“
At that moment - in that small, concise, perfectly clear moment of time - I knew. It was that moment I fell in love with him. It actually caused me to stop, and time froze for just a second. But that feeling was so right, and so strong, that I knew I wasn't wrong.
”
”
Jessica Verday (The Hollow (The Hollow, #1))
“
Carson," she said when she picked up. I liked it. Clear. Concise. To the point.
I decided to try it myself. "Davidson."
A loud sigh filtered to me. "Charley, you called me. You can't just say Davidson."
"What are you, the phone greeting police?
”
”
Darynda Jones (Sixth Grave on the Edge (Charley Davidson, #6))
“
Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“
If you want to have an effective ad, you need to work on communicating your message in the most effective way. Keep it clear, concise and non-confusing.
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
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I like the way everything is clear and concise, you'll always be forgiven but you must know the rules
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Rumer Godden (In This House of Brede)
“
The biggest advice I can give for setting up your market research objectives is to be very clear and concise.
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Pooja Agnihotri (Market Research Like a Pro)
“
Effective communication is key to building consensus, fostering collaboration, and ensuring that everyone is on the same page. The board chair must be able to communicate clearly and concisely, both verbally and in writing.
”
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
“
The difference was that the white man in the South spoke his hatred in clear, clean, concise terms, whereas the white man in the new country hid his hatred behind stories of wisdom and bravado, with false smiles of sincerity and stories of Jesus Christ and other nonsense that he tossed about like confetti in the Pottstown parade.
”
”
James McBride (The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store)
“
When we feel the poetic thrill, is it not that we find sweep in the concise and depth in the clear, as we might find all the lights of the sea in the water of a jewel? And what is a philosophic thought but such an epitome?
”
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George Santayana
“
But this discourse, expressed in our paternal language, keeps clear the meaning of its words. The very quality of speech and of the Egyptian words have in themselves the energy of the object they speak of.
Therefore, my king, in so far as you have the power (who are all powerful), keep the discourse uninterpreted, lest mysteries of such greatness come to the Greeks, lest the extravagant, flaccid and (as it were) dandified Greek idiom extinguish something stately and concise, the energetic idiom of usage. For the Greeks have empty speeches, O king, that are energetic only in what they demonstrate, and this is the philosophy of the Greeks, an inane foolosophy of speeches. We, by contrast, use not speeches but sounds that are full of action. (Chapter XVI)
”
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Hermes Trismegistus (Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius)
“
Men have forgotten God"
Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“
Accurate minutes are the official record of a board meeting. They capture key decisions, discussions, and action items. Minutes should be clear, concise, and distributed to all board members promptly after the meeting.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
“
Make a concise statement clearly and you should only need to say it once.
”
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Mary Mihalic (The 40 Best Business Tips No One's Ever Told You)
“
Sharing a clear and concise vision spawns a sense of purpose and direction. It attracts success toward you and helps you build an expanding team.
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Farshad Asl (The "No Excuses" Mindset: A Life of Purpose, Passion, and Clarity)
“
You were in business making meth? Do you have any idea what that drug does to people?"
We weren't givin' it away," Concise snaps. "If someone was fool enough to mess himself up, that was his problem."
I shake my head, disgusted. "If you build it, they will come."
If you build it," Concise says, "you cover your rent. If you build it, you pay off the loan sharks. If you build it, you put shoes on your kid's feet and food in his belly and maybe even show up every now and then with a toy that every other goddamn kid in the school already has." He looks up at me. "If you build it, maybe your son don't have to, when he grow up."
It is amazing -- the secrets you can keep, even when you are living in close quarters. "You didn't tell me."
Concise gets up and braces his hands against the upper bunk. "His mama OD'd. He lives with her sister, who can't always be bothered to take care of him. I try to send money so that I know he's eatin' breakfast and gettin' school lunch tickets. I got a little bank account for him, too. Jus' in case he don't want to be part of a street gang, you know? Jus' in case he want to be an astronaut or a football player or somethin'." He digs out a small notebook from his bunk. "I'm writin' him. A diary, like. So he know who his daddy is, by the time he learn to read."
It is always easier to judge someone than to figure out what might have pushed him to the point where he might do something illegal or morally reprehensible, because he honestly believes he'll be better off. The police will dismiss Wilton Reynolds as a drug dealer and celebrate one more criminal permanently removed from society. A middle-class father who meets Concise on the street, with his tough talk and his shaved head, will steer clear of him, never guessing that he, to, has a little boy waiting for him at home. The people who read about me in the paper, stealing my daughter during a custody visit, will assume I am the worst sort of nightmare.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)
“
Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say, ‘I want plenty of money.’ Be definite as to the amount. (There is a psychological reason for definiteness which will be described in a subsequent chapter.) 2. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as ‘something for nothing’.) 3. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire. 4. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action. 5. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire. Name the time limit for its acquisition. State what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it. 6. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after rising in the morning. AS YOU READ, SEE AND FEEL AND BELIEVE YOURSELF ALREADY IN POSSESSION OF THE MONEY.
”
”
Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
“
More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God: That’s why this all happened.”
In the process [the process of his 50 year study of the Russian Revolution] I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have contributed eight volumes toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God, that’s why this has happened.
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“
Plans and orders must be communicated in a manner that is simple, clear, and concise. Everyone
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
Bob Elliott (Make Your Point!:Speak clearly and concisely anyplace anytime.)
“
Condensing means saying it as clearly and concisely as possible.
”
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Greg McKeown (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)
“
even when rising from sleep, his mind was clear and focused, able to pick up on the essential points and make a concise judgment.
”
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Michael Chatfield (The Second Realm (Ten Realms, #2))
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Folklore has it in America that quality and production are incompatible; that you can not have both. A plant manager will usually tell you that it is either or. In his experience, if he pushes quality, he falls behind in production. If he pushes production, his quality suffers. This will be his experience when he knows not what quality is nor how to achieve it.
A clear, concise answer came forth in a meeting with 22 production workers, all union representatives, in response to my question, "Why is it that productivity increase as quality improves?"
Less rework.
There is no better answer. Another version often comes forth: Not so much waste.
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W. Edwards Deming (Out of the Crisis)
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Nikola Telsa, an electrical engineer and genius in his own time, once suggested that when science begins the exploration of the non-physical phenomena, only then will it make the speediest progress in terms of discovery.
”
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Natalie Nolan (Psychic Development for Beginners: A Clear and Concise Guide on How to Allow and Naturally Develop Your Intuition and Psychic Abilities)
“
THE BEGIN YEARS HAD not been easy ones for Israel, but they had been important. Israel had made peace with its once most potent enemy, Egypt. It had made clear that it would not tolerate weapons of mass destruction in the hands of its sworn enemies. It had shown that it would go to war—even a war that many Israelis eventually opposed—to protect the rights of its citizens and children to live normal lives and not to sleep in bomb shelters.
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Daniel Gordis (Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn)
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marketing strategy is a clear explanation of how you’re going to get there, not where or what “there” is. An effective marketing strategy is a concise explanation of your stated plan of execution to reach your objectives.
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John Jantsch (Duct Tape Marketing Revised and Updated: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide)
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We’ll spare your life, I promise,” hissed Odysseus. “Only speak quickly. And quietly. I have shaky hands and this blade against your throat might just slip and find its way into your windpipe if you aren’t quick, clear, and concise.
