Contrary To Popular Belief Quotes

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Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.
Terry Pratchett
High school is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship - nor, contrary to popular belief, an anarchic state. High school is a divine-right monarchy. And when the queen goes on vacation, things change.
John Green (Paper Towns)
Miracles, contrary to popular belief, do not just happen. A miracle is the achievement of the impossible, and it is only when we put aside out greed, anger, pride and prejudice so that our minds are open and ready to accept it, that a miracle can occur.
Julie Andrews Edwards (The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles)
Contrary to popular belief, the experience of terror does not make you braver. Perhaps though, it is easier to hide your fear when you're afraid all the time.
David Benioff (City of Thieves)
Don't fall asleep yet. Contrary to popular belief, that's not where dreams get accomplished.
George Watsky
Polyamorous or monogamous, your love should be a thing that brings something to you. It's true that giving can be a part of love. But, contrary to popular belief, love should never take from you, Freddy.
Mariko Tamaki (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me)
Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
Michael E. Gerber (The E-myth Revisited)
Contrary to popular belief, going shopping is really about stopping afterward for cheesecake.
Bonnie Jensen
Contrary to popular belief and hope, people don't usually come running when they hear a scream. That's not how humans work. Humans look at other humans and say, 'Did you hear a scream?' because the first scream might have been you screaming inside your head, or a horse backfiring.
Terry Pratchett (Unseen Academicals (Discworld, #37; Rincewind, #8))
Your mother is not crazy. Neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother. He is merely miscast in a play. He would have made the perfect knight in a different century, or a very good pagan prince in a time of heroes. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do.
S.E. Hinton (Rumble Fish)
I mean, contrary to popular belief, I'm actually not harboring a secret desire to grow up and become a bioterrorist.
Elizabeth Norris (Unraveling (Unraveling, #1))
Because feminism, contrary to popular belief, isn’t about hating on guys like me. It’s all about all of us working toward equality, together.
Michelle Quach (Not Here to Be Liked)
She looks at Sam. 'Close your ears if you don't want to know what I suspect to be the sex of your child,' she says, and he blocks his ears. 'It's Sam's?' Jonesey asks, surprised, just as he gets a message. 'Where have you been, Jonesey?' Bernadette says. 'In La La Land?' 'Contrary to popular belief, I think it has no penis,' Georgie whispers to them while Lucia covers Sam's ears. Jonesey looks up from his text messaging, shocked. 'Poor little guy.
Melina Marchetta (The Piper's Son)
First off, contrary to popular belief, I'm as human as you are. One of us should probably be ashamed of that. I'm not entirely sure that it's me.
Jeff Mach (There and Never, Ever Back Again: Diary of a Dark Lord)
Contrary to popular belief, the wings of demons are the same as the wings of angels, although they’re often better groomed.
Terry Pratchett (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed anymore.
Terry Pratchett (Pyramids (Discworld, #7))
Despite popular belief to the contrary, there is absolutely no power in intention. The seagull may intend to fly away, may decide to do so, may talk with the other seagulls about how wonderful it is to fly, but until the seagull flaps his wings and takes to the air, he is still on the dock. There’s no difference between that gull and all the others. Likewise, there is no difference in the person who intends to do things differently and the one who never thinks about it in the first place. Have you ever considered how often we judge ourselves by our intentions while we judge others by their actions? Yet intention without action is an insult to those who expect the best from you.
Andy Andrews (The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective)
The angel told her, An honest man who committed a crime, you have no idea how many honest men have committed crimes, their crimes are countless, and contrary to popular belief these are the only crimes that cannot be forgiven.
José Saramago (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ)
Liberalism, contrary to popular belief, is facing backward in considering the injustice of its ancestors. Conservatism, contrary to popular belief, is facing forward in considering the psychology of its descendants. Definitively, it seems in the modern world that neither side really knows which direction it's facing, and men of the sharpest judgment are simply turned off from picking either of the poisons.
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
Contrary to popular belief, the key to being a mastermind isn’t your ability to plot. It’s, in fact, your ability to predict your opponent’s moves before they make them.
Rina Kent (Reign of a King (Kingdom Duet, #1))
It is impossible to be hurt by someone you love contrary to popular belief. Only something or someone you fear can hurt you.
Frederick Dodson (Parallel Universes of Self)
Contrary to popular belief, most detectives couldn't detect a heartbeat on a speed addict, but you never know when you might be up against the next Ellery Queen.
Simon Kernick (The Business of Dying (Dennis Milne, #1))
Contrary to popular belief, the gene-centered theory of evolution does not imply that the point of all human striving is to spread our genes.
Steven Pinker (How the Mind Works)
Listen carefully to me. Despite popular belief to the contrary, there is absolutely no power in intention...There is no difference in the person who intends to do things differently and the one who never thinks about it in the first place. Have you ever considered how often we judge ourselves by out intentions while we judge others by their actions? Yet intention without action is an insult to those who expect the best from you.
