tend to ‘build and maintain functional and structural order in open systems’ far from the zone of thermodynamic equilibrium” (Piaget, 1977/2001, pp. 312–313).
”
”
Ulrich Müller (The Cambridge Companion to Piaget (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy))
“
The masculine and feminine elements, exactly equal and balancing each other, are as essential to the maintenance of the equilibrium of the universe as positive and negative electricity, the centripetal and centrifugal forces, the laws of attraction which bind together all we know of this planet whereon we dwell and of the system in which we revolve.
”
”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (The Woman's Bible)
“
Look! The beauty -- but that is nothing -- look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragile! And so strong! And so exact! This is Nature -- the balance of colossal forces. Every star is so -- and every blade of grass stands so -- and the mighty Kosmos in perfect equilibrium produces -- this. This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature -- the great artist.
”
”
Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim)
“
But they don’t only dream, though – they work towards making their dreams come true. They will work hard, but they also need to maintain that delicate balance between their personal life and their professional one. The importance of this cannot be overestimated, because Libra depends on this sense of equilibrium in order to keep their emotional life in check.
”
”
Vicki B. Larock (Numerology: Divination & Numerology: Fortune Telling, Success in Career & Wealth, Love & Relationships, Health & Well Being - Fortune Telling With Numbers to Reveal Your Future)
“
Paine’s pamphlet appealed to a wide range of colonial opinion angered by England. But it caused some tremors in aristocrats like John Adams, who were with the patriot cause but wanted to make sure it didn’t go too far in the direction of democracy. Paine had denounced the so-called balanced government of Lords and Commons as a deception, and called for single-chamber representative bodies where the people could be represented. Adams denounced Paine’s plan as “so democratical, without any restraint or even an attempt at any equilibrium or counter-poise, that it must produce confusion and every evil work.” Popular assemblies needed to be checked, Adams thought, because they were “productive of hasty results and absurd judgements.
”
”
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present)
“
But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
“
But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow . .
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
“
But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow . . .
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
“
Changing my narrative from one of complaint and dissatisfaction to a more positive one changed my mood, but it didn’t change all the other negatives that had tipped the balance of our marital life into dysfunction. Memories of good times were a reminder that life cannot be measured in purely black and white terms. The good and bad coexist in a tenuous equilibrium that is always in flux.
”
”
Ranjani Rao (Rewriting My Happily Ever After: A Memoir of Divorce and Discovery)
“
The stars are always guiding you towards your higher purpose, your higher self. You must have faith in them no matter how much pain they might have caused you up until now. Everything in life is about balance. Without pain, we cannot know pleasure, without sadness, we cannot appreciate joy. These equilibriums are what make the universe move forever forward. Without them, life would be static.
”
”
Caroline Peckham (Broken Fae (Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac, #4))
“
Meantime do you see me as still working on the book, still trying to answer such questions as: Is there any ultimate reality, external, conscious and ever-present etc. etc. that can be realised by any such means that may be acceptable to all creeds and religions and suitable to all climes and countries? Or do you find me between Mercy and Understanding, between Chesed and Binah (but still at Chesed)—my equilibrium, and equilibrium is all, precarious—balancing, teetering over the awful unbridgeable void, the all-but unretraceable path of God’s lightning back to God?...Though it is perhaps a good idea under the circumstances to pretend at least to be proceeding with one's great work on "Secret Knowledge," then one can always say when it never comes out that the title explains this deficiency.
”
”
Malcolm Lowry (Under the Volcano)
“
The great weakness of Christianity lies in the fact that it ignores rhythm. It balances God with Devil instead of Vishnu with Siva. Its dualisms are antagonistic instead of equilibrating, and therefore can never issue in the functional third in which power is in equilibrium. Its God is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and does not evolve with an evolving creation, but indulges in one special creative act and rests on His laurels. The whole of human experience, the whole of human knowledge, is against the likelihood of such a concept being true. The Christian concept being static, not dynamic, it does not see that because a thing is good, its opposite is not necessarily evil. It has no sense of proportion because it has no realisation of the principle of equilibrium in space and rhythm in time. Consequently, for the Christian ideal the part is all too often greater than the whole. Meekness, mercy, purity and love are made the ideal of Christian character, and as Nietzsche truly points out, these are slave virtues. There should be room in our ideal for the virtues of the ruler and leader-courage, energy, justice and integrity. Christianity has nothing to tell us about the dynamic virtues; consequently those who get the world's work done cannot follow the Christian ideal because of its limitations and inapplicability to their problems. They can measure right and wrong against no standard save their own self-respect. The result is the ridiculous spectacle of a civilisation, committed to a one-sided ideal, being forced to keep its ideals and its honour in separate compartments.
”
”
Dion Fortune (The Mystical Qabalah)
“
It is, in fact, much like a coastline, and like a coastline its exact orientation in space and time ebbs and flows. At the moment the threshold is crossed, at the moment when self-organization occurs, the new living system enters a state of dynamic equilibrium. From that point on, the self-organized system retains an elegant sensitivity to that threshold point; it exists just on the balanced side of that threshold and so constantly monitors any incoming energy flows that touch it, for each incoming energy flow causes the system to move slightly too close to the line again—a process that can cause it to lose organization entirely if allowed to go too far. As that occurs, the system analyzes the nature of the flow it has encountered and crafts a response to it which will restore the balance point.
”
”
Stephen Harrod Buhner (Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming of Earth)
“
As lovers, we poise together delicately on a tightrope. When the winds of doubt and fear begin blowing, if we panic and clutch at each other or abruptly turn away and head for cover, the rope sways more and more and our balance becomes even more precarious. To stay on the rope, we must shift with each other’s moves, respond to each other’s emotions. As we connect, we balance each other. We are in emotional equilibrium.
”
”
Sue Johnson (Hold Me Tight)
“
The Master Hand looked at the jewel that glittered on Ged's palm, bright as the prize of a dragon's hoard. The old Master murmured one word, "Tolk," and there lay the pebble, no jewel but a rough grey bit of rock. The Master took it and held it out on his own hand. "This is a rock; tolk in the True Speech," he said, looking mildly up at Ged now. "A bit of the stone of which Roke Isle is made, a little bit of the dry land on which men live. It is itself. It is part of the world. By the Illusion-Change you can make it look like a diamond – or a flower or a fly or an eye or a flame – " The rock flickered from shape to shape as he named them, and returned to rock. "But that is mere seeming. Illusion fools the beholder's senses; it makes him see and hear and feel that the thing is changed. But it does not change the thing. To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son, even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world. It can be done. Indeed it can be done. It is the art of the Master Changer, and you will learn it, when you are ready to learn it. But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow..."
He looked down at the pebble again. "A rock is a good thing, too, you know," he said, speaking less gravely. "If the Isles of Eartbsea were all made of diamond, we'd lead a hard life here. Enjoy illusions, lad, and let the rocks be rocks.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
“
It must be obvious that in the high Middle Ages there was no possibility of the sort of naturalism which reduces the whole of reality to a mere sum of sense impressions any more than of a total replacement of feudal forms of rule by the bourgeois manner of life, nor again of any radical abolition of the spiritual dictatorship of the Church for a free and untrammelled secular culture. In art, as in all other fields of culture, what we find is just a certain balance between freedom and restraint. Gothic naturalism is an unstable equilibrium of world-affirming and world-denying impulses, just as the whole of chivalry is permeated by an inner contradiction, and just as the whole religious life of the period fluctuates between dogma and inwardness, between clerical creeds and lay piety, between orthodoxy and subjectivism. The same inner contradiction, the same spiritual polarity, manifests itself in all these social, religious and artistic oppositions.
”
”
Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages)
“
The distribution of salt throughout food can be explained by osmosis and diffusion, two chemical processes powered by nature’s tendency to seek equilibrium, or the balanced concentration of solutes such as minerals and sugars on either side of a semipermeable membrane (or holey cell wall). In food, the movement of water across a cell wall from the saltier side to the less salty side is called osmosis. Diffusion, on the other hand, is the often slower process of salt moving from a
”
”
Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat)
“
Franklin and Jefferson understood balance. They were part of an Enlightenment era that embraced the scientific method of testing and revising beliefs based on evidence. Both of them studied Isaac Newton, whose mechanics explained how contending forces could be brought into equilibrium. Their goal on contentious issues was not to triumph but to find the right balance, an art that has been lost today. Compromisers may not make great heroes, Franklin liked to say, but they do make great democracies.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (The Greatest Sentence Ever Written)
“
Making money in the markets is tough. The brilliant trader and investor Bernard Baruch put it well when he said, “If you are ready to give up everything else and study the whole history and background of the market and all principal companies whose stocks are on the board as carefully as a medical student studies anatomy—if you can do all that and in addition you have the cool nerves of a gambler, the sixth sense of a clairvoyant and the courage of a lion, you have a ghost of a chance.” In retrospect, the mistakes that led to my crash seemed embarrassingly obvious. First, I had been wildly overconfident and had let my emotions get the better of me. I learned (again) that no matter how much I knew and how hard I worked, I could never be certain enough to proclaim things like what I’d said on Wall $ treet Week: “There’ll be no soft landing. I can say that with absolute certainty, because I know how markets work.” I am still shocked and embarrassed by how arrogant I was. Second, I again saw the value of studying history. What had happened, after all, was “another one of those.” I should have realized that debts denominated in one’s own currency can be successfully restructured with the government’s help, and that when central banks simultaneously provide stimulus (as they did in March 1932, at the low point of the Great Depression, and as they did again in 1982), inflation and deflation can be balanced against each other. As in 1971, I had failed to recognize the lessons of history. Realizing that led me to try to make sense of all movements in all major economies and markets going back a hundred years and to come up with carefully tested decision-making principles that are timeless and universal. Third, I was reminded of how difficult it is to time markets. My long-term estimates of equilibrium levels were not reliable enough to bet on; too many things could happen between the time I placed my bets and the time (if ever) that my estimates were reached. Staring at these failings, I realized that if I was going to move forward without a high likelihood of getting whacked again, I would have to look at myself objectively and change—starting by learning a better way of handling the natural aggressiveness I’ve always shown in going after what I wanted. Imagine that in order to have a great life you have to cross a dangerous jungle. You can stay safe where you are and have an ordinary life, or you can risk crossing the jungle to have a terrific life. How would you approach that choice? Take a moment to think about it because it is the sort of choice that, in one form or another, we all have to make.
”
”
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
“
Nothing is consistent, nothing is fixed or certain, in my life. By turns I resemble and differ; there is no living creature so foreign to me that I cannot be sure of approaching. I do not yet know, at the age of 36, whether I am miserly or prodigal, temperate or greedy ... or
rather, being suddenly carried from one to the other extreme, in this very balancing I feel that my fate is being carried out. Why should I attempt to form, by artificially imitating myself, the artificial unity of my life? Only in movement can I find my equilibrium.