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Stephen Fry (Troy: The Greek Myths Reimagined (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology #3))
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The resulting prose, he wrote, “may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.
”
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Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
By being organized, you will be more efficient. By being more efficient, you will have more time in your day. By having more time in your day, you will be more relaxed in your day; you will be able to accomplish the task at hand in a clear, concise, fluid motion.
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Dan Charnas (Work Clean: The life-changing power of mise-en-place to organize your life, work, and mind)
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To implement Prioritize and Execute in any business, team, or organization, a leader must: • evaluate the highest priority problem. • lay out in simple, clear, and concise terms the highest priority effort for your team. • develop and determine a solution, seek input from key leaders and from the team where possible. • direct the execution of that solution, focusing all efforts and resources toward this priority task. • move on to the next highest priority problem. Repeat. • when priorities shift within the team, pass situational awareness both up and down the chain. • don’t let the focus on one priority cause target fixation. Maintain the ability to see other problems developing and rapidly shift as needed.
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
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From Desire to Reality in Six Easy Steps Six definite practical steps to transform a burning desire into reality. Fix in your mind an exact picture of what you desire. It's not sufficient merely to say, for example, "I want plenty of money." Be definite as to the amount. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the thing you desire. There's no such reality as something for nothing. Establish a definite date by which you intend to possess the desired thing. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you feel entirely ready or not to put this plan into action. Write out a clear, concise statement of your responses to the preceding four steps. Read your written statement aloud twice daily. Once after arising in the morning and once just before retiring at night. As you read, see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of whatever your goal happens to be. "Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry, nature wraps up in the impulse [of a] strong desire that something which recognizes no such word as impossible and accepts no such reality as failure." - Napoleon Hill
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Earl Nightingale (How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds)
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Combat, like anything in life, has inherent layers of complexities. Simplifying as much as possible is crucial to success. When plans and orders are too complicated, people may not understand them. And when things go wrong, and they inevitably do go wrong, complexity compounds issues that can spiral out of control into total disaster. Plans and orders must be communicated in a manner that is simple, clear, and concise. Everyone that is part of the mission must know and understand his or her role in the mission and what to do in the event of likely contingencies. As a leader, it doesn’t matter how well you feel you have presented the information or communicated an order, plan, tactic, or strategy. If your team doesn’t get it, you have not kept things simple and you have failed. You must brief to ensure the lowest common denominator on the team understands.
”
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
He wrote: “Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.” The resulting prose, he wrote, “may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.
”
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Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
Having a clear, concise statement ready to deliver at any moment—one that says what you do now but emphasizes what you want to do in the future and why you’re qualified to do it—gives you a huge advantage in terms of visibility and positioning. It sets you apart from the pack and enables you to make the case for yourself at the highest level when the chance presents itself. In my experience, great careers are often built on chance encounters. So it always pays to be prepared.
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Sally Helgesen (How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back from Your Next Raise, Promotion, or Job)
“
Break the habit of attempting to get people to say “yes.” Being pushed for “yes” makes people defensive. Our love of hearing “yes” makes us blind to the defensiveness we ourselves feel when someone is pushing us to say it. ■“No” is not a failure. We have learned that “No” is the anti-“Yes” and therefore a word to be avoided at all costs. But it really often just means “Wait” or “I’m not comfortable with that.” Learn how to hear it calmly. It is not the end of the negotiation, but the beginning. ■“Yes” is the final goal of a negotiation, but don’t aim for it at the start. Asking someone for “Yes” too quickly in a conversation—“Do you like to drink water, Mr. Smith?”—gets his guard up and paints you as an untrustworthy salesman. ■Saying “No” makes the speaker feel safe, secure, and in control, so trigger it. By saying what they don’t want, your counterpart defines their space and gains the confidence and comfort to listen to you. That’s why “Is now a bad time to talk?” is always better than “Do you have a few minutes to talk?” ■Sometimes the only way to get your counterpart to listen and engage with you is by forcing them into a “No.” That means intentionally mislabeling one of their emotions or desires or asking a ridiculous question—like, “It seems like you want this project to fail”—that can only be answered negatively. ■Negotiate in their world. Persuasion is not about how bright or smooth or forceful you are. It’s about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea. So don’t beat them with logic or brute force. Ask them questions that open paths to your goals. It’s not about you. ■If a potential business partner is ignoring you, contact them with a clear and concise “No”-oriented question that suggests that you are ready to walk away. “Have you given up on this project?” works wonders. CHAPTER 5 TRIGGER THE TWO WORDS THAT IMMEDIATELY TRANSFORM ANY NEGOTIATION
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
“
What we feel and how we feel is far more important than what we think and how we think. Feeling is the stuff of which our consciousness is made, the atmosphere in which all our thinking and all our conduct is bathed. All the motives which govern and drive our lives are emotional. Love and hate, anger and fear, curiosity and joy are the springs of all that is most noble and most detestable in the history of men and nations.
The opening sentence of a sermon is an opportunity. A good introduction arrests me. It handcuffs me and drags me before the sermon, where I stand and hear a Word that makes me both tremble and rejoice. The best sermon introductions also engage the listener immediately. It’s a rare sermon, however, that suffers because of a good introduction.
Mysteries beg for answers. People’s natural curiosity will entice them to stay tuned until the puzzle is solved. Any sentence that points out incongruity, contradiction, paradox, or irony will do.
Talk about what people care about. Begin writing an introduction by asking, “Will my listeners care about this?” (Not, “Why should they care about this?”)
Stepping into the pulpit calmly and scanning the congregation to the count of five can have a remarkable effect on preacher and congregation alike. It is as if you are saying, “I’m about to preach the Word of God. I want all of you settled. I’m not going to begin, in fact, until I have your complete attention.”
No sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as crystal. The getting of that sentence is the hardest, most exacting, and most fruitful labor of study.
We tend to use generalities for compelling reasons. Specifics often take research and extra thought, precious commodities to a pastor. Generalities are safe. We can’t help but use generalities when we can’t remember details of a story or when we want anonymity for someone. Still, the more specific their language, the better speakers communicate.
I used to balk at spending a large amount of time on a story, because I wanted to get to the point. Now I realize the story gets the point across better than my declarative statements.
Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. Limits—that is, form—challenge the mind, forcing creativity.
Needless words weaken our offense. Listening to some speakers, you have to sift hundreds of gallons of water to get one speck of gold.
If the sermon is so complicated that it needs a summary, its problems run deeper than the conclusion. The last sentence of a sermon already has authority; when the last sentence is Scripture, this is even more true.
No matter what our tone or approach, we are wise to craft the conclusion carefully. In fact, given the crisis and opportunity that the conclusion presents—remember, it will likely be people’s lasting memory of the message—it’s probably a good practice to write out the conclusion, regardless of how much of the rest of the sermon is written.
It is you who preaches Christ. And you will preach Christ a little differently than any other preacher. Not to do so is to deny your God-given uniqueness.
Aim for clarity first. Beauty and eloquence should be added to make things even more clear, not more impressive.
I’ll have not praise nor time for those who suppose that writing comes by some divine gift, some madness, some overflow of feeling. I’m especially grim on Christians who enter the field blithely unprepared and literarily innocent of any hard work—as though the substance of their message forgives the failure of its form.