Andy Andrews (The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective)
The good news, however, is that, also contrary to popular belief, full and lasting recovery from an eating disorder is possible.
Lynn Crilly
Contrary to popular belief, charisma was not inherent but had constantly to be reinforced.
Katie Kitamura (Intimacies)
Contrary to popular belief, love does not need understanding to thrive.
Ann Patchett (These Precious Days: Essays)
Contrary to popular belief, winners quit a lot. That’s how they win.
Annie Duke (Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away)
Contrary to popular belief, Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is about bad people coping with their failure to be good.
Tullian Tchividjian (Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free)
Contrary to popular belief, there are no negative emotions. There are only emotions that are harder to experience or that cause more distress for certain people, and the more you suppress those emotions, the harder they are to manage.
Whitney Goodman (Toxic Positivity: Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy)
Begging is much more difficult than it looks. Contrary to popular belief, it’s a high art form that takes years of dedicated practice to master.
Sol Luckman (Beginner's Luke (Beginner's Luke, #1))
Because feminism, contrary to popular belief, isn’t about hating on guys like me. It’s about all of us working toward equality, together
Michelle Quach (Not Here to Be Liked)
A smile crept to her lips. “What does the ‘F’ stand for?” she asked. He blinked a moment in confusion, and then recalled the nameplate on his desk: Hon. F. Darcy. “What do you think it stands for?” he countered. “Do you really have any doubt what I think it stands for?” she said, smirking. “Contrary to popular belief, my mother did not name me F*cker. It’s Fitzwilliam.
Sara Angelini (The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy)
Vampires, contrary to popular belief, don't incinerate when exposed to sunlight. If that were true, there would be a heck of a lot more stories about spontaneous combustion around the world. They are, however, very sensitive to sunlight and their skin cannot take long term exposure without damaging and burning it, which was painful. From Vampire Princess Rising book two of the Winters Saga
Jami Brumfield
Contrary to popular belief, alcohol does not destroy brain cells.
Graeme Simsion (The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1))
It's true that giving can be a part of love. But, contrary to popular belief, love should never take from you, Freddy.
Mariko Tamaki (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me)
It is safe to assume that any individual or group you wish to influence has access to more wisdom than they currently use. It is also safe to assume that they also have considerably more facts than they can process effectively. Giving them even more facts adds to the wrong pile. They don't need more facts. They need help finding their wisdom. Contrary to popular belief, bad decisions are rarely made because people don't have all the facts.
Annette Simmons (The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence, and Persuasion through the Art of Storytelling)
When one sifts place, ka-lyrra, one comes out on top of whatever currently occupies that space. Which isn't much of a problem if one also has all one's powers. But I don't. We hit a lake somewhere around the ninety-seventh hop. And, contrary to popular belief, I don't walk on water." ~Adam to Gabby
Karen Marie Moning
Contrary to popular belief, there aren’t that many descriptions of hell in the Bible, and the majority of images most people carry around in their heads are from the fourteenth-century poem, which means that our contemporary view of hell is actually from the Middle Ages.
Craig Johnson (Hell Is Empty (Walt Longmire, #7))
Contrary to popular belief, the helpful words that open the way to great, dramatic dialogues are, in general, modest, ordinary, banal, no one would think that Would you like a cup of coffee could serve as an introduction to a bitter debate about feelings that have died or to the sweetness of a reconciliation that neither person knows how to bring about.
José Saramago (The Double)
Contrary to popular belief, time does not heal, time does not fly, time does not do anything. Time has no consciousness. It does nothing for you. The key to happiness now is what you choose to do with your time right now. Are you, right now, making the most valuable use of your time? This moment is, after all, the time of your life. Your choices are what make each moment.
Robert Holden (Happiness Now!: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast)
In medieval times, contrary to popular belief, most knights were bandits, mercenaries, lawless brigands, skinners, highwaymen, and thieves. The supposed chivalry of Charlemagne and Roland had as much to do with the majority of medieval knights as the historical Jesus with the temporal riches and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, or any church for that matter. Generally accompanied by their immoral entourage or servants, priests, and whores, they went from tourney to tourney like a touring rock and roll band, sports team, or gang of South Sea pirates. Court to court, skirmish to skirmish, rape to rape. Fighting as the noble's substitution for work.
Tod Wodicka (All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well)
And Dil was realizing that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed anymore.
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10; Industrial Revolution, #1))
Contrary to popular belief and Pinterest, not everything is made better by being sorted into containers. Socks don’t need their own little cubbies. They’re socks—they’re not going to wander off or get into fights.
