“
Don't place some vague moral judgement on yourself based on what others might think. Don't waste your energy.
”
”
E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1))
“
Our praying needs to be pressed and pursued with an energy that never tires, a persistency which will not be denied, and a courage that never fails.
”
”
E.M. Bounds
“
If you believed that thoughts were energy and energy is matter (E=mc2) and matter never disappears, then a person can never truly leave you unless you stop thinking about them. Everything you shared with a person is still there swirling around in the universe. Love, Cam had to admit, might be real. And love endures. Relationships endure. Because thoughts are energy, energy is matter, and matter never disappears.
”
”
Wendy Wunder (The Probability of Miracles)
“
He is all restless energy, and urgent need, and there isn't enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be.
That time always ends a second before you're ready.
That life is the minutes you want minus one.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue)
“
Whatever you focus on expands,
”
”
Pam Grout (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Imago (Xenogenesis, #3))
“
What shows up in our lives is a direct reflection of our inner thoughts and emotions.
”
”
Pam Grout (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
I couldn’t make sense out of what I was seeing. There was a shiny metal arm about an inch thick with a joint in the middle and a knob on the end. The arm was knocking the knob against the window. The oddest thing was that the arm wasn’t connected to anything. It appeared to be floating by itself in midair!
”
”
C.A. Knutsen (Tom and G.E.R.I.)
“
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.
”
”
Pam Grout (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
He wasn’t being arrogant. It wasn’t self-confidence that a human would have because they had been successful in the past. GERI was simply certain he would be successful because he was what he was—a superlative intellect, perhaps the only one of his caliber.
”
”
C.A. Knutsen (Tom and G.E.R.I.)
“
Here we are— Energy, Mass, Life, Shaping life, Mind, Shaping Mind, God, Shaping God. Consider— We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
“
Eleanor, I bought the Simpson place because I’ve always wanted the forest on that land. I got more than I bargained for. Tuesday, I went out there to take a walk in the forest and I found something. That something has become as you say my ‘friend.
”
”
C.A. Knutsen (Tom and G.E.R.I.)
“
Sometimes we carry unhappy feelings about past hurts too long. We spend too much energy dwelling on things that have passed and cannot be changed. We struggle to close the door and let go of the hurt. If, after time, we can forgive whatever may have caused the hurt, we will tap 'into a life-giving source of comfort' through the Atonement, and the 'sweet peace' of forgiveness will be ours ("My Journey to Forgiving," Ensign, Feb. 1997. 43). Some injuries are so hurtful and deep that healing comes only with help from a higher power and hope for perfect justice and restitution in the next life. . . . You can tap into that higher power and receive precious comfort and sweet peace.
”
”
James E. Faust
“
I don't think I have enough energy to fall apart. Why did I never realize it took energy to fall apart?
”
”
H.E. Edgmon (The Witch King (Witch King #1))
“
It is Einstein’s famous equation E=MC^2, in which E is energy (rajas), M is mass (tamas), and C is the speed of light (sattva). Energy, mass, and light are endlessly bound together in the universe.
”
”
B.K.S. Iyengar (Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom (Iyengar Yoga Books))
“
The problem is that children believe what adults say and once they're adults themselves they exact their revenge by deceiving their own children. "Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is" is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true it's too late. The mystery remains intact but all your available energy has long ago been wasted on stupid things. All that's left is to anesthetize yourself by trying to hide the fact that you can't find any meaning in your life and then the better to convince yourself you deceive your own children. ... People aim for the stars and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd. That might deprive you of a few good moments in your childhood but it would save you a considerable amount of time as an adultnot to mention the fact that you'd be spared at least one traumatic experience i.e. the goldfish bowl.
”
”
Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
“
So you see, you have nothing to be afraid of."
Oh no, thought Otto, just squads of hired goons wandering around with experimental energy weapons. Nothing to be afraid of at all.
”
”
Mark Walden (H.I.V.E. Higher Institute of Villainous Education (H.I.V.E., #1))
“
The fundamental laws of the universe which correspond to the two fundamental theorems of the mechanical theory of heat.
1. The energy of the universe is constant.
2. The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum.
”
”
Rudolf Clausius (The Mechanical Theory of Heat)
“
He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. All that was there, in the lids of his brown eyes, his smooth skin, his lower lip pushed out. There was coiled energy inside.
”
”
E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
“
Eating sensibly and exercising don't guarantee long life and good health; they just decrease the risk of getting sick.
”
”
Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
“
At one time, we thought that the way life came together was almost completely random, only needing an energy gradient to get going. But as we’ve moved into the information age, we’ve come to realize that life is more about information than energy. Fire has most of the characteristics of life. It eats, it grows, it reproduces. But fire retains no information. It doesn’t learn; it doesn’t adapt. The five millionth fire started by lightning will behave just like the first. But the five hundredth bacterial division will not be like the first one, especially if there is environmental pressure. That’s DNA. And RNA. That’s life. …
”
”
Dennis E. Taylor (We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1))
“
The fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.
”
”
Karl Marx (Essential Writings of Karl Marx: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Communist Manifesto, Wage Labor and Capital, Critique of the Gotha Program)
“
„Ura e energie, iar energia îţi dă puterea de a rămâne în viaţă!” - Monica Ramirez, Asasin la feminin
”
”
Monica Ramirez (Asasin la feminin)
“
Hate pulls so much negative energy from the soul. I guess the saying is true; misery loves company.