”
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Mark Galli (Preaching that Connects)
“
1. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say, ‘I want plenty of money.’ Be definite as to the amount. (There is a psychological reason for definiteness which will be described in a subsequent chapter.) 2. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as ‘something for nothing’.) 3. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire. 4. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action. 5. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire. Name the time limit for its acquisition. State what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it. 6. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after rising in the morning. AS YOU READ, SEE AND FEEL AND BELIEVE YOURSELF ALREADY IN POSSESSION OF THE MONEY.
”
”
Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
“
Paul was an attorney. And this was what his as yet brief career in the law had done to his brain. He was comforted by minutiae. His mortal fears could be assuaged only by an encyclopedic command of detail. Paul was a professional builder of narratives. He was a teller of concise tales. His work was to take a series of isolated events and, shearing from them their dross, craft from them a progression. The morning’s discrete images—a routine labor, a clumsy error, a grasping arm, a crowded street, a spark of fire, a blood-speckled child, a dripping corpse—could be assembled into a story. There would be a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stories reach conclusions, and then they go away. Such is their desperately needed magic. That day’s story, once told in his mind, could be wrapped up, put aside, and recalled only when necessary. The properly assembled narrative would guard his mind from the terror of raw memory. Even a true story is a fiction, Paul knew. It is the comforting tool we use to organize the chaotic world around us into something comprehensible. It is the cognitive machine that separates the wheat of emotion from the chaff of sensation. The real world is overfull with incidents, brimming over with occurrences. In our stories, we disregard most of them until clear reason and motivation emerge. Every story is an invention, a technological device not unlike the very one that on that morning had seared a man’s skin from his bones. A good story could be put to no less dangerous a purpose. As an attorney, the tales that Paul told were moral ones. There existed, in his narratives, only the injured and their abusers. The slandered and the liars. The swindled and the thieves. Paul constructed these characters painstakingly until the righteousness of his plaintiff—or his defendant—became overwhelming. It was not the job of a litigator to determine facts; it was his job to construct a story from those facts by which a clear moral conclusion would be unavoidable. That was the business of Paul’s stories: to present an undeniable view of the world. And then to vanish, once the world had been so organized and a profit fairly earned.
”
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Graham Moore (The Last Days of Night)
“
in general, that which is to our greater profit—the loss and annihilation of self—we esteem a calamity; and that which is of but little value—comfort and sweetness, where, in general, we lose instead of gaining—we look upon as the more advantageous for us. 5. But, to speak with more accuracy, and to the purpose, of the ladder of secret contemplation, I must observe that the chief reason why it is called a ladder is, that contemplation is the science of love, which is an infused loving knowledge of God, and which enlightens the soul and at the same time kindles within it the fire of love till it shall ascend upwards step by step unto God its Creator; for it is love only that unites the soul and God. With a view to the greater clearness of this matter, I shall mark the steps of this divine ladder, explaining concisely the signs and effects of each, that the soul may be able to form some conjecture on which of them it stands. I shall distinguish between them by their effects with St. Bernard and St. Thomas,6 and because it is not naturally possible to know them as they are in themselves, because the ladder of love is so secret that it can
”
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Juan de la Cruz (Dark Night of the Soul)
“
There is, in Dr. Tillotson’s writings, an argument against the real presence, which is as concise, and elegant, and strong as any argument can possibly be supposed against a doctrine, so little worthy of a serious refutation. It is acknowledged on all hands, says that learned prelate, that the authority, either of the scripture or of tradition, is founded merely in the testimony of the Apostles, who were eyewitnesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which he proved his divine mission. Our evidence, then, for the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater; and it is evident it must diminish in passing from them to their disciples; nor can any one rest such confidence in their testimony, as in the immediate object of his senses. But a weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger; and therefore, were the doctrine of the real presence ever so clearly revealed in scripture, it were directly contrary to the rules of just reasoning to give our assent to it. It contradicts sense, though both the scripture and tradition, on which it is supposed to be built, carry not such evidence with them as sense; when they are considered merely as external evidences, and are not brought home to every one’s breast, by the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
“
The emotion of love is an affective emotion, directly reacting to goodness, rather than an aggressive one, reacting to challenge. Not only our so-called natural ability to grow and propagate exemplify natural love, but every faculty has a built-in affinity for what accords with its nature. By passion we mean some result of being acted on: either a form induced by the agent (like weight) or a movement consequent on the form (like falling to the ground). Whatever we desire acts on us in this way, first arousing an emotional attachment to itself and making itself agreeable, and then drawing us to seek it. The first change the object produces in our appetite is a feeling of its agreeableness: we call this love (weight can be thought of as a sort of natural love); then desire moves us to seek the object and pleasure comes to rest in it. Clearly then, as a change induced in us by an agent, love is a passion: the affective emotion strictly so, the will to love by stretching of the term. Love unites by making what is loved as agreeable to the lover as if it were himself or a part of himself. Though love is not itself a movement of the appetite towards an object, it is a change the appetite undergoes rendering an object agreeable. Favour is a freely chosen and willing love, open only to reasoning creatures; and charity―literally, holding dear―is a perfect form of love in which what is loved is highly prized. To love, as Aristotle says, is to want someone’s good; so its object is twofold: the good we want, loved with a love of desire, and the someone we want it for (ourselves or someone else), loved with a love of friendship. And just as what exist in the primary sense are subjects of existence, and properties exist only in a secondary sense, as modes in which subjects exist; so too what we love in the primary sense is the someone whose good we will, and only in a secondary sense do we love the good so willed. Friendship based on convenience or pleasure is friendship inasmuch as we want our friend’s good; but because this is subordinated to our own profit or pleasure such friendship is subordinated to love of desire and falls short of true friendship.
”
”
Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation)
“
Essay on Lust Identity can’t be concise. It’s knit from sequins and lust and scatters. Mostly everyone was fucking the seven arts with a willed difficulty. Then for one day there was the collective sensation that we carried our lovely voices as if in baskets, piled up in clear tones like grapes. Each voice had achieved its particular mass. From an interior space we heard the word sequin repeating in relation to leaves and the image was yellow-gold leaves moving on dark water. We had undergone an influence of death which was itself imprinted on such a moving sequin: the breath sequins, the heartbeat sequins, the organs and their slowing articulation sequins which drifting from the foreground appear to dim since they gradually go out to illuminate some event so distant we will never own the moment of its perception. But all this gives the illusion of peacefulness which is inert or at least passive when breaths burst smashing into sobbed words some urgent errand trapped in these letters as labour of light diminishing rhythm and if we fiercely decide to clear the stupid human stuff stop waiting for something to come to the father-studded earth shouldn’t this impatience release itself as a tongue so new weeping stops. In young women enamoured of their own intensities the Latin element wells up and knits from lust the pelt on the wall that’s ocelot or shadepelt or the imagination of matter. Nothing’s frugal. As for us, we want to give the city what lust has never ceased to put together. Young women or other women carrying their lovely voices as if on platters, their ten voices or nine voices in urgent errand dictating the imagination of matter. It is not our purpose to obscure the song of no-knowledge.
”
”
Lisa Robertson (Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip)
“
Live to start. Start to live.
Don’t Wait. Start Stuff.
People are innately passionate about certain unique aspects of life. You are innately passionate about certain unique aspects of life. And people are blessed with bouts of clear and concise intuition that drive them toward distinct goals and aspirations within their jobs and their lives as a whole.(You are not excluded from this group.)