”
”
André Gide (Journals 1889-1949)
“
Nothing is consistent, nothing is fixed or certain, in my life. By turns I resemble and differ; there is no living creature so foreign to me that I cannot be sure of approaching. I do not yet know, at the age of 36, whether I am miserly or prodigal, temperate or greedy ... or rather, being suddenly carried from one to the other extreme, in this very balancing I feel that my fate is being carried out. Why should I attempt to form, by artificially imitating myself, the artificial unity of my life? Only in movement can I find my equilibrium.
”
”
André Gide (Journal 1942-1949 (French Edition))
“
[I]t is wrong to think of conversion as the decision of a man or as an agreement or contract between a man and God in which grace comes to a man only as a result of his decision to allow it. For one thing such an idea suggests that men before they are converted occupy a position of neutrality or of balance or equilibrium, and that a man by his decision is able to tip the balance one way or the other, to allow grace or to resist it. But any conscious decision, any turning to God, comes about as a result of being turned by God, by being regenerated.
”
”
Paul Helm (The Beginnings: Word and Spirit in Conversion)
“
Look at a strung bow lying on the ground or leaning against a wall. No movement is visible. To the eyes, it appears a static object, completely at rest. But in fact, a continuous tug-of-war is going on within it, as will become evident if the string is not strong enough, or is allowed to perish. The bow will immediately take advantage, snap it and leap to straighten itself, thus showing that each had been putting forth effort all the time. The harmonia was a dynamic one of vigorous and contrary motions neutralized by equilibrium and so unapparent.
”
”
W.K.C. Guthrie (A History of Greek Philosophy, Volume 1: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans)
“
The phases of Boldwood's life were ordinary enough, but his was not an ordinary nature. That stillness, which struck casual observers more than anything else in his character and habit, and seemed so precisely like the rest of inanition, may have been the perfect balance of enormous antagonistic forces—positives and negatives in fine adjustment. His equilibrium disturbed, he was in extremity at once. If an emotion possessed him at all, it ruled him; a feeling not mastering him was entirely latent. Stagnant or rapid, it was never slow. He was always hit mortally, or he was missed.
”
”
Thomas Hardy (Far from the Madding Crowd)
“
In a very real sense, it was a game, the very subtle and entirely serious game of comparative rank which is played by all social animals. It is the method by which individuals arrange themselves—horses in a herd, wolves in a pack, people in a community—so that they can live together. The game pits two opposing forces against each other, both equally important to survival: individual autonomy and community welfare. The object is to achieve dynamic equilibrium. At times and under certain conditions individuals can be nearly autonomous. An individual can live alone and have no worry about rank, but no species can survive without interaction between individuals. The ultimate price would be more final than death. It would be extinction. On the other hand, complete individual subordination to the group is just as devastating. Life is neither static nor unchanging. With no individuality, there can be no change, no adaptation and, in an inherently changing world, any species unable to adapt is also doomed. Humans in a community, whether it is as small as two people or as large as the world, and no matter what form the society takes, will arrange themselves according to some hierarchy. Commonly understood courtesies and customs can help to smooth the friction and ease the stress of maintaining a workable balance within this constantly changing system. In some situations most individuals will not have to compromise much of their personal independence for the welfare of the community. In others, the needs of the community may demand the utmost personal sacrifice of the individual, even to life itself. Neither is more right than the other, it depends on the circumstances; but neither extreme can be maintained for long, nor can a society last if a few people exercise their individuality at the expense of the community.
”
”
Jean M. Auel (The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children, #3))
“
Change happens.
Loss happens.
With or without your input.
Afraid you’ll fall, you’ll fail,
You’ll flail, you’ll falter.
The more you fall, the sooner you learn
How to recover, repair, rebuild.
The more you flail
Or falter, the more you get
How to regain equilibrium.
The more you fail, the more you see
Success demands—requires—
Failure.
Make a move.
Now.
Or now.
Take a breath.
Catch a breeze.
Like riding a bicycle
Your legs going round and round
Will build strength
Gain balance
Find a way.
Forward.
Beyond thought.
Beyond instruction.
The internal systems
Never forget.
You just have to
Make a move.
”
”
Shellen Lubin
“
Soon thereafter, a maid brought Poppy a tray of neat boxes tied with ribbons. Opening them, Poppy discovered that one was filled with toffee, another with boiled sweets, and another with Turkish delight. Best of all, one box was filled with a new confection called "eating-chocolates" that had been all the rage at the London Exhibition.
"Where did these come from?" Poppy asked Harry when he returned to her room after a brief visit to the front offices.
"From the sweet shop."
"No, these," Poppy showed him the eating-chocolates. "No one can get them. The makers, Fellows and Son, have closed their shop while they moved to a new location. The ladies at the philanthropic luncheon were talking about it."
"I sent Valentine to the Fellows residence to ask them to make a special batch for you." Harry smiled as he saw the paper twists scattered across the counterpane. "I see you've sampled them."
"Have one," Poppy said generously.
Harry shook his head. "I don't like sweets." But he bent down obligingly as she gestured for him to come closer. She reached out to him, her fingers catching the knot of his necktie.
Harry's smile faded as Poppy exerted gentle tension, drawing him down. He was suspended over her, an impending weight of muscle and masculine drive. As her sugared breath blew against his lips, she sensed the deep tremor within him. And she was aware of a new equilibrium between them, a balance of will and curiosity. Harry held still, letting her do as she wished.
She tugged him closer until her mouth brushed his. The contact was brief but vital, striking a glow of heat.
Poppy released him carefully, and Harry drew back.
"You won't kiss me for diamonds," he said, his voice slightly raspy, "but you will for chocolates?"
Poppy nodded.
As Harry turned his face away, she saw his cheek tauten with a smile. "I'll put in a daily order, then.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Tempt Me at Twilight (The Hathaways, #3))
“
The mind, like a spinning flywheel of fatigued steel, was gradually racked to bursting by the conflict of stresses. And yet: every equilibrium was an opposure of forces. Rotation, if swift enough, creates amazing stability: he had seen how the gyroscope can balance at apparently impossible angles. Perhaps it was so of the mind. If it twirls at high speed it can lean right out over the abyss without collapse. But the stationary mindhe thought of Bishop Borzoimust keep away from the edge. Try to force it to the edge, it raves in panic. Every mind, very likely, knows its own frailties, and does well to safeguard them.
”
”
Christopher Morley (The Works of Christopher Morley)
“
It’s possible to search in vain for that point where your running feels “just right.” As I considered the point of balance for myself, I was reminded of a quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. He wrote: “Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself.
”
”
John "The Penguin" Bingham (The Courage To Start: A Guide To Running for Your Life)
“
There are people who claim to love humanity, while others object that we can love only in the singular, that is, only individuals. I agree and add that what goes for love also goes for hate. Man, this being pining for equilibrium, balances the weight of the evil piled on his back with the weight of his hatred. But try directing your hatred at mere abstract principles, at injustice, fanaticism, cruelty, or, if you've managed to find the human principle itself hateful, then try hating mankind! Such hatreds are beyond human capacity, and so man, if he wishes to relieve his anger (aware as he is of its limited power) concentrates it on a single individual.
”
”
Milan Kundera (The Joke)
“
The trend toward the ownership of land by fewer and fewer individuals is, it seems to me, a disastrous thing. For when too large a proportion of the populace is supporting itself by the indirections of trade and business and commerce and art and the million schemes of men in cities, then the complexity of society is likely to become so great as to destroy its equilibrium, and it will always be out of balance in some way. But if a considerable portion of the people are occupied wholly or partially in labors that directly supply them with many things that they want, or think they want, whether it be a sweet pea or a sour pickle, then the public poise will be a good deal harder to upset.
”
”
E.B. White (E.B. White on Dogs)
“
The Great Carouser by Stewart Stafford
The Great Carouser approaches,
His belly as stacked cheddar rolls,
Used as a springboard for lust,
And a battering ram for tavern doors.
Shrieks of terror and welcome,
Greet his arrival with ale demands,
Tankards clank and merriment begins,
Lewd ditties and jokes by the bar.
Balancing acts on tables,
With tongues held hostage,
By braggadocio squatters,
In an intoxicated stranglehold.
Slurred speech and equilibrium loss,
Signal festivities end for the gang,
Staggering out into the starlit street,
Partners on each arm for shady exertions.
Then waking as if mauled by a bear,
A quick drink and a greasy feast initiated,
For the strange girls snoring in his bed,
The Great Carouser has struck again.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
”
”
Stewart Stafford
“
Illusion fools the beholder's senses; it makes him see and hear and feel that the thing is changed. But it does not change the thing. To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son, even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world. It can be done. Indeed it can be done. It is the art of the Master Changer, and you will learn it, when you are ready to learn it. But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is danger-ous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow ...
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
“
But that is mere seeming. Illusion fools the beholder’s senses; it makes him see and hear and feel that the thing is changed. But it does not change the thing. To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son, even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world. It can be done. Indeed it can be done. It is the art of the Master Changer, and you will learn it, when you are ready to learn it. But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow . .
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1))
“
In a house, as in a garden, there is a point when over-mingling can occur. At first, when the new plants are dug in, there is too much space between them. They seem artificial, temporary. Then, as they grow, the bed finds a point of balance, the taller trees occupying the upper layers, the sprawling shrubs - the hydrangeas, buddleia, pittosporum - filling out the middle, and the smaller bulbs and ground covers punctuating the under-spaces. Then, without warning, equilibrium is lost. A rampant jasmine covers an adolescent tree; a hydrangea thrives, forcing out a lilly pilly that struggles for light beneath a spreading magnolia. The spaces are subsumed. In the house, there was a period when everyone thrived. Even Heloise had been noticed by Jerome, who was sitting down with her on most days and doing sums and geography, and reading poetry. 'She has real talent,' he said to Helena, over the kitchen bench. She raised an eyebrow ambiguously but didn't comment. Then, slowly, the balance began to slip.
”
”
Emily Bitto (The Strays)
“
The newcomers and those who were at home were accustoming themselves to each other in their own way and their own time; getting to know what the strangers smelled like, how they moved, how they breathed, how they scratched, the feel of their rhythms and pulses. These were their topics and subjects of discussion, carried on without the need of speech. To a greater extent than a human in a similar gathering, each rabbit, as he pursued his own fragment, was sensitive to the trend of the whole. After a time, all knew that the concourse was not going to turn sour or break up in a fight. Just as a battle begins in a state of equilibrium between the two sides, which gradually alters one way or the other until it is clear that the balance has tilted so far that the issue can no longer be in doubt—so this gathering of rabbits in the dark, beginning with hesitant approaches, silences, pauses, movements, crouchings side by side and all manner of tentative appraisals, slowly moved, like a hemisphere of the world into summer, to a warmer, brighter region of mutual liking and approval, until all felt sure that they had nothing to fear.