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (Why Are You Obsessed with My Race?)
“
But here’s what physicists tell us. Things, in the quantum world, do not happen in steps. They happen immediately.
”
”
Pam Grout (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
It’s right underneath your fingers, baby. That’s all you have to understand—everything is right underneath your fingers.
”
”
Pam Grout (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
It really is all about having the right people on your team and directing their energies accordingly. I think it was Harvey Firestone who said, ‘The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.’
”
”
E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1))
“
They are crystals, Mr. Williams,” Ferg said, “but unlike any other crystals on this planet. If I were to put a label on the spheres, each is a Dynamically Layered Organic Crystal Lattice. Something like this has been theorized, but it has remained in the theory stage because no one could imagine how to make them.
”
”
C.A. Knutsen (Tom and G.E.R.I.)
“
I knew he was unreliable, but he was fun to be with. He was a child’s ideal companion, full of surprises and happy animal energy. He enjoyed food and drink. He liked to try new things. He brought home coconuts, papayas, mangoes, and urged them on our reluctant conservative selves. On Sundays he liked to discover new places, take us on endless bus or trolley rides to some new park or beach he knew about. He always counseled daring, in whatever situation, the courage to test the unknown, an instruction that was thematically in opposition to my mother’s.
”
”
E.L. Doctorow (World's Fair)
“
The flash would prove that proton decay really happens. The flash would mean that the matter of the proton - the solid stuff - had turned into the energy of the flash (E-mc2). Totally. Nothing left behind. No ash. No smoke. No smell. Nada. One moment it's there, the next moment - pffft - gone.
What would it mean? Only this: Nothing lasts. Nothing. Because everything that exists is made of protons.
”
”
Jerry Spinelli (Smiles to Go)
“
Why are you not having me take you there?” GERI asked. “I could have had you there in twenty minutes.” “I appreciate the offer, GERI. I don’t know what I’m getting into. I don’t want to have to explain to someone how I got to South Carolina so fast. I need to have this trip well documented.
”
”
C.A. Knutsen (Tom and G.E.R.I.)
“
DRAMA: Be careful about being baited into the personal battles and confusion of others. If you want to help someone out emotionally, be certain he or she has made a commitment to the sacrifice before you intervene for his or her success. If you don’t, you’re likely to be drained of all your healthy energy with his or her selfish petty, pitiful pretending and negotiating. Be encouraged but more importantly if you can’t make it better, whatever you do don’t make it worse, for them and especially yourself
”
”
Kerry E. Wagner
“
A prayerless age will have but scant models of divine power. The age may be a better age than the past, but there is an infinite distance between the betterment of an age by the force of an advancing civilization and its betterment by the increase of holiness and Christlikeness by the energy of prayer.
”
”
E.M. Bounds (Power of Prayer (One Minute Devotions))
“
When someone hurts your pride, do not allow them to force you to run away or lose hope. They want you to struggle, they want you to feel like you are suffocating, and they want you to feel like you cannot go on. Let go of wasted negative energy and fear —you are only human and you cannot please everyone at the same time. Remember, nobody can take your inner peace unless you allow them to.
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
“
She’d ceased spying upon him, that was true, but the damage was done. Every time he sat at his desk, he could feel her eyes upon him, even though he knew very well she’d shut her curtains tight. But clearly, reality had very little to do with the matter, because all he had to do, it seemed, was glance at her window, and he lost an entire hour’s work.
It happened thus: He looked at the window, because it was there, and he couldn’t very well never happen to glance upon it unless he also shut his curtains tight, which he was not willing to do, given the amount of time he spent in his office. So he saw the window, and he thought of her, because, really, what else would he think of upon seeing her bedroom window? At that point, annoyance set in, because A) she wasn’t worth the energy, B) she wasn’t even there, and C) he wasn’t getting any work done because of her.
C always led into a bout of even deeper irritation, this time directed at himself, because D) he really ought to have better powers of concentration, E) it was just a stupid window, and F) if he was going to get agitated about a female, it ought to be one he at least liked.
F was where he generally let out a loud growl and forced himself to get back to his translation. It usually worked for a minute or two, and then he’d look back up, and happen to see the window, and the whole bloody nonsense cycled back to the beginning.
”
”
Julia Quinn (What Happens in London (Bevelstoke, #2))
“
The Time (T) and Energy (E) we invest in others, people will take it and carry it with them.
”
”
Ken Poirot (Mentor Me: GA=T+E—A Formula to Fulfill Your Greatest Achievement)
“
Scientists tell us that 98 percent of our 60,000 thoughts are repeats from the day before.
”
”
Pam Grout (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
The lazy man does not, will not, cannot pray, for prayer demands energy. Paul calls it a striving, an agony.
”
”
E.M. Bounds (The Complete Collection of E. M. Bounds on Prayer)
“
Love is surrounding you, just like the sunbeam on the flowers that gives them the energy to grow.”
~Love is respect ♥~
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (In Love With Blindfolds On)
“
As I took in a deep breath, I felt renewed. As I released each breath, I let go of negative thoughts and energy.
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (Dying on The Inside and Suffocating on The Outside)
“
I dispute the point that nuclear energy is 'clean' and 'cost-effective'. As I recall, when we first harnessed nuclear power it was to drop an atom bomb on a civilian population, not to save the environment. However, you must admit, the victors are never tried for war crimes.