Messie Condo (Tidy the F*ck Up: The American Art of Organizing Your Sh*t)
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be fixed up with another one of your ideas of the perfect man. Contrary to popular belief, we all don’t want to get fucked by the first thing that shows any interest in us. Besides, testosterone-driven sex machines with little to no brains do not appeal to me!
Mandy M. Roth (Immortal Ops Box Set (Immortal Ops, #1-4))
High school is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship - nor, contrary to popular belief, an anarchic state. High school is a divine-right monarchy.
John Green (Paper Towns)
Contrary to popular belief we do not just stumble into our decisions. Every emotion is connected to a thought and those thoughts produce action.
Sarah Jakes Roberts (Don't Settle for Safe: Embracing the Uncomfortable to Become Unstoppable)
Contrary to popular belief: Knowing where you are from will not really tell you where you are going. It will merely tell you why you are where you are.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. It is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from repeated insults like the chronic stress we experience daily from small doses of negative feelings—as opposed to the invigorating “good stress” of the tiger popping up occasionally in your living room. You can rationalize all you want; the hippocampus takes the insult of chronic stress seriously, incurring irreversible atrophy. Contrary to popular belief, these small, seemingly harmless stressors do not strengthen you; they can amputate part of your self.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable)
Contrary to popular belief, fantasy is not about making things up. The world is stuffed full of things. It is almost impossible to invent any more. No, the role of fantasy as defined by G. K. Chesterton is to take what is normal and everyday and usual and unregarded, and turn it around and show it to the audience from a different direction, so that they look at it once again with new eyes.
Terry Pratchett (A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction)
vampires do walk in the sun, contrary to popular belief. We simply hate the hell out of it, similar to how cats hate baths, children hate bedtime, and men hate listening. Vampires. Hate. Sunshine.
Mimi Jean Pamfiloff (The Librarian's Vampire Assistant 2 (The Librarian's Vampire Assistant, #2))
Polyamorous or monogamous, your love should be a thing that brings something to you. It’s true that giving can be a part of love, but contrary to popular belief, your love should never take from you.
Mariko Tamaki (Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me)
Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin. It is largely because of the books, films and reminiscences that have come between that the war of 1914-18 is now supposed to have had some tremendous, epic quality that the present one lacks.
George Orwell
Contrary to popular belief, BLACK WOMEN SMILE but WE'RE NOT OBLIGATED TOO! We experience a range of emotions just like every. other. living. creature. Stop weaponizing our emotions.... -Sincerly and with as much sass as you probably read it
Kierra C.T. Banks
Contrary to popular belief, productivity isn’t about how much you can do. It’s about whether or not you’re doing the right things—the things that matter to your work and to you. And that means starting small with what you know matters to you.
Melissa Steginus (Self Care at Work: How to Reduce Stress, Boost Productivity, and Do More of What Matters)
Contrary to popular belief,” he began, “every normal person is both male and female in some degree.” What he called “erotic emotions” are felt by all people, toward virtually all other people. The problem is that “people not trained to an analytical point of view fail to consider these more complex expressions of erotic feeling,” and tend to regard them as abnormal.
Jill Lepore (The Secret History of Wonder Woman)
Russia used to be great, a nation of philosophers, brilliant thinkers, artists, and scientists. Not anymore. It hasn’t been great for a long time, not since Stalin purged the thinking class. Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t murder the bourgeoisie, he murdered anyone with talent. Do you know what that does to a society? I find it’s difficult to be proud of my heritage, of a culture I now consider mediocre at best, monstrous at worst. Russia is irrevocably crippled, stained by its totalitarianism—to which it still subscribes, like sheep—and rivers flow, the sky weeps with the blood of what once made it great.
Penny Reid (Kissing Tolstoy (Dear Professor, #1))
You are not a small and unimportant creature confined to the form of this physical body, contrary to popular belief. At the core of your being you are pure awareness, and this awareness is the same source from which everything in the Universe arises, exists as, and returns to. Consciousness is the dimension of yourself that you have forgotten you are, and of which you long to return to.
Joseph P. Kauffman (The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom)
While Apicius is full of ancient delicacies such as roasted peacock, boiled sow vulva, testicles, and other foods we would not commonly eat today, there are many others that are still popular, including tapenade, absinthe, flatbreads, and meatballs. There is even a recipe for Roman milk and egg bread that is identical to what we call French toast. And, contrary to popular belief, foie gras was not originally a French delicacy. The dish dates back twenty-five hundred years, and Pliny credits Apicius with developing a version using pigs instead of geese by feeding hogs dried figs and giving them an overdose of mulsum (honey wine) before slaughtering them.