”
”
Richard Adams (Watership Down)
“
Until the war had broken out, there had been some sort of order in the strange and complex mixture of the four disparate peoples crowded into the little valley, all calling themselves Bosnians. They celebrated separate holidays, ate different foods, feasted and fasted on different days, yet all depended on one another, but never admitted it. They had lived amidst an ever present, if dormant, mixture of hatred and love for each other. The Muslims with their Ramadan, the Jews with Passover, the Catholics with Christmas, and the Serbs with their Slavas- each of them tacitly tolerated and recognised the customs and existence of others. With suckling pigs turned on spits in Serbian houses, giving off a mouth-watering fragrance, kosher food would be eaten in Jewish homes, and in Muslim households, meals were cooked in suet. There was a certain harmony in all this, even if there was no actual mixing. The aromas had long ago adjusted to one another and had given the city its distinctive flavor. Everything was "as God willed it." But it was necessary to remove only one piece of that carefully balanced mosaic and that whole picture would fall into its component parts which would then, rejoined in an unthinkable manner, create hostile and incompatible entities. Like a hammer, the war had knocked out one piece, disrupting the equilibrium.
”
”
Gordana Kuić (Miris kiše na Balkanu)
“
If we now turn to strength of mind or soul, then the first question is, What are we to understand thereby?
Plainly it is not vehement expressions of feeling, nor easily excited passions, for that would be contrary to all the usage of language, but the power of listening to reason in the midst of the most intense excitement, in the storm of the most violent passions. Should this power depend on strength of understanding alone? We doubt it. The fact that there are men of the greatest intellect who cannot command themselves certainly proves nothing to the contrary, for we might say that it perhaps requires an understanding of a powerful rather than of a comprehensive nature; but we believe we shall be nearer the truth if we assume that the power of submitting oneself to the control of the understanding, even in moments of the most violent excitement of the feelings, that power which we call self-command, has its root in the heart itself. It is, in point of fact, another feeling, which in strong minds balances the excited passions without destroying them; and it is only through this equilibrium that the mastery of the understanding is secured. This counterpoise is nothing but a sense of the dignity of man, that noblest pride, that deeply-seated desire of the soul always to act as a being endued with understanding and reason. We may therefore say that a strong mind is one which does not lose its balance even under the most violent excitement.
”
”
Carl von Clausewitz (On War)
“
I want to find you, where you don't know your own existence, the you that your common self denies utterly. But I don't want your good looks, and I don't want your womanly feelings, and I don't want your thoughts nor opinions nor your ideas -- they are all bagatelles to me.'
`You are very conceited, Monsieur,' she mocked. `How do you know what my womanly feelings are, or my thoughts or my ideas? You don't even know what I think of you now.'
`Nor do I care in the slightest.'
`I think you are very silly. I think you want to tell me you love me, and you go all this way round to do it.'
`All right,' he said, looking up with sudden exasperation. `Now go away then, and leave me alone. I don't want any more of your meretricious persiflage.'
`Is it really persiflage?' she mocked, her face really relaxing into laughter. She interpreted it, that he had made a deep confession of love to her. But he was so absurd in his words, also.
They were silent for many minutes, she was pleased and elated like a child. His concentration broke, he began to look at her simply and naturally.
`What I want is a strange conjunction with you --' he said quietly; `not meeting and mingling -- you are quite right -- but an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings -- as the stars balance each other.'
She looked at him. He was very earnest, and earnestness was always rather ridiculous, commonplace, to her. It made her feel unfree and uncomfortable. Yet she liked him so much. But why drag in the stars.
”
”
D.H. Lawrence (Women in Love)
“
RAIN IN MEASURED AMOUNTS
Another item of information provided in the Qur'an about rain is
that it is sent down to Earth in "due measure." This is mentioned in
Surat az-Zukhruf as follows:
It is He Who sends down water in measured amounts from the sky by
which We bring a dead land back to life. That is how you too will be
raised [from the dead]. (Qur'an, 43:11)
This measured quantity in rain has again been discovered by modern
research. It is estimated that in one second, approximately 16 million
tons of water evaporates from the Earth. This figure amounts to
513 trillion tons of water in one year. This number is equal to the
amount of rain that falls on the Earth in a year. Therefore, water continuously
circulates in a balanced cycle, according to a "measure." Life
on Earth depends on this water cycle. Even if all the available technology
in the world were to be employed for this purpose, this cycle could
not be reproduced artificially.
Even a minor deviation in this equilibrium would soon give rise to
a major ecological imbalance that would bring about the end of life on
Earth. Yet, it never happens, and rain continues to fall every year in
exactly the same measure, just as revealed in the Qur'an.
The proportion of rain does not merely apply to its quantity, but
also to the speed of the falling raindrops. The speed of raindrops,
regardless of their size, does not exceed a certain limit.
Philipp Lenard, a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize
in physics in 1905, found that the fall speed increased with drop diameter
until a size of 4.5 mm (0.18 inch). For larger drops, however, the fall
speed did not increase beyond 8 metres per second (26 ft/sec).57 He
attributed this to the changes in drop shape caused by the air flow as
the drop size increased. The change in shape thus increased the air
Allah's Miracles in the Qur'an
113
resistance of the drop and slowed its fall rate.
As can be seen, the Qur'an may also be drawing our attention to
the subtle adjustment in rain which could not have been known 1,400
years ago.
Harun Yahya
Every year, the amount of water that evaporates and that falls back to the
Earth in the form of rain is "constant": 513 trillion tons. This constant
amount is declared in the Qur'an by the expression "sending down water in
due measure from the sky." The constancy of this quantity is very important
for the continuity of the ecological balance, and therefore, life.
”
”
Harun Yahya (Allah's Miracles in the Qur'an)
“
My rights are that part of my power which others have not merely conceded me, but which they wish me to preserve. How do these others arrive at that? First: through their prudence and fear and caution: whether in that they expect something similar from us in return (protection of their own rights); or in that they consider that a struggle with us would be perilous or to no purpose; or in that they see in any diminution of our force a disadvantage to themselves, since we would then be unsuited to forming an alliance with them in opposition to a hostile third power. Then: by donation and cession. In this case, others have enough and more than enough power to be able to dispose of some of it and to guarantee to him they have given it to the portion of it they have given: in doing so they presuppose a feeble sense of power in him who lets himself be thus donated to. That is how rights originate: recognised and guaranteed degrees of power. If power-relationships undergo any material alteration, rights disappear and new ones are created as is demonstrated in the continual disappearance and reformation of rights between nations. If our power is materially diminished, the feeling of those who have hitherto guaranteed our rights changes: they consider whether they can restore us to the full possession we formerly enjoyed if they feel unable to do so, they henceforth deny our 'rights'. Likewise, if our power is materially increased, the feeling of those who have hitherto recognised it but whose recognition is no longer needed changes: they no doubt attempt to suppress it to its former level, they will try to intervene and in doing so will allude to their 'duty' but this is only a useless playing with words. Where rights prevail, a certain condition and degree of power is being maintained, a diminution and increment warded off. The rights of others constitute a concession on the part of our sense of power to the sense of power of those others. If our power appears to be deeply shaken and broken, our rights cease to exist: conversely, if we have grown very much more powerful, the rights of others, as we have previously conceded them, cease to exist for us. The 'man who wants to be fair' is in constant need of the subtle tact of a balance: he must be able to assess degrees of power and rights, which, given the transitory nature of human things, will never stay in equilibrium for very long but will usually be rising or sinking: being fair is consequently difficult and demands much practice and good will, and very much very good sense.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality)
“
At all these studies Ged was apt, and within a month was bettering lads who had been a year at Roke before him. Especially the tricks of illusion came to him so easily that it seemed he had been born knowing them and needed only to be reminded. The Master Hand was a gentle and lighthearted old man, who had endless delight in the wit and beauty of the crafts he taught; Ged soon felt no awe of him, but asked him for this spell and that spell, and always the Master smiled and showed him what he wanted. But one day, having it in mind to put Jasper to shame at last, Ged said to the Master Hand in the Court of Seeming, 'Sir, all these charms are much the same; knowing one, you know them all. And as soon as the spell-weaving ceases, the illusion vanishes. Now if I make a pebble into a diamond-' and he did so with a word and a flick of his wrist 'what must I do to make that diamond remain diamond? How is the changing-spell locked, and made to last?'
The Master Hand looked at the jewel that glittered on Ged's palm, bright as the prize of a dragon's hoard. The old Master murmured one word, 'Tolk,' and there lay the pebble, no jewel but a rough grey bit of rock. The Master took it and held it out on his own hand. 'This is a rock; tolk in the True Speech,' he said, looking mildly up at Ged now. 'A bit of the stone of which Roke Isle is made, a little bit of the dry land on which men live. It is itself. It is part of the world. By the Illusion-Change you can make it look like a diamond -or a flower or a fly or an eye or a flame-' The rock flickered from shape to shape as he named them, and returned to rock. 'But that is mere seeming. Illusion fools the beholder's senses; it makes him see and hear and feel that the thing is changed. But it does not change the thing. To change this rock into a jewel, you must change its true name. And to do that, my son, even to so small a scrap of the world, is to change the world. It can be done. Indeed it can be done. It is the art of the Master Changer, and you will learn it, when you are ready to learn it. But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow...'
He looked down at the pebble again. 'A rock is a good thing, too, you know,' he said, speaking less gravely. 'If the Isles of Earthsea were all made of diamond, we'd lead a hard life here. Enjoy illusions, lad, and let the rocks be rocks.' He smiled, but Ged left dissatisfied.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (A Wizard Of Earthsea)
“
There is a rhythmic interchange between positive and negative. The high becomes low, the low becomes high. Everything is exchanging with its opposite to create a state of equilibrium. Each must become the other to achieve balance. The discharged must become charged, and the charged must become discharged. The universe always wants to be balanced, and in a state of equilibrium.
”
”
Laurence Galian (666: Connection with Crowley)
“
White equilibrium is a cocoon of racial comfort, centrality, superiority, entitlement, racial apathy, and obliviousness, all rooted in an identity of being good people free of racism. Challenging this cocoon throws off our racial balance. Because being racially off balance is so rare, we have not had to build the capacity to sustain the discomfort. Thus, whites find these challenges unbearable and want them to stop.
”
”
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
“
White equilibrium is a cocoon of racial comfort, centrality, superiority, entitlement, racial apathy, and obliviousness, all rooted in an identity of being good people free of racism. Challenging this cocoon throws off our racial balance. Because being racially off balance is so rare, we have not had to build the capacity to sustain the discomfort.