But people disregard these inspired thoughts, these high-potential opportunities, as “just another stupid idea.”
Why?
Perhaps they are concerned about a lack of support (perceived or otherwise) from others, or maybe they are afraid of what others will think of them if they fail. Whatever the reason, they convince themselves:
“This would be a great idea for someone who has more free time.”
“This would be a great idea for someone with a higher level of education.”
“This would be a great idea for someone who has more money.”
“Everybody thinks this idea is crazy. They must be right.”
No matter the justification, the response is the same. These inspired thoughts, these high-potential ideas, are stuffed deep into the drawer labeled “stupid,” and they’re never heard from again . . . or the waiting game begins.
People wait.
They wait for that elusive day when they’ll finally have enough time (guess what? — you never will), enough education (there is always more to know), enough money (no matter how much you make, someone will always have more). They wait until the children are grown (news flash: just because they’re grown, it doesn’t mean you’re rid of them) or until things settle down at work (they never will).
People wait until . . . until . . . until . . . They wait, and they wait, and they wait, until that fateful day when they wake up and realize that while they were sitting around, paying dues, earning their keep, waiting for that elusive “perfect time,” their entire life has passed them by.
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Richie Norton (The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen, and Live without Regret)
“
There’s no good playbook for how to fire someone, though I have my own internal set of rules. You have to do it in person, not over the phone and certainly not by email or text. You have to look the person in the eye. You can’t use anyone else as an excuse. This is you making a decision about them—not them as a person but the way they have performed in their job—and they need and deserve to know that it’s coming from you. You can’t make small talk once you bring someone in for that conversation. I normally say something along the lines of: “I’ve asked you to come in here for a difficult reason.” And then I try to be as direct about the issue as possible, explaining clearly and concisely what wasn’t working and why I didn’t think it was going to change. I emphasize that it was a tough decision to make, and that I understand that it’s much harder on them. There’s a kind of euphemistic corporate language that is often deployed in those situations, and it has always struck me as offensive. There’s no way for the conversation not to be painful, but at least it can be honest, and in being honest there is at least a chance for the person on the receiving end to understand why it’s happening and eventually move on, even if they walk out of the room angry as hell.
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Robert Iger (The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company)
“
With his sharp nose, red at the tip, and his thin pinched lips, he always looked as though he were raging inwardly; and he was concise in his speech to the point of rudeness. All his time off duty he spent in his cabin with the door shut, keeping so still in there that he was supposed to fall asleep as soon as he had disappeared; but the man who came in to wake him for his watch on deck would invariably find him with his eyes wide open, flat on his back in the bunk, and glaring irritably from a soiled pillow. He never wrote any letters, did not seem to hope for news from anywhere; and though he had been heard once to mention West Hartlepool, it was with extreme bitterness, and only in connection with the extortionate charges of a boarding-house. He was one of those men who are picked up at need in the ports of the world. They are competent enough, appear hopelessly hard up, show no evidence of any sort of vice, and carry about them all the signs of manifest failure. They come aboard on an emergency, care for no ship afloat, live in their own atmosphere of casual connection amongst their shipmates who know nothing of them, and make up their minds to leave at inconvenient times. They clear out with no words of leavetaking in some God-forsaken port other men would fear to be stranded in, and go ashore in company of a shabby sea-chest, corded like a treasure-box, and with an air of shaking the ship’s dust off their feet.
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Joseph Conrad (Delphi Complete Works of Joseph Conrad)
“
Headed, appropriately enough, by the succinct title “BREVITY,” the minute began: “To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points.” He set out four ways for his ministers and their staffs to improve their reports. First, he wrote, reports should “set out the main points in a series of short, crisp paragraphs.” If the report involved discussion of complicated matters or statistical analysis, this should be placed in an appendix. Often, he observed, a full report could be dispensed with entirely, in favor of an aide-mémoire “consisting of headings only, which can be expanded orally if needed.” Finally, he attacked the cumbersome prose that so often marked official reports. “Let us have an end to phrases such as these,” he wrote, and quoted two offenders: “It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations…” “Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect…” He wrote: “Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.” The resulting prose, he wrote, “may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.
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Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
On Friday, August 9, for example, amid a rising tide of urgent war matters, he found time to address a minute to the members of his War Cabinet on a subject dear to him: the length and writing style of the reports that arrived in his black box each day. Headed, appropriately enough, by the succinct title “BREVITY,” the minute began: “To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points.” He set out four ways for his ministers and their staffs to improve their reports. First, he wrote, reports should “set out the main points in a series of short, crisp paragraphs.” If the report involved discussion of complicated matters or statistical analysis, this should be placed in an appendix. Often, he observed, a full report could be dispensed with entirely, in favor of an aide-mémoire “consisting of headings only, which can be expanded orally if needed.” Finally, he attacked the cumbersome prose that so often marked official reports. “Let us have an end to phrases such as these,” he wrote, and quoted two offenders: “It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations…” “Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect…” He wrote: “Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.” The resulting prose, he wrote, “may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.” That evening, as he had done almost every weekend thus far, he set off for the country.
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Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
This might be perhaps the simplest single-paragraphy summation of civilizational advances, a concise summary of growth that matters most. Our ability to provide a reliable, adequate food supply thanks to yields an order of magnitude higher than in early agricultures has been made possible by large energy subsidies and it has been accompanied by excessive waste. A near-tripling of average life expectancies has been achieved primarily by drastic reductions of infant mortality and by effective control of bacterial infections. Our fastest mass-travel speeds are now 50-150 times higher than walking. Per capita economic product in affluent countries is roughly 100 times larger than in antiquity, and useful energy deployed per capita is up to 200-250 times higher. Gains in destructive power have seen multiples of many (5-11) orders of magnitude. And, for an average human, there has been essentially an infinitely large multiple in access to stored information, while the store of information civilization-wide will soon be a trillion times larger than it was two millenia ago.
And this is the most worrisome obverse of these advances: they have been accompanied by a multitude of assaults on the biosphere. Foremost among them has been the scale of the human claim on plants, including a significant reduction of the peak posts-glacial area of natural forests (on the order of 20%), mostly due to deforestation in temperate and tropical regions; a concurrent expansion of cropland to cover about 11% of continental surfaces; and an annual harvest of close to 20% of the biosphere's primary productivity (Smil 2013a). Other major global concerns are the intensification of natural soil erosion rates, the reduction of untouched wilderness areas to shrinking isolated fragments, and a rapid loss of biodiversity in general and within the most species-rich biomes in particular. And then there is the leading global concern: since 1850 we have emitted close to 300 Gt of fossil carbon to the atmosphere (Boden and Andres 2017). This has increased tropospheric CO2 concentrations from 280 ppm to 405 ppm by the end of 2017 and set the biosphere on a course of anthropogenic global warming (NOAA 2017).
These realities clearly demonstrate that our preferences have not been to channel our growing capabilities either into protecting the biosphere or into assuring decent prospects for all newborns and reducing life's inequalities to tolerable differences. Judging by the extraordinary results that are significantly out of line with the long-term enhancements of our productive and protective abilities, we have preferred to concentrate disproportionately on multiplying the destructive capacities of our weapons and, even more so, on enlarging our abilities for the mass-scale acquisition and storage of information and for instant telecommunication, and have done so to an extent that has become not merely questionable but clearly counterproductive in many ways.