Crystal King (Feast of Sorrow)
Contrary to popular belief, we are all called to pastor (a word that simply means “shepherd”). Older women are to shepherd the younger (Titus 2:3–5). Parents are to shepherd their children (Eph. 6:4). Timothy was told to teach others what he himself had been taught (2 Tim. 2:2). We’re all called to be making disciples (Matt. 28:19–20). If you can’t find a single person who looks to you as a mentor, something is wrong with you.
Francis Chan (We Are Church)
Contrary to popular belief, all gestures of altruism originate in the mind, not the heart. The heart will do anything possible to achieve its innermost goal, but if the goal serves someone else instead it will lose all interest and leave the mind free to exhaust itself battling to find the solution to its one task.
Vadim Zeland (Reality Transurfing Steps I-V)
First, contrary to popular belief, Buddhists can actually be very anxious people. That’s often why they become Buddhists in the first place. Buddhism was made for the anxious like Christianity was made for the downtrodden or AA for the addicted. Its entire purpose is to foster equanimity, to tame excesses of thought and emotion. The Buddhists have a great term for these excesses. They refer to them as the condition of “monkey mind.” A person in the throes of monkey mind suffers from a consciousness whose constituent parts will not stop bouncing from skull-side to skull-side, which keep flipping and jumping and flinging feces at the walls and swinging from loose neurons like howlers from vines. Buddhist practices are designed explicitly to collar these monkeys of the mind and bring them down to earth—to pacify them. Is it any wonder that Buddhism has had such tremendous success in the bastions of American nervousness, on the West Coast and in the New York metro area?
Daniel B. Smith (Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety)
To begin with, it was important for women to keep up their “curb appeal,” to “look and smell delicious,” to be “feminine, soft, and touchable,” not “dumpy, stringy, or exhausted”—at least if they wanted husbands to come home to them. But that was just the beginning. To keep a husband’s interest, Morgan was a strong believer in the power of costumes in the bedroom (or kitchen, living room, or backyard hammock), so that when a husband opened the front door each night it was like “opening a surprise package.” One day a “smoldering sexpot,” another “an all-American fresh beauty,” a pixie, a pirate, “a cow-girl or a show girl.” (Contrary to popular belief, Morgan never recommended that women clothe themselves in nothing but Saran Wrap. She wasn’t sure where that rumor got its start, though she conceded it was “a great idea.”) 3
Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation)
And that's how romance works. It exploits the Achilles' heel of exceptional women: their desire th think the best of men and stand by their side. Contrary to popular belief, men are not turned off by powerful women. Rather, they long for them, court them, wine and dine them, and ultimately either ruin them or lock them in their towers. It was the violence of romance that conquered women, more than witch pyres and swords and pillaging. Once trapped, the protection rackets run by their captors kept terrorized females dependent and compliant so as not to disturb the precarious and conditional security they were offered. They were then fattened up and put to work on their backs, either as breeders or playthings.
Tyson Yunkaporta (Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World)
I drink hot coffee in the summer, and iced coffee in the winter. I’m a contrarian, and contrary to popular belief I'm not a sellout. I rent.
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
Contrary to popular belief, overeating often stems from not eating enough of the right foods at the right time.
Keri Gans (The Small Change Diet: 10 Steps to a Thinner, Healthier You)
Contrary to popular belief, love is actually a reflection of how much we ‘honor’ another person—for at its core genuine love is a decision, not a feeling.
Philip Yancey (Meet the Bible: A Panorama of God's Word in 366 Daily Readings and Reflections)
Our society has led us to believe that everybody is on the internet these days. Contrary to popular belief everyone is not on social media.
Germany Kent
Contrary to popular belief, it's not easy for us to lie. Even the body has tells, even our blood runs toward truth.
Amanda Gorman (Call Us What We Carry: Poems)
Contrary to popular belief, Jack wasn’t a ghost. He was imprisoned in a dream. He couldn’t escape, but one of the advantages of dreams was that you could shape them.
C. Gockel (Snow so White (Urban Magick & Folklore, #1))
Contrary to popular belief, not everyone is entitled to their opinion. If you don't know the facts, your opinion doesn't count.
Andy Rooney
Contrary to popular belief, "Damn It" is not God's last name
Construction wall Philadelphia
Guru” literally means “dispeller of darkness.” The function of the guru, contrary to popular belief, is not to teach, indoctrinate, or convert. The guru is here to throw light on dimensions beyond your sensory perceptions and your psychological drama, dimensions that you are currently unable to perceive. The guru is here, fundamentally, to throw light on the very nature of your existence.
Sadhguru (Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy)
As I’ve said before, “the Mod generation”, contrary to popular belief, was not born in even 1958, but in the 1920s after a steady gestation from about 1917 or so. Now, Mod certainly came of age, fully sure of itself by 1958, completely misunderstood by 1963, and in a perpetual cycle of reinvention and rediscovery of itself by 1967 and 1975, respectively, but it was born in the 1920s, and I will maintain this. I don’t care who disagrees with me, and there are dozens of reasons that I do so —from the Art Deco aesthetic, to flapper fashions (complete with bobbed hair), to androgyny and subtle effeminacy, to jazz.