”
”
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
“
Fact: Being near her screwed with his equilibrium. He didn’t care if his tattoo said he was balanced. He knew how he felt, and his emotions were in turmoil. How could that be good? Fact: He couldn’t afford weakness—just touching her blocked out all sense of greed in the building. Fact: She distracted him, and that was dangerous. When she had her hands on him, he couldn’t breathe from the intensity of his irrational desire for her. It was illogical
”
”
Lana Pecherczyk (Greed (The Deadly Seven, #2))
“
Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
The adaptability of our brain is remarkable. By simply adjusting our mindset, we can rewire our neural pathways, leading us to a more harmonious life-work balance.” - Marlene Gonzalez, Author of Brain Boost
“Your brain is an intricate maestro, orchestrating everything from your heartbeat to your decisions. It's pivotal in determining how you balance emotions with the demands of work and life.” - Marlene Gonzalez, Author of Brain Boost
“The brain's incredible ability for neuroplasticity reminds us that we can always learn, adapt, and find equilibrium in our work-life balance.” - Marlene Gonzalez, Author of Brain Boost
“While emotional intelligence and personality types offer insights into behavioral prowess, understanding how the brain functions adds depth, guiding us towards more effective leadership and a balanced life.” - Marlene Gonzalez, Author of Brain Boost
“Consider your brain as a trainable muscle. By nurturing it, you not only strengthen resilience against stress but also pave the way for a balanced life and work journey.” - Marlene Gonzalez, Author of Brain Boost
”
”
Marlene Gonzalez (Brain Boost: Developing Leaders Through Neuroplasticity)
“
Metternich system, in a world consisting of three major elements: the European balance of power; an internal German equilibrium between Austria and Prussia; and a system of alliances based on the unity of conservative values.
”
”
Henry Kissinger (Diplomacy)
“
infinite intelligence which gave me this desire leads, guides and reveals to me the perfect plan for the unfolding of my desire. I know the deeper wisdom of my subconscious is now responding, and what I feel and claim within is expressed in the without. There is a balance, equilibrium and equanimity.
”
”
Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind)
“
She needed balance. Her own moon that would rise and fall with her, keeping her equilibrium, loving her unconditionally.
”
”
Lola Akinmade Åkerström (In Every Mirror She's Black)
“
Gli Dei delle Stelle crearono tre Mondi, tre realtà parallele e distanti tra loro, nel tempo e nello spazio, ma legate in modo indissolubile, mondi in cui tutti gli esseri potevano vivere in pace e armonia, tra loro e con la terra che popolavano.
Gli Dei delle Stelle avevano grande sapienza, conoscevano tutti i segreti dell'universo, sicuramente crearono altri mondi e altri esseri in realtà sconosciute, ma questo è un discorso che ci porterebbe troppo lontano…
”
”
E.C. Bröwa (Nel mondo del tempo (Al di là delle valli gemelle, #1))
“
ROOT CHAKRA—MULADHARA The Root Chakra is at the root of your tailbone and is your equilibrium hub. You feel stressed, shaky, and dizzy or as if you have a vertigo when it's out of balance. You feel unable to make progress in your life, on personal or professional grounds, when this chakra becomes overactive and you feel stuck in your key relationships. All situations feel deeply unsettling to you, as if the change rests on your very being. This is because the Root Chakra is your prime balance point between the ‘Below and the Above’. An unbalanced or unattended Root Chakra can influence any aspect of your life, which is why many energy workers and Reiki practitioners take a bottom-up approach to chakra practice, beginning from the Root (or even deeper from the Earth Star) and moving upward to the Third Hand, Crown, and Soul Star Core networks. You are free to move freely in the universe when your Root Chakra is healthy, visible and working well, realizing you are safe, protected and seen. In Sanskrit, this chakra's name, Muladhara, means "foundation" or "pillar." That's where male sexual energy resides in the physical body (the Sacral Chakra sits on feminine sexual energy). Where the Earth Star Chakra is a gateway to the Earthly Kingdom of rocks, stones, and subterranean pathways of spirit animals and insects, the Root Chakra is a portal to our connection with our own physical realm— the physical goods and systems that keep us safe in the three-dimensional world we inhabit right now. The Root Chakra's masculine strength isn't explicitly male; it's a protective force field that can offer anybody a profound sense of comfort regardless of their sexual orientation or affiliation. You will find a stable partner for your journey as you begin to communicate with the masculine energy source, one that can support, sustain, and lead you toward the best outcome for your work and life. In terms of energy, manifestation is the act of forming thought, or of creating your desires. The very act of creation demands that you indulge in a greater density of matter, drawing in forces to create new form that involves a strong binding of your soul to the Earth. If you manifest from an ungrounded place, it will be temporary and fleeting to your creations. Imagine building a building without a firm foundation. You wouldn't even imagine doing this, would you? Well then, neither should you try to create or manifest from an ungrounded floating position within the ethers.
”
”
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.)
“
It is possible for the human being to achieve a state of equilibrium and not to desire anything in life. The state of not liking or hating anything that is presented to your senses.
”
”
Mwanandeke Kindembo
“
MY EQUILIBRIUM IS interior. A refusal to succumb to inherited feelings of helplessness. Equilibrium, for me, was balancing internal conflict. It wasn’t possible for my mother to have a feeling and not discharge it immediately. It was up to me to not lose my balance and adjust.
”
”
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
“
Vastu shastra is yoga for architecture and by balancing all 8 directions, panch mahabhootas ie 5 elements and energies with in a space a perfect equilibrium of health and happiness may be achieved in homes and work places alike.
Dr. Vaishali Gupta is a Vedic scholar & modern researcher of the science of Vastushastra, with more than 15 years of experience and expertise in the field. Although Dr. Vaishali Gupta has worked in all areas of Vastu but she specializes in commercial and industrial vastu and has a long list of industrial clients in India and abroad. She is a qualified interior designer and has done in depth study of building construction.
This gives her immense understanding of dealing with buildings, plans, elevations & sections etc. and she is known for giving simple yet effective vastu solutions, for homes, offices restaurants, factories etc. She is one of the few Vastu Consultants who take the natal chart of the owner into consideration while giving vastu solutions as she firmly believes that both vastu and astrology go hand in hand.
”
”
Dr. Vaishali Gupta
“
The sun works the day shift; the moon, the night shift.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson (Song of a Nature Lover)
“
Knowing the earth’s albedo (as averaged over the globe and daily and seasonal cycles), we can determine its equilibrium temperature by balancing the sunlight absorbed against the infrared cooling. As we discussed, that cooling becomes stronger as the temperature increases—if the earth gets hotter, it emits more heat—making it a kind of thermostat.
”
”
Steven E. Koonin (Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters)
“
Though we’re generally not aware of it, we are continually sensing and processing information from the outside world; based upon this input, our brain and body respond in ways that help keep us connected, alive, and thriving. When we are pushed out of equilibrium—out of balance—we have a set of stress-response systems that will be activated to help us.
”
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Bruce D. Perry (What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing)
“
Our journey spirals inwardly towards the central point—our unique Self—contrasted with the separate self. This unique Self represents a perfect equilibrium of immanence and transcendence, particle and wave, parts and whole. It neither rejects nor clings to either polarity, instead guiding from a harmonious balance between the opposing spectrums. The unique Self transcends the ego's constraints and the abstraction of nondual awareness, allowing us to fully embody the human form while recognizing our spiritual nature. Without realizing and gravitating towards this unique Self, we remain subject to the ego's chaotic attempts to manage disparate parts. The unique Self exerts a grounding, centering gravitational force similar to Earth's pull, providing a stable point of attraction. While the transpersonal Self is the boundless, aware presence containing everything, analogous to the limitless expanse of outer space beyond Earth.
”
”
Laura Patryas (Awaken To Love: Reclaiming Wholeness through Embodied Nonduality with Jungian Wisdom, Psychosynthesis & Internal Family Systems)
“
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Qi Coil Life store
“
Originally man lived in isolation; with the support of nature every individual tried to maintain his equilibrium between sinful temptations. This filled the whole of his life, there was no room for interest in others nor worry about the future; as a result labour did not exist, nor did sorrow, hate, fear, or lust. But man was not content, he began to search for power over others and for certainty about the future. In this way the balance was broken, labour became more and more and more diabolical. In the end everyone wielded power and suffered suppression at the same time. The old instinct of separation and isolation has survived only in the form of pale envy and jealousy.
”
”
L.E.J. Brouwer (Vita, arte e mistica)
“
The organs and elements either generate or destroy each other in a particular pattern. This idea is a reflection of the Chinese principle of restoring equilibrium through balancing opposites (yin-yang) or of wuxing, which refers to the interlocking nature of the five elements. The idea of wuxing explains that each element exerts a generative and subjugative influence on one another. Wood will generate (or feed) fire and fire will generate new earth. Elements also subjugate or destroy each other. A practitioner diagnoses which elements might need to be generated or decreased and will figure treatment accordingly. Understanding this cycle is the key to creating balance within the system. GENERATIVE INTERACTIONS wood feeds fire fire creates earth earth bears metal metal collects water water nourishes wood DESTRUCTIVE INTERACTIONS These are often called “overcoming” interactions, as they involve one element being destroyed or changed by another: wood parts earth earth takes in water water quenches fire fire melts metal metal chops wood The ancient Chinese had a different idea of anatomy than Western physicians. Instead of being characterized by their position in the body, the organs were understood by the role they played within the overall system. They were therefore described by their interdependent relationships and connection to the skin via the blood (xue), fluids, meridians, and the three vital treasures described below. Just as organs flow in five phases, so do the seasons and points on the compass. There are four directions, with China representing the fifth (at the center). Unlike the Western compass, the Chinese compass emphasizes the south. This is summer, the hottest time of the year. It is appropriately linked to fire. West is the setting of the sun and is associated with autumn and metal, while north is winter and water (the opposite of the south). East, the rising sun, is linked with spring and wood. Earth is related to the center of the compass and late summer. If any of these phases are out of balance, the entire system is unbalanced. Blocks or stagnation anywhere can result in problems, as can excess or lack. A proper diagnosis will integrate all of these factors. FIGURE 4.20 THE FIVE CHINESE ELEMENTS THE THREE VITAL TREASURES The Three Treasures, sometimes called the Three Jewels, are keystones in traditional Chinese medicine. From the Taoist perspective, these three treasures constitute the essential forces of life, which are considered to be three forms of the same substance. These three treasures are: •Jing, basic or nutritive essence, seen as represented in sperm, among other substances. •Chi, life force connected with air, vapor, breath, and spirit. •Shen, spiritual essence linked with the soul and supernaturalism. Most often, jing is related to body energy, chi to mind energy, and shen to spiritual energy. These three energies cycle, with jing serving as the foundation for life and procreation, chi animating the body’s performance, and shen mirroring the state of the soul.
”
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Cyndi Dale (The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy)
“
But the most old-fashioned research topic of all - an idea Western culture had known since the time of Aristotle as "the balance of nature," the presence of a dynamic equilibrium in the natural world - began to push ecological sicence in the direction of understanding the role of predators. The Biological Survey's policies (the federal predator control agency) assumed the European fold position: predators were entirely disposable, and the banishment of wolves and cougards and coyotes from America would create a civilized paradise for deer and elk and ranchers and sheepmen.