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Vaclav Smil (Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities (Mit Press))
“
Yet clearly, Cantemir, without renouncing faith, is on the side of reason and is thus close to the thinking of his intended audience because the Wise Man, in the end, conceives of man as a rational being and admits the power of reason in acquiring knowledge.
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Keith Hitchins (A Concise History of Romania (Cambridge Concise Histories))
“
IRST. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say “I want plenty of money.” Be definite as to the amount. (There is a psychological reason for definiteness which will be described in a subsequent chapter.) SECOND. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.”) THIRD. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire. FOURTH. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action. FIFTH. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it. SIXTH. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning. As you read, see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the money.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
“
Clear and Concise with a touch of Annoyed is a good formula for success when talking on the radio.
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Terry Virts (How to Astronaut: Everything You Need to Know Before Leaving Earth)
“
● First, fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. ● Second, determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. ● Third, establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire. ● Fourth, create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once. ● Fifth, write out a clear, concise statement of the answers to the previous four steps. ● Sixth, read your written statement aloud, twice daily, and as you read—see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the money.
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Paul Martinelli (The Missing Chapters: An epilogue to Think and Grow Rich: Discover the Three Key Principles missing from the classic publication by Napoleon Hill)
“
Write a blog post on [topic] that is structured and easy to read. Begin with a clear and concise introduction that sets the tone and provides context for the topic. Use headings, subheadings, and clear paragraphs to organize and illustrate the content, making sure that the final product is organized and easy to follow. In the body of the post, make sure that each section is clearly defined and contributes to the overall message of the post. Consider the readability of the final product by using clear and concise language, while avoiding jargon or overly complex terminology. Finally, include a clear and concise conclusion that summarizes your main points and reinforces the importance of your argument. Repurposing a Blog Post for Different Audiences Description: This prompt will guide you in repurposing a blog post on the topic of your choice for a different target audience.
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Aurimas Butvilauskas (The ChatGPT Prompt Library: Third Edition (Artificial Intelligence Guides Book 6))
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It’s hard to write a truly helpful book on the serious and complicated topic of depression. Day of Trouble, is many good things; clear, compassionate, concise. But most of all this book is helpful. If you or someone you love struggles with depression, Joey Tomlinson’s book will speak your language, give you understanding, and point you to helpful gospel remedies for this dark and common trouble.
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Rush Witt (I'm Want to Escape: Reaching for Hope When Life Is Too Much)
“
Hi, I am Sangeetha, I passionately explore the world of academia and offer
valuable tips, insights, and resources to empower students and researchers. With
a commitment to clear, concise, and effective communication, I aim to simplify
complex ideas and foster academic success.
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Geetha
“
Tips on Web Design and Site Marketing Web content is king, which is why we have devoted an entire chapter to it later in this book. It is what draws visitors and ultimately what converts them to customers. So, try to make your web content as engaging as possible. Make sure the content is interactive, unique and educational. Ensure that visitors have the option of plugins while encouraging them to visit as many pages on your site as possible if they want to obtain vital information. The images you use on your website should be both enticing and descriptive in nature. In today’s world, social media is all pervasive. In order to encourage visitors to share your web content, you can include icons of social media platforms on your website. In some select cases, consider integrating social media feeds, like Facebook or Instagram, onto your website so that they can automatically show the latest postings. A "Call-to-Action" can help convert visitors to your site into customers. Always try using a very clear and concise "Call-to-Action" language. Understand what type of conversion you are looking for, and try to provide multiple levels of conversion. For example, a plastic surgeon may provide Schedule an Appointment as a call to action, which will attract only the segment of web visitors who have reached their decision stage. By adding conversion points for visitors who are at earlier stages of their decision making, like signing up for a webcast or your newsletter can help you widen your conversion points and provide inputs to your email marketing. To raise the average amount of time a visitor spends on your website and to minimize the bounce rate, ensure that your website offers a user-friendly and attractive design. This way you will increase the number of links you have on your website and boost its SEO ranking (Tip: While Google’s algorithm is not public, our iterative testing shows that sites with good usability analytics metrics like time on site and bounce rate play favorably in Google’s algorithm, other things remaining constant). Ensure you observe due diligence when designing a website that will enable visitors to navigate in different languages. For example, you may need a lot more space for your menu, as there are languages that use up more space than the English language.
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Danny Basu (Digital Doctor: Integrated Online Marketing Guide for Medical and Dental Practices)
“
When analyzing the cost of U.S. health care, it’s important to remember that spending is not spread evenly among all patients. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, in 2009, 21.8% of health care spending came from just 1% of patients. That’s roughly three million people in the U.S. who each spent about $90,000 in a year on health-related expenses. Further, the AHRQ states, “[T]he top decile of spenders were more likely to be in fair or poor health, elderly, female, non-Hispanic whites and those with public-only coverage. Those who remained in the bottom half of spenders were more likely to be in excellent health, children and young adults, men, Hispanics, and the uninsured.”44 The fact that so many resources go to so few patients led to the term “super-utilizers.” Increasingly, policy efforts focus on how to reduce costs among this group.
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Elisabeth Askin (The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System)
“
That of the Theravāda is the only Abhidharma collection to survive in its entirety in its original Indian language. The Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma, originally composed in Sanskrit, survives only in Chinese and Tibetan translations. A brief analysis of the works of these two collections follows. THE BOOKS OF THE THERAVĀDIN ABHIDHAMMA PIṬAKA (a) Dhammasaṅganī, the ‘classification of things’ – listing and defining good, bad, and neutral mental states, and an analysis of material form. (b) Vibhaṅga, ‘analysis’ – offering a detailed analysis or classification of sixteen major topics of the Dharma, including the skandhas, nidānas, the elements, the faculties, mindfulness, bojjhaṅgas, jhānas, and insight. (c) Dhātukathā, ‘discussion of the elements’ – based on the skandha and āyatana analyses, and proceeding by means of questions and answers. (d) Puggalapaññati, ‘description of personalities’ – the analysis of human character types, by various factors that range in number from one to ten. (e) Kathāvatthu, ‘subjects of controversy’ – the refutation of the heterodox views of other Buddhist schools. (f) Yamaka, the ‘pairs’ – concerned with clear definition of terms. (g) Paṭṭhāna, ‘causal relations’ – a full discussion of pratītya-samutpāda.
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Andrew Skilton (Concise History of Buddhism)
“
The Mahāyāna sūtras clearly re-evaluate the relative roles of the monastic and lay practitioner, making it clear that the new movement put less stress upon formal membership of the monastic community as a prerequisite for pursuit of the Bodhisattva Path. This is suggested by the frequency with which lay people, sometimes women, are shown with high attainments, and reaches its apogee in the figure of Vimalakīrti, the layman Bodhisattva who trounces all the śrāvakas and even the archetypal Bodhisattvas. The principle seems to be that spiritual attainment is not defined by, or restricted to those occupying, formal positions and roles within the monastic Saṅgha.