”
”
E.A. Bucchianeri (Brushstrokes of a Gadfly (Gadfly Saga, #1))
“
If we simply devote our minds to feeling rich, to being grateful for all the already-apparent riches in our lives—say, our families and our wonderful friends—being broke would disappear. We only experience it because we devote our thoughts to it. That’s how powerful our minds are.
”
”
Pam Grout (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
It really is true: doing what you please (i.e., what pleases you), with energy, will lead you to everything—to your particular obsessions and the ways in which you’ll indulge them, to your particular challenges and the forms in which they’ll convert into beauty, to your particular obstructions and your highly individualized obstruction breakers. We can’t know what our writing problems will be until we write our way into them, and then we can only write our way out.
”
”
George Saunders (A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading and Life)
“
An educational strategy to help you maintain your clear boundaries is the JADE technique. JADE is an acronym and it stands for:
J = Justify: Don’t try to justify yourself to toxic people. It’s unproductive.
A = Argue: Do not waste your energy arguing with toxic people.
D = Defend: Don’t waste your breath trying to defend yourself to those who don’t care.
E = Explain: Never explain yourself, especially to those who discredit you.
The goal of the JADE technique is to take back your power. To stand up for yourself without needing to defend or explain yourself. It’s essential to not engage in this ridiculous mind-game with abusive people.
”
”
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
“
The darkness wasn’t negative energy, it was healing—it balanced my soul. It helped me to trust whatever unfolded and to believe and have faith in what I couldn’t see. It prepared me for the battles that I wasn’t prepared for. They sneaked up on me and revealed themselves without notice. When obstacles jumped out at me without warning, I knew I wasn’t alone. My faith was improving during the darkest hours of my life.
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
“
We evolved to be physically active as we age, and in turn being active helps us age well. Further, the longer we stay active, the greater the benefit, and it is almost never too late to benefit from getting fit.
”
”
Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
“
„Teoria mea … teoria mea este că e mai bine să mori câtă vreme nu ți-a luat viața totul. Trebuie să păstrezi muniț
ii, energie pentru moarte și să nu ajungi acolo complet golit, ca bătrânii ăștia acriți si nefericiți.
”
”
Martin Page (How I Became Stupid)
“
The information. Every bit that of information that was ever in your brain. But the information is not the mind Jenna. That we've never accomplished before. What we've done with you is groundbreaking. We cracked the code. The mind is an energy that the brain produces. Think of a glass ball twirling on your fingertip. If it falls, it shatters into a million pieces. All the parts of a ball are still there, but it will never twirl with that force on your fingertip again. The brain is the same way.
”
”
Mary E. Pearson (The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Jenna Fox Chronicles, #1))
“
Darkness is not a bad place; it depends on how one looks at it. It keeps me from going insane and losing my mind. Darkness rejuvenates my mind, restores peace and teaches me how to pray and ask for help. When we prepare for rest, we want the room to be dark; therefore, we close the blinds, cut off the lights and television, and eliminate any distractions so we can get a peaceful night’s rest. Darkness renews your mind. It restores your energy and it gives you the strength you need to get through another day.
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
“
within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital. But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.
”
”
Karl Marx (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Volume 1)
“
As they throw more stones, let them fall where they may. In my opinion, the more rings in the ripple effect the better! Needless to say, they are giving you the opportunity to exchange their hate, backbiting, and negative energy into valuing and loving yourself more. They are helping you create a thicker skin as you find your happiness and you embrace a fruitful future.
This is your moment. You are coming into a time of peace and fulfillment. Take it all in! You put up with a lot of people’s shit to get where you are today.
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
“
If you believed that thoughts were energy and energy is matter (E=mc2) and matter never disappears, then a person can never truly leave you unless you stop thinking about them.
”
”
Wendy Wunder (The Probability of Miracles)
“
Thus energy may be regarded as the universal currency of the sciences,
”
”
J.E. Gordon (Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down)
“
Man’s chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes other than his own state of consciousness.” —NEVILLE GODDARD, BARBADIAN AUTHOR AND MYSTIC
”
”
Pam Grout (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
The universe is limitless, abundant, and strangely accommodating.
”
”
Pam Grout (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
As their frenzy grew, so did the storm, as if the hurricane built off their furious energy. Prophet would never look at a hurricane the same way again.
”
”
S.E. Jakes (Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water, #2))
“
Your energy bothers me and your spirit has different shadows of negative ghosts that love misery.
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (Dying on The Inside and Suffocating on The Outside)
“
If any theme runs through all my work, it is what Adrienne Rich once called "re-vision", i.e., the re-perceiving of experience, not because our experience is complex or subtle or hard to understand (though it is sometimes all three) but because so much of what's presented to us as "the real world" or "the way it is" is so obviously untrue that a great deal of social energy must be mobilized to hide that gross and ghastly fact. has a theatre critic (whose name I'm afraid I've forgotten) once put it," There's less there than meets the eye". Hence, my love for science fiction, which analyses reality by changing it.
”
”
Joanna Russ (To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction)
“
The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.
”
”
Leonard Edward Read (I, Pencil: My Family Tree As Told to Leonard E. Read)
“
Thus with continued concentration and the expenditure of enormous amounts of energy he tried to keep himself from slipping into the vast distances of his unhappiness. It was all around him. It was a darkness as impudently close as his brow. It choked him by its closeness. And what was most terrifying was its treachery. He would wake up in the morning and see the sun coming in the window, and sit up in his bed and think it was gone, and then find it there after all, behind his ears or in his heart.