”
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Dan Flores (Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History)
“
Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that’s the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the Balance of the Whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale’s sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat’s flight, all they do is done within the Balance of the Whole. But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the Balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility. Who am I—though I have the power to do it—to punish and reward, playing with men’s destinies?
”
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Ursula K. Le Guin (The Farthest Shore (Earthsea Cycle, #3))
“
The infinite intelligence which gave me this desire leads and guides me. It reveals the perfect plan for the unfolding of my desire. I know the deeper wisdom of my subconscious is now responding, and what I feel and claim within is expressed in the without. There is a balance, equilibrium, and equanimity.
”
”
Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind)
“
The order of the universe is defined as consciousness’s entanglement with itself within the holographic universe. The Law of Attraction states: The degree to which you accept/love yourself will be reflected in all that is attracted to you. Intimately connected with the above universal law, yet specifically associated with the organizational balance between Psychological Reality Framework One and Two, The Law of Consciousness Equilibrium states: The Dynamic System of Consciousness has a constant, propensity towards balancing the physical, emotional and spiritual value climate between Psychological Framework One and Two, thereby providing stabilizing, expansive solutions vital to the survival/evolution of the individual.
”
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Hope Bradford (the healing power of dreams)
“
Perhaps it is a matter of celestial balance,” he reflected. “A sort of cosmic equilibrium. Perhaps the aggregate experience of Time is a constant and thus for our children to establish such vivid impressions of this particular June, we must relinquish our claims upon it.” “So that they might remember, we must forget,” Vasily summed up.
”
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Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow)
“
In Firestone’s dialectic of tech (or specifically reprotech), it is the revolutionary capacity of technological progress that establishes the crucial link between feminism, population control, and ecological sustainability. Greater technological control over both production and reproduction is thus the ultimate ethical and political imperative that links the future of the female to the future of the human race, as the rate of population growth eventually becomes a matter of human survival, against which biology can no longer be protected as a “moral” question. “Thus,” she argued,
in view of accelerating technology, a revolutionary ecological movement would have the same aim as the feminist movement: control of the new technology for humane purposes, the establishment of a new equilibrium between man and the new artificial environment he is creating, to replace the destroyed “natural” balance.
”
”
Mandy Merck (Further Adventures of The Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone (Breaking Feminist Waves))
“
How can we achieve a state of equilibrium or balance in the body when the Earth itself rotates daily?
”
”
Mwanandeke Kindembo
“
But surely, there is a comfort to be taken from that,” continued the Count. “For even as the weeks begin racing by in a blur for us, they are making the greatest of impressions upon our children. When one turns seventeen and begins to experience that first period of real independence, one’s senses are so alert, one’s sentiments so finely attuned that every conversation, every look, every laugh may be writ indelibly upon one’s memory. And the friends that one happens to make in those impressionable years? One will meet them forever after with a welling of affection.” Having expressed this paradox, the Count happened to look across the lobby, where Grisha was lugging the luggage of one guest toward the front desk as Genya lugged the luggage of another toward the door. “Perhaps it is a matter of celestial balance,” he reflected. “A sort of cosmic equilibrium. Perhaps the aggregate experience of Time is a constant and thus for our children to establish such vivid impressions of this particular June, we must relinquish our claims upon it.” “So that they might remember, we must forget,” Vasily summed up.
”
”
Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow)
“
SOUND: Striking a Harmonious Auditory Balance Sound sensitivities can disrupt your equilibrium. Make a list of sounds that bring you comfort so you can refer to it when you need to be soothed. Consider using tools like noise-canceling headphones or sound machines to regulate your auditory experiences.
”
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Megan Anna Neff (Self-Care for Autistic People: 100+ Ways to Recharge, De-Stress, and Unmask!)
“
Life balance is not about achieving perfect symmetry or equal attention to every aspect. It is about prioritizing what matters most to you at any given time and finding a sustainable equilibrium that aligns with your values and goals.
”
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Janani Srikanth (QUESTION THE ANSWERS: A Toolkit for Personal Transformation)
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Without balance, equilibrium and knowledge of self people will always get drawn to low frequency energy, topics and themes, getting dumbed down, losing their soul bit by bit without even realising it, which means they’ll eventually hit a wall of unfulfillment, which can only be solved by looking within, not without.
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Henry Joseph-Grant
“
I take steps to restore equilibrium in my life. It’s easy to get thrown off kilter and lose our center of gravity when we have too much work and too little play; too much stress and too little calm; too many screens and too little nature; too much world and too little silence. If this sounds familiar, consider taking a seriously lighthearted look at balance.
”
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Mary Davis (Every Day Spirit: A Daybook of Wisdom, Joy and Peace)
“
In the same year, Musashi adopted another son, but this time it was a blood relative. Iori was the second son of Tahara Hisamitsu, Musashi’s older brother by four years, and he was retained to serve the Akashi daimyō, Ogasawara Tadazane. With his newly adopted son gainfully employed, Musashi became a “guest” of Tadazane and moved to Akashi. Iori was clearly a gifted young man, and five years later, at the age of twenty, was promoted to the distinguished position of “elder” of the domain. As a guest in the Honda house in Himeji and then the Ogasawara house, Musashi cultivated his artistic expression. He started studying Zen, painting, sculpture and even landscape design, and fraternized with distinguished artists and scholars such as Hayashi Razan. He had a free hand to do as he liked, and he liked to be creative. Having just emerged from an era of incessant warfare, proficiency in the more refined arts had become once again a desirable attribute in high society. It was during this period that Musashi realized how the various arts had much in common in terms of the search for perfection. He understood that the arts and occupations were “Ways” in their own right, by no means inferior to the Way of the warrior. This attitude differs from writings by other warriors, which are typically underpinned by hints of exclusivity, even arrogance, toward those not in “Club Samurai.” That said, the ideal of bunbu ryōdō (the two ways of brush and sword in accord) had long been a mainstay of samurai culture. Samurai literature from the fourteenth century onwards exhibits a concern for balancing martial aptitude with the refinement in the genteel arts and civility; namely an equilibrium between bu (martial) and bun (letters or the arts). For example, Shiba Yoshimasa’s Chikubasho (1383) admonishes the ruling class to pay attention to matters of propriety, self-cultivation, and attention to detail. “If a man has attained ability in the arts, it is possible to ascertain the depth of his mind, and the demeanor of his clan can be ascertained. In this world, honour and reputation are valued above all else. Thus, a man is able to accrue standing in society by virtue of competence in the arts and so should try to excel in them too, regardless of whether he has ability or not… It goes without saying that a man should be dexterous in military pursuits using the bow and arrow…” This was easier said than done in times of constant social turmoil and the chaos of war, but is exactly what Musashi turned his attention to as he entered the twilight years of his life. His pursuit for perfection in both military arts and other artistic Ways is perhaps why he is so revered to this day.
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Alexander Bennett (The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works)
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Therapy is a compelling tool of Right Effort. A skilled therapist can tell when patients are acting out an emotion rather than acknowledging it, or when they are numbing themselves to escape from something that feels overwhelming. Right Effort seeks to create a context in which learned habits of indulging or denying feelings can be divested. These habits are the equivalents of striking the lute too tightly or too loosely. Too tight is like the rigidity of people chronically clamping down on their feelings. Too loose is like giving feelings free rein, assuming that because we feel them they are "true" and must be taken seriously. Right Effort is an attempt to find balance in the midst of all this. From a therapeutic point of view, it means trusting that an inherent wisdom can emerge when we avoid the two extremes. This wisdom, or clear comprehension, is the emotional equivalent of a therapist's evenly suspended attention. Buddha believed this emotional equilibrium was possible for everyone. Feelings are confusing but they also make sense. A therapist's job is to help bring this equilibrium into awareness. There is a wonderful sound when it dawns.
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Mark Epstein (Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself)
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them entertained and supplied with a surfeit of horseflesh. But none to really worry about. Their source of food and sustenance, the buffalo, roamed the plains in record numbers and still ranged into every corner of Comancheria. The tribe’s low birth rates virtually guaranteed that their nomadic life following buffalo herds was infinitely sustainable. Their world was thus suspended in what seemed to be a perfect equilibrium, a balance of earth and wind and sun and sky that would endure forever. An empire under the bright summer moon. For those who witnessed the change at a very intimate and personal level, including Cynthia Ann and her husband, the speed with which that ideal world was dismantled must have seemed scarcely believable. She herself, the daughter of pioneers who were hammering violently at the age-old Comanche barrier that had defeated all other comers, now adopted into a culture that was beginning to die, was the emblem of the change. Somehow she and her husband, Peta Nocona, survived the cataclysm. As nomads, they moved constantly. One imagines her on one of these migrations, on horseback, moving slowly across the open grassy plain with hundreds of others, warriors in the vanguard, toward a wide, hazy horizon that would have looked to white men like unalloyed emptiness. There were the long trains of heavily packed mules and horses and the ubiquitous Comanche dogs. There were horses dragging travois that carried the huge tent poles and piled buffalo hides and scored the earth as they went along—perfectly parallel lines drawn on the prairie, merging and vanishing into the pale-blue Texas sky. All trailed by the enormous horse remuda, the source of their wealth. It must have been something to behold. Cynthia Ann lived a hard life. Women did all of the brutally hard work, including most of the work that went into moving camp. They did it from dawn till dark, led brief difficult lives, and did not complain about it; they did everything except hunt and fight. Her camp locations show just how far she roamed. Pah-hah-yuco’s camps were found in 1843 north of the Red River and south of modern-day Lawton, Oklahoma, on Cache Creek (the encampment was on a creek bank on the open prairie and stretched for half a mile).25 In 1844 he was camped on the Salt Plains of present-day north-central Oklahoma, on the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River,26 well north of the Washita, where Williams found him in 1846. In 1847 his band was spotted a hundred miles north of Austin, in rolling, lightly timbered prairie, camped in a village of one hundred fifty lodges,27 and again that same year in a village in the limestone hills and mesas west of Austin. She was identified as being with the Tennawish band in 1847, who often camped with the Penateka (with whom Pah-hah-yuco was often
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S.C. Gwynne (Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History)
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For if a bad action springs from the nature, i.e. the inborn constitution, of a human being, then the blame obviously resides with the originator of this nature. That is why free will was invented. But then, with that assumed, what the action is supposed to have sprung from cannot be understood at all – because the free will is fundamentally a merely negative property and signifies only that nothing necessitates, or hinders, the human being’s acting thus or so. But in this way it never becomes clear what in the end the action springs from, since it is not supposed to arise from the inborn or acquired constitution of the human being, as it would then become a burden to his creator, nor from external circumstances alone, as then it would be attributable to accident; so the human being would remain blameless either way – while in fact he is made responsible for it. The natural image of a free will is an unweighted balance: it hangs there calmly, and will never come out of equilibrium unless something is placed in one of its scales. Just as it can produce no movement out of itself, no more can the free will produce an action out of itself; because indeed nothing comes out of nothing.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (On the Freedom of the Human Will)
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Christopher Elwell from Woburn, MA, embodies success, harmonizing IT proficiency, professional dedication, and genuine personal connections. In his leisure, he embraces golfing and curling, fostering relaxation and equilibrium, emblematic of his balanced persona and dedication to a harmonious work-life blend.