Ruadhán J. McElroy
contrary to popular belief, i have no interest in vengance. the thing about karma is that she's a bitch & she's a bitch that can always be counted on, so i leave everything in her all-too-eager hands. -the threefold law.
Amanda Lovelace (Flower Crowns and Fearsome Things)
Happiness or a relationship.......think about it: which one do you REALLY want? Contrary to popular belief, they are not the same. Everyone in a relationship isn't happy, and everyone that is happy isn't necessarily in a relationship.
Karlicia Lewis
I feel life today is too competitive to be enjoyable. Even if you don't want it to be, life is one intense competition, and how well you fare in it will determine your happiness and success. Most people just want to look like a winner more than they want to be a winner. I detest the competitiveness that permeates the society and how everything revolves around establishing yourself as a unique individual and honing skills that you can advertise in the market place. Contrary to popular belief, competition is not always beneficial. It adds a lot of unwanted frustration and stress. It can be destructive to one's self-esteem. Competition makes us imitate our competitors and we lose our identity in the midst of it. Why does it matter how successful someone else is in comparison to me? To be honest, I don't really care about being successful now. I just want the freedom to do anything I want without having to worry about social standards.
Sai Pradeep
Military history teaches us, contrary to popular belief, that wars are not necessarily the most costly of human calamities. The allied coalition lost few lives in getting Saddam out of Kuwait during the Gulf War of 1991, yet doing nothing in Rwanda allowed savage gangs and militias to murder hundreds of thousands with impunity. Bill Clinton stopped a Balkan holocaust through air strikes, without sacrificing American soldiers. His supporters argued, with some merit, that the collateral damage from the NATO bombing of Belgrade resulted in far fewer innocents killed, in such a “terrible arithmetic,” than if the Serbian death squads had been allowed to continue their unchecked cleansing of Islamic communities.
Victor Davis Hanson (The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern)
Self-love is the practice of understanding, embracing, and showing compassion for yourself. Self-love involves nurturing your entire being – that means taking care of yourself on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels. When engaging in self-love, we also work to forgive ourselves, accept our flaws, and embrace our inner demons. Contrary to popular belief, self-love isn’t just a blind adoration of our strengths, it’s also an embrace of our weaknesses and shadows.
Aletheia Luna
Time is free, but it's priceless, and we're all obliged to spend it. But spend it wisely because contrary to popular belief, time is not money. You can always earn more money, but you don't get more time. Time is finite. But it is predictable. It is consistent.
Bryan Johnston (Death Warrant)
An intelligent man wants to ultimately spend his life with a woman with whom he knows he shares complimentary energies with. He wants to feel like him and his woman are solid, because nothing can throw them off base, because the flow of their connection is just so grounded, that nothing can come in between that— not reason, not logic, not lies, not insecurities, not doubts and not fears. Men don't talk about this, but this is what intelligent men innately crave, and they don't want anything less. They want something solid. They don't want to be with women who want to be with guys who don't respect them or who try to make them jealous all the time; they don't want to be with women who need to feel like there's a game that's being played. So, contrary to popular belief, men do want something real, even more real than what many women dream of! And it's not about other people and what they think is real; it's about just him and her and what they know is real. But you can never fake making a man believe this is the kind of connection that you have with him, because you can't fake energies! At the end of the day, if you're that woman, then you're that woman and he's that man for you. Your connection through your energies will just flow through everything— walls, distance, time, fears— you'll be solid.
C. JoyBell C.
Although some studies show that paid work enhances women's self-esteem, which can improve their parenting, others suggest that single mothers in low-wage jobs are just as depressed, hostile, and fatalistic as single mothers on welfare. And contrary to widespread popular belief, higher levels of welfare assistance in a neighborhood tend to decrease the impact of resource deprivation on crime rates.22
Stephanie Coontz (The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap)
Contrary to popular belief, they were not carnival acts meant to wow the crowds and convince everyone of his divinity—if that were the case, the miracles failed miserably, since none of Jesus’ followers seemed to consider him a divine being until after his resurrection.
Tony Jones (A Holy Week Reader)
Contrary to popular belief, sushi isn’t about freshness; it’s about timing. Not just having your rice the proper temperature, but also having your fish the perfect age. Serve fish too soon out of the water and the muscles will be tight and the flavor underdeveloped. Wait too long and the protein turns to mush.
Matt Goulding (Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture)
Contrary to popular belief, people always say "It was a pleasure doing business with you". It is the only thing that has stayed with me after an assignment. Always mix business with pleasure. That is a secret they don't want you to know. BUT never mix pleasure with business. Then you might just end up in a divorce.