”
”
E.L. Doctorow (Ragtime)
“
Aren’t gods normally off in some god space doing important things?”
All of her [Vorgaine’s] eyes blink at once and it is revolting and oh my Her I’m going to be sick. “I breathed this world into life, Wyatt. What could be more important than living within it?
”
”
H.E. Edgmon (The Fae Keeper (Witch King #2))
“
Fathers are…
The teeth on a saw,
The head of a nail,
The blades on a mower.
Fathers are…
The grit in a tumbler,
The cement in the pit,
The coin for the machine.
Fathers are…
The air in the tires,
The spring in the suspension,
The key to the ignition.
Fathers are...
the confidence in a dare,
The energy of a command,
The boots for the trail.
Tis true you might make things work without them,
but not at all like they were meant to.
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year)
“
Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant. And once we did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though we had stolen thoughts from their minds.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Lilith's Brood (Xenogenesis, #1-3))
“
The direction of research . . .should be:
- toward non-violence rather than violence,
- towards a harmonious cooperation with nature rather than with warfare against nature;
- towards the noiseless, low-energy, elegant, and economical solutions normally applied in nature rather than [our often] noisy, high-energy, brutal, wasteful, and clumsy solutions.
”
”
Ernst F. Schumacher
“
The greatest discovery and development of the coming years will be along spiritual lines. Here is a force which history clearly teaches has been the greatest power in the development of man and history, and yet we have been merely playing with it and have never seriously studied it as we have physical forces. Some day people will learn that material things do not bring happiness and are of little use in making men and women creative and powerful. Then the scientists of the world will turn their laboratories over to the study of the spiritual forces. When this day comes, the world will see more advancement in one generation than it has in the past four.
”
”
Charles Proteus Steinmetz (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
She draws him out of bed, and into the kitchen, and Henry sits on a stool and listens as she makes an omelet and tells him about the first time she flew a plane, heard a song on the radio, saw a moving picture.
This is the last gift she can give him, these moments he will never have.
And this is the last gift he can give her, the listening.
And he wishes they could climb back into bed with Book, but they both know there’s no going back. And now that he’s up, he cannot bear the stillness. He is all restless energy, and urgent need, and there isn’t enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be.
That time always ends a second before you’re ready.
That life is the minutes you want minus one.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue)
“
Reframe: To put Conversational Intelligence to work, stop thinking of your job as managing resistance and instead accept resistance as a natural part of change. People need to challenge new ideas before they can accept them. For full ownership and accountability to take place, people need to be in the conversation about how to change rather than being asked to merely comply. When leaders reframe in this way, they see that conversations release new energy for change—which will propel their efforts forward faster.
”
”
Judith E. Glaser (Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust & Get Extraordinary Results)
“
Look through the Bible and nowhere does Jesus say, “Worship me.” His call to us was “follow me.” There’s a big difference. By making Jesus out to be a hero, we miss the whole point. Jesus wasn’t saying, “I’m cool. Make statues of me; turn my birthday into a huge commercial holiday.” He was saying, “Here, look what is possible. Look what we humans are capable of.” Jesus is our brother, our legacy, the guy we’re supposed to emulate.
”
”
Pam Grout (E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality)
“
Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilárd, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. ...
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat or exploded in a port, might well destroy the whole port altogether with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.
”
”
Albert Einstein
“
For generation after generation, our ancestors young and old woke up each morning thankful to be alive and with no choice but to spend several hous walking, digging, and doing other physical activities to survive to the next day. Sometimes they also played or danced for enjoyment and social reasons. Otherwise, they generally steered clear of nonessential physical activities that divert energy from the only thing evolution really cares about: reproduction.
”
”
Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
“
When you provide value to others and when you are not full of negativity but instead irradiate amazing positive energy; people will always come to you because they feel good around you. And when someone is walking away from you; it's because their vibration and your vibration are not synced. Rise to the top and negative people will slip away. it's law!
”
”
E. Christian Trejo
“
Pseudoscience often relies on a witches' brew of scientific terms (e.g. "wavelength," "energy fields," "vibrations") half-baked into simplistic metaphors that do not correspond with testable reality. In some cases, pseudoscience simply relies on language that is deliberately vague and poorly defined to deceive. While outright lunacy is almost always easy to spot, the most dangerous of pseudoscientific meanderings are those filled with scientific terminology that, even for experts, can initially be daunting and impressive. Upon dissection, however, the terminology is invariably found to be misused, or used in a context far from accepted understanding. However convincing and artful, however much we may even wish the conclusions to be true, monuments built in such shifting sands cannot withstand the inevitable tests of time.