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Christopher Elwell Woburn, MA
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If you think of our planet as a living, breathing organism, the forests are the lungs. They create a perfect balance to our own respiratory process by absorbing millions of tons of CO2 into the soil and exhaling oxygen into the air, exactly what is needed to maintain equilibrium of animal life with plant life and create the livable atmosphere we all enjoy. However, we are losing this integral part of our ecosystem on a massive scale, and it is largely due to the persistence of meat centered diets.
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Hope Bohanec (The Ultimate Betrayal: Is There Happy Meat?)
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Jack and Ev looked at each other for a moment in the boardroom. At that moment neither realized that they were both fundamental to what Twitter had become. The perfect equilibrium of two different ways of looking at the world: the need to talk about yourself, compared with the need to let people talk about what was happening around them. One could never have existed without the other. That balance, or battle, had created Twitter. A tool that could be used by corporate titans and teens, by celebrities and nobodies, by government officials and revolutionaries. A place where people with fundamentally different views of the world, like Jack and Ev, could converse.
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Nick Bilton (Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal)
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7. Calmness of Mind. The Yogi breathing above mentioned is fit rather for physical exercise than for mental balance, and it will be beneficial if you take that exercise before or after Meditation. Japanese masters mostly bold it very important to push forward. The lowest part of the abdomen during Zazen, and they are right so far as the present writer's personal experiences go. 'If you feel your mind distracted, look at the tip of the nose; never lose sight of it for some time, or look at your own palm, and let not your mind go out of it, or gaze at one spot before you.' This will greatly help you in restoring the equilibrium of your mind. Chwang Tsz[FN#248] thought that calmness of mind is essential to sages, and said: "The stillness of the sages does not belong to them as a consequence of their skilful ability; all things are not able to disturb their minds; it is on this account that they are still. When water is still, its clearness shows the beard and eyebrows (of him who looks into it). It is a perfect level, and the greatest artificer takes his rule from it. Such is the clearness of still water, and how much greater is that of the human spirit? The still mind of the sage is the mirror of heaven and earth, the glass of all things." Forget all worldly concerns, expel all cares and anxieties, let go of passions and desires, give up ideas and thoughts, set your mind at liberty absolutely, and make it as clear as a burnished mirror. Thus let flow your inexhaustible fountain of purity, let open your inestimable treasure of virtue, bring forth your inner hidden nature of goodness, disclose your innermost divine wisdom, and waken your Enlightened Consciousness to see Universal Life within you. "Zazen enables the practiser," says Kei-zan,[FN#249] "to open up his mind, to see his own nature, to become conscious of mysteriously pure and bright spirit, or eternal light within him." [FN#248]
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Kaiten Nukariya (The Religion of the Samurai A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and Japan)
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History has taught us that when understanding and tolerance are fostered, people of different faiths can live together in harmony. Regrettably, history has also taught us the opposite, that such states of equilibrium can quickly degenerate and succumb to rhetoric of anger and fear, sometimes leading to violence and even war. A balance of mutual respect and tolerance needs to be maintained through good works. Interrelations need continual nurturing.
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Gudjon Bergmann (Experifaith: At the Heart of Every Religion; An Experiential Approach to Individual Spirituality and Improved Interfaith Relations)
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balance,” he reflected. “A sort of cosmic equilibrium.
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Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow)
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What happened to us yesterday,” said Dominika, “when we survived last night, and later on with you, I found something that was lacking from before. How do you say ravnovesie?”
“Equilibrium,” said Nate. He saw where this was going, and it scared him, because he was thinking the same thing.
“Yes, equilibrium. Balance. I did not feel that before, but now we have it. I need it.” She put her hands on his shoulders, and dug her nails in softly. She looked coyly at him. “I need you.”
“Last night. Last night was wonderful …, ” said Nate. “But you can’t work inside if we’re having an affair. We need focus, calculation, a clear—”
“Bozhe, Oh God,” said Dominika. “I am having an affair, I cannot go back inside. Gore mne, woe is me!”
“Keep your voice down, for God’s sake,” said Nate.
“Dushka, listen to me,” said Dominika. “What we have, it makes things stronger, it makes me stronger. There is nothing wrong in this. Bratok is wrong, you all are wrong.
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Jason Matthews (Palace of Treason (Red Sparrow Trilogy, #2))
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The woman dying of cancer in The Barracks facing the raw fear of everything in her life disintegrating. The abused adolescent boy in The Dark whose life is torn open for us. They are such raw books of individuals facing the terrors of life. But then these individuals began to merge more into group portraits. That's not to say he's not still searching for a balance and equilibrium in the face of those horrors - the horrors are always there in McGahern. But the celebration of wonder and of love in the face of fear and terror, the beauty in simple things, become his central preoccupation. He starts to celebrate communal bonds in a way he didn't do at all in the beginning.
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John McGahern
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No great thing comes without a curse.
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Sophocies
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Free Trade: The stage of trade policy that followed mercantilist and protectionist success in raising first Britain and then the United States and Germany to industrial and financial dominance. Pulling up the ladder, these leading industrial nations demand that other countries open their markets to lead-nation exports and investment instead of protecting, subsidizing and modernizing their own industry and agriculture. Such “free trade” has become a euphemism for centralizing industrial, agricultural and financial power in the United States, while offshoring employment to the low-wage countries. Academic rationalization of this kind of globalization is based on short-term equilibrium theory that excludes consideration of how protectionist policies may support capital investment to raise productivity over time. Also ignored are “off balance sheet” costs borne by society to clean up environmental pollution
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Michael Hudson (J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS: A Guide To Reality In An Age Of Deception)
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The challenge for organizations is to manage its portfolio of relevant cross-border strategic synergies and organizational interdependence and achieve the digital equilibrium via delicate balance.
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Pearl Zhu (Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit)
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The inverse-square law singles out no particular scale of length as special and has an infinite range. To explain objects of particular sizes requires a balance between gravity and some other force. Boscovich proposed a grand unified force law which included all known physical effects. This was his 'Theory', as he called it. It approached the inverse-square law of Newtonian gravitation at large distances as required by observations of the lunar motions. But on smaller length scales, it is alternately attractive and repulsive and so gives rise to equilibrium structures whose sizes are dictated by the characteristic length scales built into the force law.
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John D. Barrow (Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation)
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thinking. Creativity, we know from current research, requires a subtle balance between chaos and order. To foster this equilibrium, support is necessary for an atmosphere that encourages novel insights, unusual perspectives, contrarian opinions, and an abundance of data to surface and be recognized.
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Julia Sloan (Learning to Think Strategically)
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Those who do surya namaskars regularly find that their batteries last longer, with less need for recharge or replenishment. Additionally, the surya namaskar aids the balance or reorganization of inner energies, in terms of right and left, or lunar and solar dimensions. This produces an innate physical and psychological equilibrium that can be an enormous asset in one’s daily life. As
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Sadhguru (Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy)
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Emotional attachment makes a child feel connected and supported, not alone and helpless. One of the most important roles parents play is helping to regulate a child's level of arousal by providing a safe and appropriate balance of food, rest, play, comfort, and stimulation. Abused and neglected children never learn from their parents how to soothe themselves and cannot trust others to help them do so. So they may turn to cutting and other forms of self-injury as a means of self-soothing and reestablishing, at least temporarily, biological and psychological equilibrium.
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Marilee Strong (A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain)
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A star is a body that is massive enough for the gravitational comptession at its centre to produce a temperature great enough for nuclear reactions to occur spontaneously. When this ignition temperature is achieved, nuclear reactions in the central region will produce an energy outflow that is eventually radiated away from its surface in the form of heat and light. The star is kept in equilibrium by the balance between its internal pressure and gravity. This is a stable balance because if the gravitational force were made slightly greater then the star's centre would be squeezed a little more, so producing faster nuclear reactions and hence a corresponding extra pressure pushing outwards. Thus a balance is quickly restored.
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John D. Barrow (Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation)
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Some may feel that no criticism can be made of real religious Faith, and this is true, it is the folly of the faith in dogmatic authority that is at issue really, and needs only the memory of Galileo to serve as an example, though there are countless other examples, particularly in modern political faiths from Liberal laissez-faire to Marxist determinism. In our day it is more the authority of science and reason that has replaced the ecclesiastic authority, though the pendulum is beginning now, in the middle of the twentieth century, to move back towards the equilibrium point, and doubtless, human nature being what it is, will eventually swing to the irrational side, and then back again, and back again, and back again, and back again, until humanity achieves some semblance of permanent balance in its outlook —or even stops being the dupe of external authority.
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Gareth Knight (Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism)
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Jika dulu ada konsep “balance of power”, barangkali kini yang kita perlukan adalah semacam “dynamic equilibrium”.
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Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
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Do Americans still broadly believe that a president’s gradual assumption of dictatorial power must be halted? That the constitutional equilibrium of divided authorities balancing and checking each other must be preserved? That their liberty hinges on the separation of powers?
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Andrew McCarthy (Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama s Impeachment)
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Balance comes not only from the principal ability to discover equilibrium amid all the opposing forces of the universe, but also from the ability to recognize and harness them. The cosmos itself is a collection of all the forces that have ever existed throughout space and time. Light and dark, good and evil, the divine and the diabolical, sinner and saint, and every other set of conflicting energies that saturates the universe - these are the lifeblood that courses through us and animates our actions. It's the flow and even collision of these forces and energies that generates life itself. The history of human civilization is just another testament to this, depicting contrasts within humanity itself. For every Gandhi, there's a Hitler. For every movement bred in hate that grows and has an impact over time, there's a righteous one that counteracts and contrasts with it. It's his friction and subsequent balance between opposing forces that lays the foundation of our ongoing existence.
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Deepak Chopra (The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes: Harnessing Our Power to Change the World)
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Our political solar system, in short, has been characterized not by two equally competing suns, but by a sun and a moon. It is within the majority party that the issues of any particular period arc fought out; while the minority party shines in reflected radiance of the beat thus generated .... Each time one majority sun sets and a new sun arises, the drama of American politics is transformed. Figuratively and literally a new political era begins. For each new majority party brings its own orbit of conflict, its own peculiar rhythm of ethnic antagonisms, its own economic equilibrium, its own sectional balance.