Nikhil Sharda
contrary to popular belief, we can’t be won back with hipper worship bands, fancy coffee shops, or pastors who wear skinny jeans. We millennials have been advertised to our entire lives, so we can smell b.s. from a mile away. The church is the last place we want to be sold another product, the last place we want to be entertained.
Rachel Held Evans (Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church)
Contrary to popular belief, twin flames do not complete each other– this is because the soul itself is already complete. Instead, such relationships exist to catalyze spiritual maturing and conscious expansion. In other words, twin flame connections exist to aid the collective growth of our planet towards compassion, tranquility, and love.
Aletheia Luna (Twin Flames and Soul Mates: How to Find, Create, and Sustain Awakened Relationships)
The second thing that I struck me was that people are not, contrary to popular belief, rude. Not in the slightest. In fact, most of them are exceptionally polite. What they are, however – and what is, I think, mistaken by many as rudeness – is busy. So busy you almost feel sorry for them. So busy that you wish Brita would start putting Valium in their filters.
Sarah Reiley
Contrary to popular belief, our deepest hunger is not for love. Our real hunger is for sensuality. We yearn to be seen in captivating ways than we’ve ever been seen, touched in deeper ways than we’ve ever been touched, and adored in ways we’ve never experienced before. Love doesn’t quite meet those needs. This is why sensuality makes so much sense now, if you truly understand what it’s purpose is really about
Lebo Grand
The major difference between heroin and alcohol is that, contrary to popular belief, heroin has no physically harmful effect. Alcohol is physically harmful to the brain, to the liver, to the nerve endings, eventually perhaps even to the stomach and intestines. Both drugs seem equally addicting, and why a person chooses one over another is probably based on experience, on availability, on legality, and on some personal idiosyncrasy not yet understood. What we do know is that the drugs work to relieve the pain and provide pleasure
William Glasser (Positive Addiction (Harper Colophon Books))
8. Poor Self-Discipline: The inability to discipline yourself. Contrary to popular belief, we are not born with the ability to discipline ourselves. We learn it from our parents, when they discipline us as children. Your CEN parents may have failed to offer you enough limits and clear boundaries, delivered in a healthy, balanced way. Now, all grown up, you haven’t been able to internalize these healthy skills and use them in a balanced way. Disciplining your own children in a natural way like other parents do is a struggle for you. Just like the emotional blind spots, these blind spots also are passed on from one generation to the next. Having failed to receive enough limits and boundaries as a child, you may find yourself struggling, feeling helpless and confused about your children’s discipline needs. You may end up under- or over-disciplining your children. Neither works very well, but it’s hard to see what you are doing wrong. The Feelings You Are Left With: Out of control, lost, helpless, frustrated, angry at your children for their lack of cooperation, confused
Jonice Webb (Running on Empty No More: Transform Your Relationships with Your Partner, Your Parents & Your Children)
You’re more interested, finally, in living life again in your writing than in making money. Now, let’s understand—writers do like money; artists, contrary to popular belief, do like to eat. It’s only that money isn’t the driving force. I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time to work at my real work. Think of it. Employers pay salaries for time. That is the basic commodity that human beings have that is valuable. We exchange our time in life for money. Writers stay with the first step—their time—and feel it is valuable even before they get money for it. They hold on to it and aren’t so eager to sell it. It’s like inheriting land from your family. It’s always been in your family: they have always owned it. Someone comes along and wants to buy it. Writers, if they are smart, won’t sell too much of it. They know once it’s sold, they might be able to buy a second car, but there will be no place they can go to sit still, no place to dream on. So it is good to be a little dumb when you want to write. You carry that slow person inside you who needs time; it keeps you from selling it all away. That person will need a place to go and will demand to stare into rain puddles in the rain, usually with no hat on, and to feel the drops on her scalp.
Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within)
Sauckel told me a very curious fact. All the girls whom we bring back from the Eastern territories are medically examined ; and 25 per cent of them are found to be virgins. That couldn't happen in Upper Bavaria! Contrary to popular belief, it is wrong to suppose that virginity is a particularly desirable quality; one cannot help suspecting that those who have been spared have nothing particular to offer ! And what is popularly said on the subject of Christian virgins I hesitate to repeat. When in the marriage ceremony the priest mentions virginity and the holy bond of matrimony, one always sees some of the lads grin and nudge each other; quite a number of them probably know this "Christian virgin" inside out!
Adolf Hitler (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944)
Nero discovered that the losses went to his emotional brain, bypassing his higher cortical structures and slowly affecting his hippocampus and weakening his memory. The hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. It is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from repeated insults like the chronic stress we experience daily from small doses of negative feelings—as opposed to the invigorating “good stress” of the tiger popping up occasionally in your living room. You can rationalize all you want; the hippocampus takes the insult of chronic stress seriously, incurring irreversible atrophy. Contrary to popular belief, these small, seemingly harmless stressors do not strengthen you; they can amputate part of your self.