”
”
K. Lee Lerner
“
Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating; each atom is like a wobbly spinning top that radiates energy. Because each atom has its own specific energy signature (wobble), assemblies of atoms (molecules) collectively radiate their own identifying energy patterns. So every material structure in the universe, including you and me, radiates a unique energy signature. If it were theoretically possible to observe the composition of an actual atom with a microscope, what would we see? Imagine a swirling dust devil cutting across the desert’s floor. Now remove the sand and dirt from the funnel cloud. What you have left is an invisible, tornado-like vortex. A number of infinitesimally small, dust devil–like energy vortices called quarks and photons collectively make up the structure of the atom. From far away, the atom would likely appear as a blurry sphere. As its structure came nearer to focus, the atom would become less clear and less distinct. As the surface of the atom drew near, it would disappear. You would see nothing. In fact, as you focused through the entire structure of the atom, all you would observe is a physical void. The atom has no physical structure—the emperor has no clothes! Remember the atomic models you studied in school, the ones with marbles and ball bearings going around like the solar system? Let’s put that picture beside the “physical” structure of the atom discovered by quantum physicists. No, there has not been a printing mistake; atoms are made out of invisible energy not tangible matter! So in our world, material substance (matter) appears out of thin air. Kind of weird, when you think about it. Here you are holding this physical book in your hands. Yet if you were to focus on the book’s material substance with an atomic microscope, you would see that you are holding nothing. As it turns out, we undergraduate biology majors were right about one thing—the quantum universe is mind-bending. Let’s look more closely at the “now you see it, now you don’t” nature of quantum physics. Matter can simultaneously be defined as a solid (particle) and as an immaterial force field (wave). When scientists study the physical properties of atoms, such as mass and weight, they look and act like physical matter. However, when the same atoms are described in terms of voltage potentials and wavelengths, they exhibit the qualities and properties of energy (waves). (Hackermüller, et al, 2003; Chapman, et al, 1995; Pool 1995) The fact that energy and matter are one and the same is precisely what Einstein recognized when he concluded that E = mc2. Simply stated, this equation reveals that energy (E) = matter (m, mass) multiplied by the speed of light squared (c2). Einstein revealed that we do not live in a universe with discrete, physical objects separated by dead space. The Universe is one indivisible, dynamic whole in which energy and matter are so deeply entangled it is impossible to consider them as independent elements.
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Bruce H. Lipton (The Biology of Belief: Unleasing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles)
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Matter and energy are equivalent, according to the equation E=mc2, where E stand for energy, m for mass and c for the speed of light,' 'Merapa explained. 'Matter can't be transported at the speed of light but energy can. Therefore, during a time shift transformation, matter is converted to energy then condenses back. In other words all the molecules in your body have been changed from matter to energy then back again.'
'Wow. It's a wonder it's not fatal,' Dirck said.
'Sometimes it is. If any transcription errors occur between the DNA and RNA in your vital organs you're all but dead.
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Marcha A. Fox (Beyond the Hidden Sky (Star Trails Tetralogy, #1))
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It’s about respecting yourself, instead of catering to your insecure need to be liked. This is incredibly powerful, because when you love yourself enough to stand in your truth no matter what the cost, everyone benefits. You start attracting the kinds of things, people, and opportunities, that are in alignment with who you truly are, which is way more fun than hanging out with a bunch of irritating energy suckers. And by declining to participate in other people’s drama, (i.e. refusing to rip people to shreds, to complain about how unfair the world is, etc.) you not only raise your own frequency, but you offer the drama queens the chance to rise up too, instead of everyone continuing to play a low, lame game. Never apologize for who you are. It lets the whole world down.
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Jen Sincero (You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life)
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This is incredibly powerful, because when you love yourself enough to stand in your truth no matter what the cost, everyone benefits. You start attracting the kinds of things, people, and opportunities, that are in alignment with who you truly are, which is way more fun than hanging out with a bunch of irritating energy suckers. And by declining to participate in other people’s drama, (i.e. refusing to rip people to shreds, to complain about how unfair the world is, etc.) you not only raise your own frequency, but you offer the drama queens the chance to rise up too, instead of everyone continuing to play a low, lame game.
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Jen Sincero (You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life)
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How does the living organism avoid decay? The obvious answer is: By eating, drinking, breathing and (in the case of plants) assimilating. The technical term is metabolism. The Greek word () means change or exchange. Exchange of what? Originally the underlying idea is, no doubt, exchange of material. (E.g. the German for metabolism is Stoffwechsel.) That the exchange of material should be the essential thing is absurd. Any atom of nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur, etc., is as good as any other of its kind; what could be gained by exchanging them? For a while in the past our curiosity was silenced by being told that we feed upon energy.
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Erwin Schrödinger (What is Life? (Canto Classics))
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If, by the virtue of charity or the funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts. You will find out that once MA’s Department of Social Services has taken a mother’s children away for any period of time, they can always take them away again, D.S.S ., like at will, empowered by nothing more than a certain signature-stamped form. I.e. once deemed Unfit— no matter why or when, or what’s transpired in the meantime— there’s nothing a mother can do.(...)That a little-mentioned paradox of Substance addiction is: that once you are sufficiently enslaved by a Substance to need to quit the Substance in order to save your life, the enslaving Substance has become so deeply important to you that you will all but lose your mind when it is taken away from you. Or that sometime after your Substance of choice has just been taken away from you in order to save your life, as you hunker down for required A.M. and P.M. prayers , you will find yourself beginning to pray to be allowed literally to lose your mind, to be able to wrap your mind in an old newspaper or something and leave it in an alley to shift for itself, without you.(...)That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on.(...)That evil people never believe they are evil, but rather that everyone else is evil. That it is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds.(...)That it is statistically easier for low-IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high-IQ people.(...)That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.(...)That most Substance -addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking. That the cute Boston AA term for addictive -type thinking is: Analysis-Paralysis. That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting
ready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good.(...)That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.(...)That certain sincerely devout and spiritually advanced people believe that the God of their understanding helps them find parking places and gives them advice on Mass. Lottery numbers.