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Andrew Skilton (Concise History of Buddhism)
“
THE METHODS OF THE ABHIDHARMA When the Buddha offered an analysis of the perceived world in the sūtras, he was making a fundamental distinction between things as they appear (how things seem to be to the unenlightened) and what really is the case (how things really are – yathābhūta). This distinction issues forth in the Abhidharma as the distinction between the two truths: saṁvṛti-satya – conventional truth – the way things appear, and paramārtha-satya – the ultimate truth, which is the object of yathā-bhūta-jnāna-darśana, ‘knowing and seeing things as they really are’. The Abhidharma project was an attempt to systematize and to analyse all that exists, the conventional world, into its building blocks of ultimate existents, or dharmas, and thereby reveal the way things really are. The tools of analysis were meditation and clear, analytical thinking. Only those things that resisted analysis with such tools could be regarded as ultimately existent.
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Andrew Skilton (Concise History of Buddhism)
“
However, these were clearly monks who had a vision of spiritual development that transcended monastic formalism, and perhaps this should be linked with the trend apparent in some early schools that questioned the status of the arhat.
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Andrew Skilton (Concise History of Buddhism)
“
The new scriptures did not form a coherent body of doctrinal exposition; they propounded different and even apparently contradictory teachings. Moreover, many individual sūtras are clearly composite works, compiled over many centuries, such that the final text is formed from layers of material of different ages, and sometimes with different outlooks, so that even individual sūtras do not necessarily present a unitary, coherent teaching. The result of this was that several expository traditions arose to try to explain the teaching of the new texts, the more cohesive of these forming distinct schools.
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Andrew Skilton (Concise History of Buddhism)
“
Śāntideva quotes the Adhyāśaya-saṁcodana Sūtra on four qualities of a teaching by which it comes to be seen as the word of the Buddha: (a) It should be connected with the truth, (b) It should be concerned with the Dharma, (c) It should bring about renunciation of moral taints, (d) It should reflect the qualities of nirvāṇa, not saṁsāra.121 Rather than regarding the canon as being closed to further additions, in the way that the Tripiṭaka was supposed to have been at the First Council, the Mahāyāna clearly adopted an inclusive attitude, expressive of an openness to any teachings which were effective – itself a reflection of the new doctrine of upāya, ‘[skilful] means’ (see below). Some 600 Mahāyāna sūtras have survived to the present day, either in Sanskrit or in Tibetan and Chinese translations. In the following survey various groupings are suggested based on the nature of the teachings of the sūtras, but it should be borne in mind that, with only a few exceptions, these groupings were not self-conscious, and that many sūtras cut across any categories that are narrower than the general category of ‘Mahāyāna’.
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Andrew Skilton (Concise History of Buddhism)
“
The breadth and consistency of the U.S. under performance across disease categories suggests that the United States pays a penalty for its extreme fragmentation, financial incentives that favor procedures over comprehensive longitudinal care, and absence of organizational strategy at the individual system level.
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Elisabeth Askin (The Health Care Handbook: A Clear and Concise Guide to the American Health Care System)
“
A practical example of the application of this method might be as follows: An ordinary, unenlightened person says T am pleased with this apple.’ The Abhidharmic analysis would restate this by saying ‘In association with this momentary series of material dharmas (rūpa) which constitute an apple, there is a concurrent series of feeling dharmas (vedanā) of a pleasant kind, of perception dharmas (saṁjñā) recognizing the object of happiness as an apple, of volitional dharmas (samskāra) both reflecting my past pleasure in apples and affirming a future predisposition to do so, and of consciousness dharmas (vijñāna), whereby there is awareness.’ Clearly, the effect of such an analysis, if applied and sustained over a long period, is to reduce the tendency to identify with a fixed sense of selfhood, and instead to emphasize that experience is made up of a constantly changing flux of conditions.
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Andrew Skilton (Concise History of Buddhism)
“
First. Be definite as to the amount. (There is a psychological reason for definiteness which will be described in a subsequent chapter). Second. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.) Third. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire. Fourth. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action. Fifth. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it. Sixth. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning. As you read, see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the money. It
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
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He called a general meeting at which he said, “I’m not firing anybody. The knock on me is that I’m not an administrator and don’t have a clue how to run a gigantic organization. That rap is accurate—I don’t. What I do have is you. I will give clear, concise direction and I trust you to make the organization work toward those objectives. What I expect from you is loyalty, honesty and hard work. What you can expect from me is loyalty, honesty, hard work and support. I will never stab you in the back, but I will stab you in the chest if I catch you playing games. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes—only slackers and cowards don’t make mistakes. But if we have a problem, I don’t want to be the last to know. I want your thoughts and your criticisms. I’m a big believer in the battleground of ideas—I don’t need the only word, just the last word.
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Don Winslow (The Border (Power of the Dog, #3))
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Nobody can destroy the indestructible individual unit of consciousness.
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B.G. Narasingha (Original Bhagavad Gita — The Ultimate Millennial Edition — With Clear and Concise Commentary)
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One whose mind remains undisturbed by distress, who has no desire for pleasure, who is free from mundane attachment, fear and anger, is a sage of steady mind.
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B.G. Narasingha (Original Bhagavad Gita — The Ultimate Millennial Edition — With Clear and Concise Commentary)
“
This first edition of A Tome of Idioms has been published as a comprehensive, concise, compact, and efficient guide to the meanings and origins of Idioms, Proverbs, and Sayings. Each inclusion is written in a clear and uncomplicated style.
First published in 2019 this book contains over 900 easily readable entries in systematic order augmented by an extensive Bibliography.
This book will be of general interest to everyone who has a curious, inquisitive, questioning, or enquiring intellect.
Sometimes, without knowing, we quote idiomatical expressions in our everyday conversations.
An idiom is used to communicate something that other words do not convey as clearly or as meaningfully.
Idioms tend to be colloquial and are more effective when used in spoken rather than written English.
The origins of idioms are sometimes difficult to trace which means that finding a precise date a particular idiom came into existence is never easy.
A number of idioms, proverbs, and sayings originate in well-known literature and Holy texts such as, William Shakespeare (60 entries), the Bible (47 entries), John Heywood (27 entries), Aesop (15 entries), and Geoffrey Chaucer (12 entries), to name but a few. Some of these have evolved in many different forms over several years into the expressions we use today.
Extract from @A Tome of Idioms
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B.H. McKechnie
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It's okay if our charm gets a little banged up along the way, don't you think? Or a lot banged up. I just—I have to believe we're all good and worthy even when we don't have clear, concise stories where everything we went through makes sense, and our issues are predictable and our quirks are only minorly quirky, never distractingly quirky. Sometimes big, shitty things happen like a serial cheater and it makes us twitchy about new relationships. Other times, we have a slightly chaotic childhood and we're almost paralyzed with anxiety as adults. The hit doesn't have to be hard to leave a dent. And regardless of the size of that dent, I need to believe we're all okay. That it's our rusty, banged up charm calling out and asking for acceptance.
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Kate Canterbary (Orientation (Benchmarks, #2))
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knowledgeable, cultured, morally principled and spiritually advanced.
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B.G. Narasingha (Original Bhagavad Gita — The Ultimate Millennial Edition — With Clear and Concise Commentary)
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TREVATHAN RARELY REWROTE his short stories. At a nickel a word he could not afford to. Furthermore, he had acquired a facility over the years which enabled him to turn out acceptable copy in first draft. Now, however, he was trying something altogether new and different, and so he felt the need to take his time getting it precisely right. Time and again he yanked false starts from the typewriter, crumpled them, hurled them at the wastebasket. Until finally he had something he liked. He read it through for the fourth or fifth time, then took it from the typewriter and read it again. It did the job, he decided. It was concise and clear and very much to the point. He reached for the phone. When he’d gotten through to Jukes he said, “Warren? I’ve decided to take your advice.” “Wrote another story for us? Glad to hear it.” “No,” he said, “another piece of advice you gave me. I’m branching out in a new direction.” “Well, I think that’s terrific,” Jukes said. “I really mean it. Getting to work on something big? A novel?” “No, a short piece.