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Samuel Lubell (The Future of American Politics)
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Old?” she repeated. “But the Director’s old; lots of people are old; they’re not like that.” “That’s because we don’t allow them to be like that. We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium. We don’t permit their magnesium-calcium ratio to fall below what it was at thirty. We give them transfusion of young blood. We keep their metabolism permanently stimulated. So, of course, they don’t look like that. Partly,” he added,
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Anonymous
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Will they achieve a uniformity in censorship methods among the various regimes?” “Not uniformity. They will create a system in which the methods support and balance one another in turn....” The Director General invites you to examine the planisphere hanging on the wall. The varied color scheme indicates: the countries where all books are systematically confiscated; the countries where only books published or approved by the State may circulate; the countries where existing censorship is crude, approximate, and unpredictable; the countries where the censorship is subtle, informed, sensitive to implications and allusions, managed by meticulous and sly intellectuals; the countries where there are two networks of dissemination: one legal and one clandestine; the countries where there is no censorship because there are no books, but there are many potential readers; the countries where there are no books and nobody complains about their absence; the countries, finally, in which every day books are produced for all tastes and all ideas, amid general indifference. “Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,” Arkadian Porphyrich says. “What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks. To be sure, repression must also allow an occasional breathing space, must close an eye every now and then, alternate indulgence with abuse, with a certain unpredictability in its caprices; otherwise, if nothing more remains to be repressed, the whole system rusts and wears down. Let’s be frank: every regime, even the most authoritarian, survives in a situation of unstable equilibrium, whereby it needs to justify constantly the existence of its repressive apparatus, therefore of something to repress. The wish to write things that irk the established authorities is one of the elements necessary to maintain this equilibrium. Therefore, by a secret treaty with the countries whose social regime is opposed to ours, we have created a common organization, with which you have intelligently agreed to collaborate, to export the books banned here and import the books banned there.” “This would seem to imply that the books banned here are allowed there, and vice versa....” “Not on your life. The books banned here are superbanned there, and the books banned there are ultrabanned here. But from exporting to the adversary regime one’s own banned books and from importing theirs, each regime derives at least two important advantages: it encourages the opponents of the hostile regime and it establishes a useful exchange of experience between the police services.” “The
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Italo Calvino (If on a Winter's Night a Traveler)
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Thereafter, Hamilton always interpreted politics as an epic tale from Plutarch of lust and greed and people plotting for power. Since his political theory was rooted in his study of human nature, he took special delight in Plutarch’s biographical sketches. And he carefully noted the creation of senates, priesthoods, and other elite bodies that governed the lives of the people. Hamilton was already interested in the checks and balances that enabled a government to tread a middle path between despotism and anarchy. From the life of Lycurgus, he noted: Among the many alterations which Lycurgus made, the first and most important was the establishment of the senate, which having a power equal to the kings in matters of consequence did . . . foster and qualify the imperious and fiery genius of monarchy by constantly restraining it within the bounds of equity and moderation. For the state before had no firm basis to stand upon, leaning sometimes towards an absolute monarchy and sometimes towards a pure democracy. But this establishment of the senate was to the commonwealth what the ballast is to a ship and preserved the whole in a just equilibrium.
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Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton)
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PRIME Prime is an ever-changing condition, a segment of a journey, not a haven at the end of the road. Companies in Prime are recognizable: All aspects work well together, all operations thrive, and all members of the organization know where it is going and how to stay on track. Prime is a state of balance: Flexibility and control, function and form, imagining and producing, innovation and administration. But companies in that exultant equilibrium — so hard to achieve, so easy to lose — continually risk sliding back to childish habits or stumbling into the rigidity of old age. An organization is no less vulnerable in Prime than it is at any other stage of its lifecycle. The cash shortage of Infancy, the founder’s heavy hand in Go-Go, the infighting of Adolescence — those are challenges it has overcome. Now the complacency that comes with a surfeit of success looms as a potential and significant threat. I have a rule of thumb by which I judge an adult company: If it does not produce significant new products or spin off promising start-ups within any three-year period, it is either decaying or on the brink of decline. Ask yourself what percentage of your revenues come from products you were not selling three years ago? Be honest. There are enhancements, changes that are cosmetic in nature that make old products look new. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are well known for
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lchak Adizes (The Pursuit of Prime: Maximize your Companys Success with the Adizes Program)
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RAIN IN MEASURED AMOUNTS
Another item of information provided in the Qur'an about rain is
that it is sent down to Earth in "due measure." This is mentioned in
Surat az-Zukhruf as follows:
It is He Who sends down water in measured amounts from the sky by
which We bring a dead land back to life. That is how you too will be
raised [from the dead]. (Qur'an, 43:11)
This measured quantity in rain has again been discovered by modern
research. It is estimated that in one second, approximately 16 million
tons of water evaporates from the Earth. This figure amounts to
513 trillion tons of water in one year. This number is equal to the
amount of rain that falls on the Earth in a year. Therefore, water continuously
circulates in a balanced cycle, according to a "measure." Life
on Earth depends on this water cycle. Even if all the available technology
in the world were to be employed for this purpose, this cycle could
not be reproduced artificially.
Even a minor deviation in this equilibrium would soon give rise to
a major ecological imbalance that would bring about the end of life on
Earth. Yet, it never happens, and rain continues to fall every year in
exactly the same measure, just as revealed in the Qur'an.
The proportion of rain does not merely apply to its quantity, but
also to the speed of the falling raindrops. The speed of raindrops,
regardless of their size, does not exceed a certain limit.
Philipp Lenard, a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize
in physics in 1905, found that the fall speed increased with drop diameter
until a size of 4.5 mm (0.18 inch). For larger drops, however, the fall
speed did not increase beyond 8 metres per second (26 ft/sec).57 He
attributed this to the changes in drop shape caused by the air flow as
the drop size increased. The change in shape thus increased the air
resistance of the drop and slowed its fall rate.
As can be seen, the Qur'an may also be drawing our attention to
the subtle adjustment in rain which could not have been known 1,400
years ago.
Every year, the amount of water that evaporates and that falls back to the
Earth in the form of rain is "constant": 513 trillion tons. This constant
amount is declared in the Qur'an by the expression "sending down water in
due measure from the sky." The constancy of this quantity is very important
for the continuity of the ecological balance, and therefore, life.
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Harun Yahya (Allah's Miracles in the Qur'an)
“
Today is the autumnal equinox, when the hours of light and dark are in equal balance. This is a good day to take stock to make sure that we have a God-given equilibrium in our lives. This may seem a forlorn and frustrating task, until we realize that Christ, who is the perfect specimen of a balanced human being, can calm our agitated or overworked parts, heal our sick parts, and strengthen our weak parts. Gildas, who has been nicknamed the Jeremiah of the early British church because he was so critical of its lax members, believed in fasting and prayer—yet he was equally aware of the danger of going overboard and losing a sense of proportion. He wrote: There is no point in abstaining from bodily food if you do not have love in your heart. Those who do not fast much but who take great care to keep their heart pure (on which, as they know, their life ultimately depends) are better off than those who are vegetarian, or travel in carriages, and think they are therefore superior to everyone else. To these people death has entered through the window of their pride. Grant me the serenity— that comes from placing the different parts of my being under your harmonizing sway. Today may I grow in balance. SEPTEMBER
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Ray Simpson (The Celtic Book of Days: Ancient Wisdom for Each Day of the Year from the Celtic Followers of Christ)
“
non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and other branches of science are now revealing that all of reality is structured as an interplay between determinism and spontaneity. Our own experience reveals the same thing. With every decision we make we reflect a deep conviction that some of the future is settled while some of it is unsettled, left up to us to decide. Far from being problematic, therefore, the balance Open Theists find in Scripture between predestined and foreknown aspects of the future, on the one hand, and open aspects of the future, on the other, is consistent with both modern science and our own experience. In this light, we should have little trouble accepting that the sovereign God is able to foreordain and foreknow that Jesus would be crucified, for example, without having to foreordain or foreknow exactly who would carry this out (Acts 2:23; 4:27). Nor should we find it hard to accept that God can predestine and foreknow that he will have a beloved church without predestining or foreknowing which individuals will and will not choose to belong to his church (Rom. 8:29; Eph. 1:4–5). 4.
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Gregory A. Boyd (Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology)
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Myron shook his head. “Violence is always the answer for you, Win.” Win frowned. “Stop sounding melodramatic. A man committed a vile act upon you. Squaring things would have helped put it behind you. It’s not about vengeance. It’s about equilibrium. It’s about man’s basic need to keep the scales balanced.
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Harlan Coben (Fade Away (Myron Bolitar, #3))
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Prakriti is said to be composed of three forces, sattwa, rajas and tamas, which are known collectively as the three gunas. These gunas-whose individual characteristics we shall describe in a moment-pass through phases of equilibrium and phases of imbalance; the nature of their relationship to each other is such that it is subject to perpetual change. As long as the gunas maintain their equilibrium, Prakriti remains undifferentiated and the universe exists only in its potential state. As soon as the balance is disturbed, a re-creation of the universe begins. The gunas enter into an enormous variety of combinations-all of them irregular, with one or the other guna predominating over the rest. Hence we have the variety of physical and psychic phenomena which make up our apparent world. Such a world continues to multiply and vary its forms until the gunas find a temporary equilibrium once more, and a new phase of undifferentiated potentiality begins.
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Prabhavananda (How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali)
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Diana’s world may be characterized as an unstable equilibrium; the unhappiness of her marriage balanced by the satisfaction she finds in her royal work, particularly among the sick and the dying; the suffocating certainties of the royal system matched by her growing self-confidence in using the organization for the benefit of her work.
Her thinking about her royal position changes by the month. However, while the graph of her progress shows various ups and downs, the general trend over the past year has been towards staying within rather than leaving the organization. She now feels impatience with the creaking machinery of monarchy rather than despair, business-like indifference towards Prince Charles as opposed to shrinking deference and cool disregard of Camilla Parker-Bowles rather than jealous rage. It is by no means a consistent development but her growing interest in how to control and reform the system as well as her serious commitment to use her position to do good in the world point to staying rather than taking flight. At the same time the Duchess’s departure merely adds another element of uncertainty in an already precarious position.
It is not an issue for complacency. The Princess can be a volatile, impatient young woman whose moods regularly swing from optimism to despair. As astrologer Felix Lyle says: “She is prone to depression, a woman who is easily defeated and dominated by those with a strong character. Diana has a self-destructive side. At any moment she could say ‘to hell with the lot of you’ and go off. The potential is there. She is a flower waiting to bud.
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Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
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You will find throughout all nature the law of action and reaction, of rest and motion. These two must balance, then there will be harmony and equilibrium. You are here to let the life principle flow through you rhythmically and harmoniously. The intake and the outgo must be equal. The impression and the expression must be equal. All your frustration is due to unfulfilled desire.
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Joseph Murphy (The Power of your Subconscious Mind and Other Works)
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To know yourself simply means to seek balance or find equilibrium in life. This does not mean pretending to know everything, or ignoring all outside advice.
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Mwanandeke Kindembo
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This difficulty in normalizing ourselves is very important. I believe that the ability to return to equilibrium and balance, after using the “immobility response,” is the primary factor in avoiding being traumatized.