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David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
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Consider the genesis of a single-celled embryo produced by the fertilization of an egg by a sperm. The genetic material of this embryo comes from two sources: paternal genes (from sperm) and maternal genes (from eggs). But the cellular material of the embryo comes exclusively from the egg; the sperm is no more than a glorified delivery vehicle for male DNA—a genome equipped with a hyperactive tail. Aside from proteins, ribosomes, nutrients, and membranes, the egg also supplies the embryo with specialized structures called mitochondria. These mitochondria are the energy-producing factories of the cell; they are so anatomically discrete and so specialized in their function that cell biologists call them “organelles”—i.e., mini-organs resident within cells. Mitochondria, recall, carry a small, independent genome that resides within the mitochondrion itself—not in the cell’s nucleus, where the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes (and the 21,000-odd human genes) can be found. The exclusively female origin of all the mitochondria in an embryo has an important consequence. All humans—male or female—must have inherited their mitochondria from their mothers, who inherited their mitochondria from their mothers, and so forth, in an unbroken line of female ancestry stretching indefinitely into the past. (A woman also carries the mitochondrial genomes of all her future descendants in her cells; ironically, if there is such a thing as a “homunculus,” then it is exclusively female in origin—technically, a “femunculus”?) Now imagine an ancient tribe of two hundred women, each of whom bears one child. If the child happens to be a daughter, the woman dutifully passes her mitochondria to the next generation, and, through her daughter’s daughter, to a third generation. But if she has only a son and no daughter, the woman’s mitochondrial lineage wanders into a genetic blind alley and becomes extinct (since sperm do not pass their mitochondria to the embryo, sons cannot pass their mitochondrial genomes to their children). Over the course of the tribe’s evolution, tens of thousands of such mitochondrial lineages will land on lineal dead ends by chance, and be snuffed out. And here is the crux: if the founding population of a species is small enough, and if enough time has passed, the number of surviving maternal lineages will keep shrinking, and shrinking further, until only a few are left. If half of the two hundred women in our tribe have sons, and only sons, then one hundred mitochondrial lineages will dash against the glass pane of male-only heredity and vanish in the next generation. Another half will dead-end into male children in the second generation, and so forth. By the end of several generations, all the descendants of the tribe, male or female, might track their mitochondrial ancestry to just a few women. For modern humans, that number has reached one: each of us can trace our mitochondrial lineage to a single human female who existed in Africa about two hundred thousand years ago. She is the common mother of our species. We do not know what she looked like, although her closest modern-day relatives are women of the San tribe from Botswana or Namibia. I find the idea of such a founding mother endlessly mesmerizing. In human genetics, she is known by a beautiful name—Mitochondrial Eve.
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Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene: An Intimate History)
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Sorrow (A Song)
To me this world's a dreary blank,
All hopes in life are gone and fled,
My high strung energies are sank,
And all my blissful hopes lie dead.--
The world once smiling to my view,
Showed scenes of endless bliss and joy;
The world I then but little knew,
Ah! little knew how pleasures cloy;
All then was jocund, all was gay,
No thought beyond the present hour,
I danced in pleasure’s fading ray,
Fading alas! as drooping flower.
Nor do the heedless in the throng,
One thought beyond the morrow give,
They court the feast, the dance, the song,
Nor think how short their time to live.
The heart that bears deep sorrow’s trace,
What earthly comfort can console,
It drags a dull and lengthened pace,
'Till friendly death its woes enroll.--
The sunken cheek, the humid eyes,
E’en better than the tongue can tell;
In whose sad breast deep sorrow lies,
Where memory's rankling traces dwell.--
The rising tear, the stifled sigh,
A mind but ill at ease display,
Like blackening clouds in stormy sky,
Where fiercely vivid lightnings play.
Thus when souls' energy is dead,
When sorrow dims each earthly view,
When every fairy hope is fled,
We bid ungrateful world adieu.
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Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poems)
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First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.
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Karl Marx (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Dover Books on Western Philosophy))
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There’s not one positive thing about being broke. The worst of it is the day-to-day grind of it all. You never know when that treadmill is finally going to buckle and hurl you into the wall. So you find yourself having to run faster and faster, just to keep from falling off. You can adjust to the hunger and the tiredness for the most part, having to choose between feeding yourself and feeding your electric meter; but one thing you can’t adjust to is the nagging anxiety. Whoever designed this loathsome system must think we’re all living these wonderful lives where money grows in the palms of our hands.
There’s never any reassurance that everything is going to be okay; a promise that tomorrow will be slightly more bearable than today. Every minute of your life is consumed by a relentless feeling that time will only ever lead you to the worst possible outcome. And why—when you haven’t eaten a decent meal in two weeks and you’ve spent the last four days lying on a mattress just to conserve energy— should you believe any differently?
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Rupert Dreyfus (B R O K E)
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Let us fool ourselves no longer. At the very moment Western nations, threw off the ancient regime of absolute government, operating under a once-divine king, they were restoring this same system in a far more effective form in their technology, reintroducing coercions of a military character no less strict in the organization of a factory than in that of the new drilled, uniformed, and regimented army. During the transitional stages of the last two centuries, the ultimate tendency of this system might b e in doubt, for in many areas there were strong democratic reactions; but with the knitting together of a scientific ideology, itself liberated from theological restrictions or humanistic purposes, authoritarian technics found an instrument at hand that h as now given it absolute command of physical energies of cosmic dimensions. The inventors of nuclear bombs, space rockets, and computers are the pyramid builders of our own age: psychologically inflated by a similar myth of unqualified power, boasting through their science of their increasing omnipotence, if not omniscience, moved by obsessions and compulsions no less irrational than those of earlier absolute systems: particularly the notion that the system itself must be expanded, at whatever eventual co st to life.