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Lawrence Block (One Thousand Dollars A Word)
“
Clearly, the effect of such an analysis, if applied and sustained over a long period, is to reduce the tendency to identify with a fixed sense of selfhood, and instead to emphasize that experience is made up of a constantly changing flux of conditions.
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Andrew Skilton (Concise History of Buddhism)
“
Finally, some schools also compiled a Kṣudrakāgama (Pāli Khuddaka-Nikāya), the ‘smaller’ or ‘inferior’ collection. Clearly this division was adopted as an appropriate place for items that did not fit easily into the other four divisions, and it therefore has something of a miscellaneous character. The Pāli Sutta Piṭaka happens to be one that did contain such a division, which, in this case, is composed of fifteen different texts.
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Andrew Skilton (Concise History of Buddhism)
“
Finally, some schools also compiled a Kṣudrakāgama (Pāli Khuddaka-Nikāya), the ‘smaller’ or ‘inferior’ collection. Clearly this division was adopted as an appropriate place for items that did not fit easily into the other four divisions, and it therefore has something of a miscellaneous character. The Pāli Sutta Piṭaka happens to be one that did contain such a division, which, in this case, is composed of fifteen different texts. They are very diverse in character, some very late, such as the Buddhavamsa and Cariyāpiṭaka, but others are very early and of great interest for giving a glimpse of the early character of the Buddha’s teaching and activity, at a stage before it had become extensively formulated. Among these early texts one can include the famous Dhammapada, the Sutta Nipāta, the Itivuttaka and the Udāna. The Khuddaka-Nikāya also contains the Thera- and Therī-gāthā, ‘Verses of the Elder Monks and Nuns’ – usually spontaneous verse utterances of the disciples of the Buddha. One of the most popular sections of this Āgama is that of the Jātaka, the stories of the previous lives of the Buddha.
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Andrew Skilton (Concise History of Buddhism)
“
■If a potential business partner is ignoring you, contact them with a clear and concise “No”-oriented question that suggests that you are ready to walk away. “Have you given up on this project?” works wonders.
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Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
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Heart-centered leadership is clear and concise, and it gives frequent transparent communication.
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Danielle Cobo (Unstoppable Grit: Break Through the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals)
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The method by which desire for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent, consists of six definite, practical steps, viz: First. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say “I want plenty of money.” First. Be definite as to the amount. (There is a psychological reason for definiteness which will be described in a subsequent chapter). Second. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as something for nothing.) Third. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire. Fourth. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action. Fifth. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it. Sixth. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning. As you read-see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the money.
”
”
Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
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The patent expressly guarantees the inventor “the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling” the idea for the twenty-year life of the patent. The patent holder can, if he chooses, issue licenses to others to make, use, or sell the idea. The license fees can bring in large sums of money. If anybody tries to market the patented product without obtaining a license, the inventor can go into federal court to get an injunction and money damages. Not a bad deal at all for the inventor. In exchange for those benefits, though, the patent holder has to reveal all the secrets of his success. The patent law says that an inventor must provide “a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in . . . full, clear, concise and exact terms.” The inventor and his company might have expended a dozen years and a hundred million dollars perfecting the idea; once a patent is granted, anybody in the world can acquire the plans—full, clear, concise, and exact—from the Patent Office for $3. If, for example, John S. Pemberton had applied for a patent for the formula he whipped up in his backyard in Atlanta one day in the mid-1880s, the product that he invented—a soft drink that he named Coca-Cola—would have entered the public domain in 1903, when the patent expired. Anybody in the world would have been free from that day forward to brew and sell the drink without paying a penny to the Coca-Cola Company. But Pemberton kept his formula unpatented, and thus secret. Even without a patent, Coca-Cola has been able to defend its formula under a body of law known as trade secret protection, which makes it illegal to copy deliberately somebody else’s commercial idea.
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T.R. Reid (The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution)
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And when things go wrong, and they inevitably do go wrong, complexity compounds issues that can spiral out of control into total disaster. Plans and orders must be communicated in a manner that is simple, clear, and concise. Everyone that is part of the mission must know and understand his or her role in the mission and what to do in the event of likely contingencies. As a leader, it doesn’t matter how well you feel you have presented the information or communicated an order, plan, tactic, or strategy. If your team doesn’t get it, you have not kept things simple and you have failed. You must brief to ensure the lowest common denominator on the team understands.
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
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implement Prioritize and Execute in any business, team, or organization, a leader must: • evaluate the highest priority problem. • lay out in simple, clear, and concise terms the highest priority effort for your team. • develop and determine a solution, seek input from key leaders and from the team where possible. • direct the execution of that solution, focusing all efforts and resources toward this priority task. • move on to the next highest priority problem. Repeat. • when priorities shift within the team, pass situational awareness both up and down the chain. • don’t let the focus on one priority cause target fixation. Maintain the ability to see other problems developing and rapidly shift as needed.
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
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While the vision should be aspirational and inspiring, the mission statement must be concise yet clearly articulating the school's purpose and how it plans to achieve its goals.
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Asuni LadyZeal
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The white man despised him in Pennsylvania as much as he did in the Low Country. The difference was that the white man in the South spoke his hatred in clear, clean, concise terms, whereas the white man in the new country hid his hatred behind stories of wisdom and bravado, with false smiles of sincerity and stories of Jesus Christ and other nonsense that he tossed about like confetti in the Pottstown parade.
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James McBride (The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store)
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A good guideline for a safe distance (wherever possible) is two-arm’s length reach from a stranger. That distance allows you to hear what a person is saying, as well as provides you a reactionary gap should you need to effectively respond. Distance equals time and time equals safety, and that could be the difference between being safe or being the target of an attack. Verbal Boundaries Say what you mean in order to enforce your boundaries, such as “Leave now!” not “Can you please just go away?” or “Just leave me alone.” Make your point clearly and concisely. The more words you use, the more likely that your message will get lost. Avoid “please” and “thank you” in situations where you’re establishing and enforcing your boundaries. It’s okay to be polite as a tactical choice of words, but don’t qualify or give reason for your statement. Remember, it’s not what you say but how you say it, and being rude or angry when you’re dealing with a threatening situation can quickly make it worse. Know what you want, state it clearly and directly, and stick to it. Know Your Triggers Triggers are products of some past event. A trigger could be a smell, a sound, or a physical object. Triggers can affect you physically and mentally. The key is to remember that the situation that contains the trigger is not happening now; it already occurred in the past, and you need to remain focused on the present. Your safety depends on it. You don’t want a trigger to overtake your ability to stay focused in a potentially dangerous encounter with a stranger. Take three deep breaths. Breathing deeply and fully signals your parasympathetic system to respond by generating a sense of relaxation. If you have to say something more than twice, they’re not listening. Repeat yourself and stand your ground, but understand you may need to change the way you’re saying it. Be firmer and/or louder. Always remember that if you can leave a situation safely, leave. Don’t defer the “no”! By putting off something to another time, instead of definitively saying “no,” you’ll just have to deal with it another day. You need to be okay with saying “no” today. Repeat if necessary. Don’t apologize too much. (Women are especially bad about this.) Interrupt the person. You don’t need to be polite if they aren’t listening to you. Plus, interrupting them will serve to distract and redirect their energy. Imagine that you’re leaving the store late at night with an armful of groceries. A man approaches you and asks to assist you with putting your groceries in the vehicle. The way you use your voice can determine whether or not he accepts your reply.