Anonymous
On the contrary, every appeal to unconstitutional violence helps in the growth of Fascism. Whatever may be the weaknesses of democracy, it is only by means of it and by the help of the popular belief in it that Socialism can hope to succeed in Great Britain or America. Whoever weakens the respect for democratic government is, intentionally or unintentionally, increasing the likelihood, not of Socialism or Communism, but of Fascism.
Bertrand Russell (In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays)
My conclusion is that contrary to popular belief, atheism is not primarily an intellectual revolt, it is a moral revolt. Atheists don’t find God invisible so much as objectionable. They aren’t adjusting their desires to the truth, but rather the truth to fit their desires. This is something we can all identify with. It is a temptation even for believers. We want to be saved as long as we are not saved from our sins. We are quite willing to be saved from a whole host of social evils, from poverty to disease to war. But we want to leave untouched the personal evils, such as selfishness and lechery and pride. We need spiritual healing, but we do not want it. Like a supervisory parent, God gets in our way. This is the perennial appeal of atheism: it gets rid of the stern fellow with the long beard and liberates us for the pleasures of sin and depravity. The atheist seeks to get rid of moral judgment by getting rid of the judge.
Dinesh D'Souza (What's So Great About Christianity)
I told them we’re tired of the culture wars, tired of Christianity getting entangled with party politics and power. Millennials want to be known by what we’re for, I said, not just what we’re against. We don’t want to choose between science and religion or between our intellectual integrity and our faith. Instead, we long for our churches to be safe places to doubt, to ask questions, and to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. We want to talk about the tough stuff—biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation, and social justice—but without predetermined conclusions or simplistic answers. We want to bring our whole selves through the church doors, without leaving our hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask. I explained that when our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends aren’t welcome at the table, then we don’t feel welcome either, and that not every young adult gets married or has children, so we need to stop building our churches around categories and start building them around people. And I told them that, contrary to popular belief, we can’t be won back with hipper worship bands, fancy coffee shops, or pastors who wear skinny jeans. We millennials have been advertised to our entire lives, so we can smell b.s. from a mile away. The church is the last place we want to be sold another product, the last place we want to be entertained.
Rachel Held Evans (Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church)
It is well-known that a big percentage of all marriages in the United States end in divorce or separation (about 39 percent, according to the latest data).[30] But staying together is not what really counts. Analysis of the Harvard Study data shows that marriage per se accounts for only 2 percent of subjective well-being later in life.[31] The important thing for health and well-being is relationship satisfaction. Popular culture would have you believe the secret to this satisfaction is romantic passion, but that is wrong. On the contrary, a lot of unhappiness can attend the early stages of romance. For example, researchers find that it is often accompanied by rumination, jealousy, and “surveillance behaviors”—not what we typically associate with happiness. Furthermore, “destiny beliefs” about soul mates or love being meant to be can predict low forgiveness when paired with attachment anxiety.[32] Romance often hijacks our brains in a way that can cause the highs of elation or the depths of despair.[33] You might accurately say that falling in love is the start-up cost for happiness—an exhilarating but stressful stage we have to endure to get to the relationships that actually fulfill us. The secret to happiness isn’t falling in love; it’s staying in love, which depends on what psychologists call “companionate love”—love based less on passionate highs and lows and more on stable affection, mutual understanding, and commitment.[34] You might think “companionate love” sounds a little, well, disappointing. I certainly did the first time I heard it, on the heels of great efforts to win my future wife’s love. But over the past thirty years, it turns out that we don’t just love each other; we like each other, too. Once and always my romantic love, she is also my best friend.