Through mechanization, automation, cybernetic direction, this authoritarian technics has at last successfully overcome its most serious weakness: its original dependence upon resistant, sometimes actively disobedient servomechanisms, still human enough to harbor purposes that do not always coincide with those of the system.
Like the earliest form of authoritarian technics, this new technology is marvellously dynamic and productive: its power in every form tends to increase without limits, in quantities that defy assimilation and defeat control, whether we are thinking of the output of scientific knowledge or of industrial assembly lines. To maximize energy, speed, or automation, without reference to the complex conditions that sustain organic life, have become ends in themselves. As with the earliest forms of authoritarian technics, the weight of effort, if one is to judge by national budgets, is toward absolute instruments of destruction, designed for absolutely irrational purposes whose chief by-product would be the mutilation or extermination of the human race. Even Ashurbanipal and Genghis Khan performed their gory operations under normal human limits.
The center of authority in this new system is no longer a visible personality, an all-powerful king: even in totalitarian dictatorships the center now lies in the system itself, invisible but omnipresent: all its human components, even the technical and managerial elite, even the sacred priesthood of science, who alone have access to the secret knowledge by means of which total control is now swiftly being effected, are themselves trapped by the very perfection of the organization they have invented. Like the Pharoahs of the Pyramid Age, these servants of the system identify its goods with their own kind of well-being: as with the divine king, their praise of the system is an act of self-worship; and again like the king, they are in the grip of an irrational compulsion to extend their means of control and expand the scope of their authority. In this new systems-centered collective, this Pentagon of power, there is no visible presence who issues commands: unlike job's God, the new deities cannot be confronted, still less defied. Under the pretext of saving labor, the ultimate end of this technics is to displace life, or rather, to transfer the attributes of life to the machine and the mechanical collective, allowing only so much of the organism to remain as may be controlled and manipulated.
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Lewis Mumford
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Filozofia este expresia neliniştii oamenilor impersonali. De aceea ea oferă atât de puţin pentru înţelegerea trăirilor totale, dramatice şi ultime. Pentru cei care, fără să vrea, au depăşit viaţa, filozofia e prea puţin. Niciun gând n-a suprimat o durere şi nicio idee n-a alungat frica de moarte. De aceea, lasă gandurile şi începe teroarea împotriva ta, cu furie şi cu o exaltare disperată. Căci ideile n-au salvat şi nici n-au prăbuşit pe nimeni. Din centrul fiinţei tale, din zona din care eşti iresponsabil, fiindcă e prea adâncă, izbucneşte într-o explozie feroce, scoate atâta energie din intunericul tău încât să nu mai rămână decât lumină. Şi în demonia aceasta, să se nască în tine mândria de-a nu mai avea idei, ci numai clocot, obsesii şi nebunie. Să fii atât de frenetic, încât vorbele tale să ardă, şi expresiile tale să fie atât de limpezi, încât să semene transparenţei arzătoare a lacrimilor. Aruncă peste neliniştea ta teroarea ta şi fă ca în acest fel totul să tremure într-un apocalips intern, zguduitor şi dramatic. Aducându-ţi întreg organismul la un nivel atât de ridicat şi la o vibraţie atât de mare, ritmul intens şi accelerat înghite durerea în încordările lui, o topeşte şi o integrează în evoluţiile lui, astfel că o mare nebunie ne scapă temporar de o mare durere.
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Emil M. Cioran (Cartea amăgirilor)
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When you hold the hand of a child, invest one hundred percent of yourself in the act of holding her hand. When you hug your partner, do the same. Forget everything else. Be totally present, totally alive in the act of hugging.
This is the opposite of the way we’ve been trained to lead our lives and run our businesses. We’ve been taught to do many things at once. We answer an e-mail while we talk on the phone; while in a meeting for one project, we work on our notes for another project.
Every new technology promises to help us do more things at once. Now we can send e-mail while listening to music, talking on the phone, and taking a picture, all with the same device. With your energy that dispersed, where is your power?
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Thich Nhat Hanh (The Art of Power)
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The top easily preventable health problems that I see in western societies are: 1. Eating chemically grown food. 2. Exposure to electronically generated harmonic energy from wind and solar power systems. 3. Exposure to harmonic energy from switched mode power supplies (SMPS) that come with modern electronic products. 4. Exposure to wireless radio frequency radiation (RF). 5. Light deficiency from an indoor lifestyle and Low-E double glazed windows. 6. Sound deficiency from heavily insulated homes that are devoid of natural sounds and are extremely quiet. 7. Pollen deficiency from living in man-made cities that are devoid of natural levels of pollen. 8. Natural radiation deficiency from living in homes that block natural levels of environmental radiation. 9. Open drain sickness that occurs when drain traps dry out and faulty vent valves that allow sewer gas to fill the home. 10. Drinking the wrong type of water.