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Darren Levine (Krav Maga for Women: Your Ultimate Program for Self Defense)
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CAD
Clear, concise construction documents in AutoCAD.
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UR Studio
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Don’t beat around the bush. If you hesitate or waver, toxic people will sense weakness and try to change your mind. Be clear and concise.
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Vanessa Van Edwards (Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People)
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Also, know that all things generated by the modes of goodness, passion and ignorance originate from Me alone. However, I am not in them but they are in Me.
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B.G. Narasingha (Original Bhagavad Gita — The Ultimate Millennial Edition — With Clear and Concise Commentary)
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What I am trying to say is that everyone here has a reason for their madness- everyone except me. I became mad without a clear and concise reason. My madness is the result of a careless mind, and because if it, I see myself as beneath everyone else here.
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Sandhya Mary (Maria, Just Maria)
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In B2B copywriting, clarity and conciseness are even more critical due to the complex nature of many business products and services. The persuasive element in B2B involves demonstrating a clear understanding of industry-specific challenges and providing evidence-based solutions. It’s about convincing a business that the product or service will offer tangible benefits and a strong return on investment (ROI).
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Kaitlin Terry (Copywriting for Marketers: The Busy Marketer’s Guide to Writing Awesome Multichannel Marketing Copy (For B2C and B2B))
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Symbols are valuable tools of communication. Symbols communicate truth concisely, and they communicate it graphically. In Revelation 11 the apostle John could have spent a great deal of time describing the spiritual and moral conditions of Jerusalem. Instead, he called the city “Sodom and Egypt.” Quickly and vividly he communicated a volume of truth that remains graphically fixed in our minds. Symbols and figures of speech, then, represent something literal. It is the task of the interpreter to investigate this figurative language to discover what literal truth is there.11 There’s a clear example of this at the very outset of Revelation as Jesus stands in the middle of seven golden lampstands holding seven stars in His right hand (1:13,16). At the end of the chapter, Jesus identifies the seven lampstands as the seven churches of Asia and the seven stars as seven angels (1:20). Jesus Himself is providing us with a key to unlock the meaning of symbols in Revelation—that is, when we see a symbol in prophecy, we are to look for the literal referent, or the literal person, place, or event that the symbol represents.
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Mark Hitchcock (101 Answers to Questions About the Book of Revelation)
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A specification is a clear and concise but complete description of the exact item desired so that all vendors have a common basis for price quotations and bids. As such, it is an essential communication tool between buyer and seller. Specifications should be realistic and should not include details that cannot be verified or tested or that would make the product too costly. Without up-to-date product information, specifications are useless. The specific information varies with each type of food, but all specifications should include at least the following information:Δ Clear, simple description using common or trade or brand name of product; when possible, use a name or standard of identity formulated by the government such as IMPS Amount to be purchased in the most commonly used terms (case, package, or unit) Name and size of basic container (10/10# packages) Count and size of the item or units within the basic container (50 pork chops, 4 ounces each) Range in weight, thickness, or size Minimum and maximum trims, or fat content percentage (ground meat, 90 percent lean and 10 percent fat, referred to as 90/10) Degree of maturity or stage of ripening Type of processing required (such as individually quick-frozen [IQF]) Type of packaging desired Unit on which price will be based Weight tolerance limit (range of acceptable weights, usually in meat, seafood, and poultry)
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Ruby Parker Puckett (Foodservice Manual for Health Care Institutions (J-B AHA Press Book 150))
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What I am advocating: For every topic on your site, think about what people come wanting to know about that topic. And then think about how to give them that information as clearly and concisely as possible.
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Janice G. Redish (Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works (Interactive Technologies))
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Practice: Framing Your Discernment Question Clarifying the scope and content of your discernment can simplify the subsequent steps of your discernment process. This exercise sets that clarifying and winnowing of your issue or question within the context of a prayer that God will help you see clearly where you should focus your discernment. 1. Let the silence deepen around you. Enter into it. Ask God for the desire to follow God’s call in and through the decision you will be making. Do not rush. Simply turn your attention to God, as you experience God, and address your desire to God. 2. Describe the decision that you wish to discern. 3. Elaborate in your discernment journal the aspects of this decision that seem important to you at this point. 4. State as concisely as you can the decision before you. It will be helpful if you can formulate your issue in a question that can be answered yes/no (for example: “Should I begin to work outside our home?”). 5. Bring the issue and the process you’ve engaged in thus far to God and attend to any thoughts or feelings that arise in you. Note these stirrings in your journal. Your first statement of the decision before you may shift; if so, repeat steps 4 and 5 until you sense that you have as clear and concise a statement as possible at this point. STARTING
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Elizabeth Liebert (The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making)
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I-thou relationship. Martin Buber’s term for a special relationship that is possible between persons when those persons relate to each other in a fully personal way and do not think of the other as an object to be manipulated or as a means to an end. Buber believed that such relationships make possible a different kind of knowledge of the other and that it is possible to have such a relation with God, who is the absolute Thou.
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C. Stephen Evans (Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion: 300 Terms Thinkers Clearly Concisely Defined (The IVP Pocket Reference Series))
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if your team isn’t doing what you need them to do, you first have to look at yourself. Rather than blame them for not seeing the strategic picture, you must figure out a way to better communicate it to them in terms that are simple, clear, and concise, so that they understand. This
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Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
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One of the major causes of stress in your life could be your inability to say ‘no’ and your will to please everyone. It is extremely important to create boundaries for yourself and then learn to stick to them. Curb the time with individuals who you feel stress you out.
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David Corr (Diabetes: Reverse Your Diabetes With a Clear and Concise Step by Step Guide: How to Prevent, Control, and Reverse Diabetes)
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Consistency of message helps build customer loyalty. Clear messaging can also have a huge impact on the bottom line. “If there’s one thing that I take away today, and I still use time and time again, it’s that the best messaging is clear, concise, and repeated,” reflected Borchers, who became a venture capitalist with the Silicon Valley firm Opus Capital after leaving Apple.
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Adam Lashinsky (Inside Apple)
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When your speaking style is clear, confident, and concise, your listeners will perceive you as such.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Communication: 8 Ways to Confirm Clarity & Understanding for Positive Impact(The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #5))
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Six Ways to Turn Desires into Gold. The method by which desire for riches can be transmuted into its financial equivalent, consists of six definite, practical steps, viz: First: fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say “I want plenty of money.” Be definite as to the amount. (There is a psychological reason for definiteness which will be described in a subsequent chapter.) Second: determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.”) Third: establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire. Fourth: create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action. Fifth: write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it. Sixth: read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning. As you read—see and feel and believe yourself already in possession of the money.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
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Mission refers the absolute necessity of developing and providing a clear, concise statement of what is to be done and for what purpose. It provides the basis for all future planning.
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Charles "Sid" Heal (Field Command)