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Peter A. Levine (Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body)
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Every single time Trenton touches me, it’s like anything that was off-balance suddenly rights itself. He’s my equilibrium,
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Diana Gardin (Just Like Breathing (Bring Me Back #1))
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Until the war had broken out, there had been some sort of order in the strange and complex mixture of the four disparate peoples crowded into the little valley, all calling themselves Bosnians. They celebrated separate holidays, ate different foods, feasted and fasted on different days, yet all depended on one another, but never admitted it. They had lived amidst an ever present, if dormant, mixture of hatred and love for each other. The Muslims with their Ramadan, the Jews with Passover, the Catholics with Christmas, and the Serbs with their Slavas- each of them tacitly tolerated and recognised the customs and existence of others. With suckling pigs turned on spits in Serbian houses, giving off a mouth-watering fragrance, kosher food would be eaten in Jewish homes, and in Muslim households, meals were cooked in suet. There was a certain harmony in all this, even if there was no actual mixing. The aromas had long ago adjusted to one another and had given the city its distinctive flavor. Everything was "as God willed it." But it was necessary to remove only one piece of that carefully balanced mosaic and that whole picture would fall into its component parts which would then, rejoined in an unthinkable manner, create hostile and incompatible entities. Like a hammer, the war had knocked out one piece, disrupting the equilibrium. Wartime turned differences into outright hatred and instead of blaming the foreign enemy for all their hardships, people blamed their nearest neighbours, which, in turn, represented an invaluable favour to the true enemy of all.
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Gordana Kuić (Miris kiše na Balkanu)
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Englishmen of Whiggish persuasion were convinced that, after decades and centuries of thought and travail, the British constitution had come to represent the best way to achieve that goal. Drawing heavily from Greek and Roman thinkers who had affirmed the need of mixed government in order to achieve balance and harmony among social classes, the English had achieved such a balance of social power among king, lords, and commons that a political balance of power would be counterpoised among these powerful estates. Social equilibrium in short would produce political equilibrium, which in turn would prevent the kind of immoderate government that might interfere in men’s liberties. This elaborate edifice was based on the theory that men, being naturally selfish, irrational, aggressive, greedy, and lustful, had to be not only protected in their liberty from government but protected from one another by government. The “Interest of Freedom,” Marchamont Nedham had written in the mid-1650s, “is a Virgin that everyone seeks to deflower.” Paine and his fellow radicals rejected this view of human nature and the Whiggish apparatus that went with it. Perhaps the people of the Old World, divided into unequal estates and corrupted by their rulers, were prone to depravity and unreason, they granted, but Americans were different. Farmers and mechanics and all others who wore “leathern aprons,” being more equal and fraternal and less grasping and competitive, were more reasonable and virtuous. Because of his faith in human nature and the perfectibility of man, as Eric Foner has said, “Paine could reject the need for governmental checks and balances.
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James MacGregor Burns (The American Experiment: The Vineyard of Liberty, The Workshop of Democracy, and The Crosswinds of Freedom)
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It was true they'd always been like two adjacent locks in a canal, one opening into the other, pouring off excess feeling, seeking equilibrium, though she was usually the lock in danger of overflowing and he the one who absorbed excess, rose up as she sank down. People thought being twins made them the same, but it was balance, not sameness, she felt with him.
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Maggie Shipstead (Great Circle)
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The divine law of balance and equilibrium is doing its perfect work.
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Catherine Ponder (The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity (Impact Books): Forces That Bring Riches to You)
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Emotionally we are designed like a bicycle – if we are not moving towards something, we lose our equilibrium or balance and fall over.
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Brian Mayne (Goal Mapping: How To Turn Your Dreams into Realities)
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For someone who is fifty pounds overweight, losing three to five pounds over half a year is a frustrating drop in the bucket. Accordingly, a stock response to these studies has been to declare exercise futile for trimming your waist. Before we entirely dismiss the weight control benefits of walking, the most fundamental type of endurance physical activity, let’s examine the major arguments behind this contention through the lens of evolutionary anthropology. The first is the specter of compensatory mechanisms, notably fatigue and hunger. If I walk ten thousand extra steps, I’ll be more tired and hungry, so I’ll rest and eat more to recoup lost calories. From an evolutionary perspective, these urges make sense. Because natural selection ultimately favors those who can allocate as much energy as possible to reproduction, our physiology has been tuned over millions of generations to hoard energy, especially fat. Further, because almost no one until recently was able to become overweight or obese, our bodies primarily sense if we are gaining or losing weight rather than how much excess fat we have. Whether you are skinny or stout, negative energy balance—including dieting—causes a starvation response that helps us restore energetic equilibrium or, better yet, gain weight so we can shunt more energy toward reproduction.35 It’s unfair, but losing ten pounds elicits food cravings and the desire to be inactive regardless of whether one is skinny or obese.
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Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
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Because women so delicate so mysterious Father said. Delicate equilibrium of periodical filth between two moons balanced. Moons he said full and yellow as harvest moons her hips thighs. Outside outside of them always but. Yellow. Feet soles with walking like. Then know that some man that all those mysterious and imperious concealed. With
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William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury)
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They whooped as the rider pedaled faster, as if she were unraveling time itself, pushing forward as the passenger raised her hands above their heads, shields against the raging sun. More often than not, women demand this of each other, sustaining impossible positions to balance, finding equilibrium in the contortion.
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Margot Douaihy (Scorched Grace (Sister Holiday Mystery, #1))
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The advertising executive “straightened himself out” and regained his confidence within a short time, once he saw clearly that for several years he had been motivated by strong personal goals that he wanted to attain, including securing his present position. These goals, which were important to him, kept him on the track. However, once he got the promotion, he ceased to think in terms of what he wanted, but in terms of what others expected of him, or whether he was living up to other people’s goals and standards. He was like the skipper of a ship who had relinquished his hold upon the wheel, and hoped that he would drift in the right direction. He was like a mountain climber, who as long as he looked upward to the peak he wished to scale, felt and acted courageously and boldly. But when he got to the top, he felt there was nowhere else to go, and began to look down, and became afraid. He was now on the defensive, defending his present position, rather than acting like a goal-striver and going on the offensive to attain his goal. He regained control when he set himself new goals and began to think in terms of “What do I want out of this job? What do I want to achieve? Where do I want to go?” “Functionally, a man is somewhat like a bicycle,” I told him. “A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it is going forward towards something. You have a good bicycle. Your trouble is you are trying to maintain your balance sitting still, with no place to go. It’s no wonder you feel shaky.
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Maxwell Maltz (Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded (The Psycho-Cybernetics Series))
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There is hardly any element that contains the same vigor as our emotions do. Embark on a journey of spirituality and self-growth by embracing your emotions.
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Alyaa Sadek (Equilibrium)
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Spirituality, in a sense, is the different sides of emotions, which transcend from the human spirit and go beyond and above the worldly desires and human needs.
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Alyaa Sadek (Equilibrium)
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Anything that’s too much turns adverse. Shift your traits to their neutrality and they become your power.
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Alyaa Sadek (Equilibrium)
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There will be positive changes if you summon the courage to question your own motives and beliefs.
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Alyaa Sadek (Equilibrium)
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It is an eternal law of our universe that everything shall always return to harmony and equilibrium. Well-being is our default, natural state. Stay strong in times of darkness. The light will soon return. It always does.
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Anthon St. Maarten
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On all levels, from national to local, the need to move toward steady state economy — equilibrium, dynamic balance, inner growth stressed — must be taught.
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Gary Snyder (A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds)
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Nothing persists, said the ancient sages: everything changes, everything flows, everything becomes; consequently, everything remains and everything is connected; by further consequence the entire universe is opposition, balance, equilibrium. There is nothing, neither outside nor inside, apart from that eternal dance; and the rhythm that commands it,
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Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
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The Tree of Life may also be said to reveal four great laws of universal being that apply as well to the human soul: (1) the Law of Emanation, which declares that all things are the successively emanated portions of the same divine essence; (2) the Law of Balance and Equilibrium, which states that life and growth imply balance, while imbalance leads to death and/or stagnation; (3) the Law of Unity in Diversity, reconciling the multiple emanations of the Tree with the monotheistic concept by stating that the essence is one, while its outpourings are many; and (4) the Law of the Ability to Return, according to which any manifestation of the emanated essence is capable of ascending to its own original source by climbing the paths and traversing the emanational centers (sephiroth) of the Tree. Kabbalistic meditation consists of effectively traveling along the branches of the Tree, up to and perhaps beyond the highest or crowning emanational center, the Sephira Kether.
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Stephan A. Hoeller (The Fool's Pilgrimage: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tarot)
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A new day has dawned. New Secondary Skills are unlocked: Strider’s Focus: You have grown closer to Nature and learned the basics of this skill without a trainer. Somatic Battle-Weaving: This skill has increased through extensive use without the need to allocate skill points to it. Equilibrium: This skill allows you to keep your balance and avoid effects that cause dizziness or disorientation. Suffer through more such effects to increase it. Blades: You have increased your knowledge of which techniques to use in which situations. He had little time to bask in the glory of his skill increases, as the true prize of level four awaited him: Focus Unlocked. At level 4, you may select a Focus for one of your Attributes. This Focus increases your effective score in that Attribute whenever the relevant trait is tested. For instance, Prowess(Strength) allows you better results when lifting heavy objects, but you receive no bonus for feats of agility (such as dodging attacks)
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Gregory Blackburn (Unbound (Arcana Unlocked #1))
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English: "Almost every more of less straight way is eventually going to an extreme."
Česky: „Téměř každá víceméně rovná cesta časem vede k extrému.
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Sebastián Wortys (Vtiposcifilo-z/s-ofie)
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Every leader must walk a fine line.… Leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities, between one extreme and another. The simple recognition of this is one of the most powerful tools a leader has. With this in mind, a leader can more easily balance the opposing forces and lead with maximum effectiveness.
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Jocko Willink (The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win)
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Indeed, the refinement and training of the
soul consists in restoring the attributes of anger and passion to a state of equi-
librium, and the balance in which they are to be weighed is the code of the Law, ob-
served in all matters. Then both soul and body will remain healthy, and intellect
and faith will advance; and each of these will be used in its proper place, according
to the command of the Law. In obedience to the Law, man should earnestly fear
God, and not strive to seek dispensation,¹⁵ for the Law and the fear of God are a
balance which maintain the attributes in a state of equilibrium, preventing some
from prevailing over others. Disequilibrium would be the state of animals and
beasts of prey, for in animals the attribute of passion prevails over that of anger,
and in beasts of prey the attribute of anger prevails over that of passion. Of neces-
sity, animals are therefore given to greed and lust, and beasts of prey to conquest,
wrath, and dominance, to killing and hunting.
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Najm Razi (Path of God's Bondsmen: From Origin to Return)