Arthur C. Brooks (From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life)
The Venetians catalogue everything, including themselves. ‘These grapes are brown,’ I complain to the young vegetable-dealer in Santa Maria Formosa. ‘What is wrong with that ? I am brown,’ he replies. ‘I am the housemaid of the painter Vedova,’ says a maid, answering the telephone. ‘I am a Jew,’ begins a cross-eyed stranger who is next in line in a bookshop. ‘Would you care to see the synagogue?’ Almost any Venetian, even a child, will abandon whatever he is doing in order to show you something. They do not merely give directions; they lead, or in some cases follow, to make sure you are still on the right way. Their great fear is that you will miss an artistic or ‘typical’ sight. A sacristan, who has already been tipped, will not let you leave until you have seen the last Palma Giovane. The ‘pope’ of the Chiesa dei Greci calls up to his housekeeper to throw his black hat out the window and settles it firmly on his broad brow so that he can lead us personally to the Archaeological Museum in the Piazza San Marco; he is afraid that, if he does not see to it, we shall miss the Greek statuary there. This is Venetian courtesy. Foreigners who have lived here a long time dismiss it with observation : ‘They have nothing else to do.’ But idleness here is alert, on the qui vive for the opportunity of sightseeing; nothing delights a born Venetian so much as a free gondola ride. When the funeral gondola, a great black-and-gold ornate hearse, draws up beside a fondamenta, it is an occasion for aesthetic pleasure. My neighbourhood was especially favoured this way, because across the campo was the Old Men’s Home. Everyone has noticed the Venetian taste in shop displays, which extends down to the poorest bargeman, who cuts his watermelons in half and shows them, pale pink, with green rims against the green side-canal, in which a pink palace with oleanders is reflected. Che bello, che magnifici, che luce, che colore! - they are all professori delle Belle Arti. And throughout the Veneto, in the old Venetian possessions, this internal tourism, this expertise, is rife. In Bassano, at the Civic Museum, I took the Mayor for the local art-critic until he interupted his discourse on the jewel-tones (‘like Murano glass’) in the Bassani pastorals to look at his watch and cry out: ‘My citizens are calling me.’ Near by, in a Paladian villa, a Venetian lasy suspired, ‘Ah, bellissima,’ on being shown a hearthstool in the shape of a life-size stuffed leather pig. Harry’s bar has a drink called a Tiziano, made of grapefruit juice and champagne and coloured pink with grenadine or bitters. ‘You ought to have a Tintoretto,’ someone remonstrated, and the proprietor regretted that he had not yet invented that drink, but he had a Bellini and a Giorgione. When the Venetians stroll out in the evening, they do not avoid the Piazza San Marco, where the tourists are, as Romans do with Doney’s on the Via Veneto. The Venetians go to look at the tourists, and the tourists look back at them. It is all for the ear and eye, this city, but primarily for the eye. Built on water, it is an endless succession of reflections and echoes, a mirroring. Contrary to popular belief, there are no back canals where tourist will not meet himself, with a camera, in the person of the another tourist crossing the little bridge. And no word can be spoken in this city that is not an echo of something said before. ‘Mais c’est aussi cher que Paris!’ exclaims a Frenchman in a restaurant, unaware that he repeats Montaigne. The complaint against foreigners, voiced by a foreigner, chimes querulously through the ages, in unison with the medieval monk who found St. Mark’s Square filled with ‘Turks, Libyans, Parthians, and other monsters of the sea’. Today it is the Germans we complain of, and no doubt they complain of the Americans, in the same words.
Mary McCarthy
The fate of the Gospels was decided by death—it hung on the “cross.”... It was only death, that unexpected and shameful death; it was only the cross, which was usually reserved for the canaille only—it was only this appalling paradox which brought the disciples face to face with the real riddle: “Who was it? what was it?”—The feeling of dismay, of profound affront and injury; the suspicion that such a death might involve a refutation of their cause; the terrible question, “Why just in this way?”—this state of mind is only too easy to understand. Here everything must be accounted for as necessary; everything must have a meaning, a reason, the highest sort of reason; the love of a disciple excludes all chance. Only then did the chasm of doubt yawn: “Who put him to death? who was his natural enemy?”—this question flashed like a lightning-stroke. Answer: dominant Judaism, its ruling class. From that moment, one found one’s self in revolt against the established order, and began to understand Jesus as in revolt against the established order. Until then this militant, this nay-saying, nay-doing element in his character had been lacking; what is more, he had appeared to present its opposite. Obviously, the little community had not understood what was precisely the most important thing of all: the example offered by this way of dying, the freedom from and superiority to every feeling of ressentiment—a plain indication of how little he was understood at all! All that Jesus could hope to accomplish by his death, in itself, was to offer the strongest possible proof, or example, of his teachings in the most public manner.... But his disciples were very far from forgiving his death—though to have done so would have accorded with the Gospels in the highest degree; and neither were they prepared to offer themselves, with gentle and serene calmness of heart, for a similar death.... On the contrary, it was precisely the most unevangelical of feelings, revenge, that now possessed them. It seemed impossible that the cause should perish with his death: “recompense” and “judgment” became necessary (—yet what could be less evangelical than “recompense,” “punishment,” and “sitting in judgment”!). Once more the popular belief in the coming of a messiah appeared in the foreground; attention was rivetted upon an historical moment: the “kingdom of God” is to come, with judgment upon his enemies.... But in all this there was a wholesale misunderstanding: imagine the “kingdom of God” as a last act, as a mere promise! The Gospels had been, in fact, the incarnation, the fulfilment, the realization of this “kingdom of God.” It was only now that all the familiar contempt for and bitterness against Pharisees and theologians began to appear in the character of the Master—he was thereby turned into a Pharisee and theologian himself!
Nietszche