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Steven Magee
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You endure the weight of love by being rooted in God. Your life energy needs to come from God, not the person you are loving. The more difficult the situation, the more you are forced into utter dependence on God. That is the crucible of love, where self-confidence and pride are stripped away, because you simply do not have the power or wisdom or ability in yourself to love. You know without a shadow of a doubt that you can’t love. That is the beginning of faith—knowing you can’t love. Faith is the power for love. Paul the apostle tells us that the I beam or hidden structure of the Christian life is “faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). Faith energizes love. We handle the weight of love by rooting ourselves in God. Our inability to sustain love drives us into dependence on God. Then faith becomes a continuous cry. Like the tax collector in the temple, we cry out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). In overwhelming situations where you are all out of human love, you discover that you are praying all the time because you can’t get from one moment to the next without God’s help. You realize you can’t do life on your own, and you need God and his love to be the center. You lean upon God because you can’t bear the weight of love. So faith is not a mountain to climb, but a valley to fall
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Paul E. Miller (A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships)
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In despair, I offer your readers their choice of the following definitions of entropy. My authorities are such books and journals as I have by me at the moment.
(a) Entropy is that portion of the intrinsic energy of a system which cannot be converted into work by even a perfect heat engine.—Clausius.
(b) Entropy is that portion of the intrinsic energy which can be converted into work by a perfect engine.—Maxwell, following Tait.
(c) Entropy is that portion of the intrinsic energy which is not converted into work by our imperfect engines.—Swinburne.
(d) Entropy (in a volume of gas) is that which remains constant when heat neither enters nor leaves the gas.—W. Robinson.
(e) Entropy may be called the ‘thermal weight’, temperature being called the ‘thermal height.’—Ibid.
(f) Entropy is one of the factors of heat, temperature being the other.—Engineering.
I set up these bald statement as so many Aunt Sallys, for any one to shy at.
[Lamenting a list of confused interpretations of the meaning of entropy, being hotly debated in journals at the time.]
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Sydney Herbert Evershed
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Evolutionarily, the function of attachment has been to protect the organism from danger. The attachment figure, an older, kinder, stronger, wiser other (Bowlby, 1982), functions as a safe base (Ainsworth et al., 1978), and is a presence that obviates fear and engenders a feeling of safety for the younger organism. The greater the feeling of safety, the wider the range of exploration and the more exuberant the exploratory drive (i.e., the higher the threshold before novelty turns into anxiety and fear). Thus, the fundamental tenet of attachment theory: security of attachment leads to an expanded range of exploration. Whereas fear constricts, safety expands the range of exploration. In the absence of dyadically constructed safety, the child has to contend with fear-potentiating aloneness. The child will devote energy to conservative, safety enhancing measures, that is, defense mechanisms, to compensate for what's missing. The focus on maintaining safety and managing fear drains energy from learning and exploration, stunts growth, and distorts personality development.
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Daniel J. Siegel (Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology))
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È tempo che lei cominci a prepararsi per affrontare la morte con dolcezza. Se lei continuerà a investire troppe energie solo nel vivere, non riuscirà a morire bene. Un poco alla volta è necessario fare questo cambiamento. In un certo senso vivere e morire si equivalgono, dottoressa."
Quella sera, nel suo grande letto immacolato, Satsuki pianse. Riconobbe il fatto che si stava dolcemente avviando verso la morte. Riconobbe di avere una pietra bianca e dura dentro il suo corpo. Riconobbe che da qualche parte nel buio si nascondeva un serpente verde tutto ricoperto di squame. Pensò al bambino che non era mai nato. Lei se n'era liberata e l'aveva gettato in un pozzo senza fine. E aveva continuato a odiare un uomo per trent'anni. Gli aveva augurato di morire fra atroci dolori. Per quello nel fondo del cuore aveva sperato persino in un terremoto. In un certo senso, si disse, sono stata io a provocare quel terremoto. Lui ha trasformato il mio cuore e il mio corpo in una pietra. Le scimmie color cenere in quella montagna lontana l'avevano guardata in silenzio. In un certo senso vivere e morire si equivalgono, dottoressa.
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Haruki Murakami (After the Quake)
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You’re unhappy and you feel like a failure. PERFECT! Use that sad/angry/disappointed energy. Channel it into what you know, deep down in your heart, you love.
Spend the next six months in a state of total obsession. Get up two hours earlier than usual and write before you go to work. Come home and exercise (not optional, sorry), then write for another hour. Read or watch the kind of comedy you love before bed. Don’t waste all your time socializing. Do a little socializing on weekends, but focus. Focus! Save your money. Research part-time work you could do for your company; use your slackness as a way to sell a new position where your boss would get your best from you every hour that you’re there. Pitch it as a win-win. Or pitch working from home half the time to cure your blahs and jack up your productivity. Then overproduce at work, but fit all of your work into a part-time schedule, and fill your prime working hours with writing/comedy. Almost any capable human with a not-that-taxing job can pull this off if they put their mind to it. If you’re a manager, investigate other roles or sell your boss on the fact that you’re managing via e-mail most of the time anyway.
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Heather Havrilesky (How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life)
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So let’s consider an alternative diet, say 1200 kcal consisting of 30% protein, 15% carbs (i.e., 180 kcal or 45 grams), and 55% fat. After a week or two of getting adapted (during which you may experience some of the fuel limitation symptoms discussed above), your serum ketones rise up in the range (1-2 millimolar) where they meet at least half of the brain’s fuel supply. Now if you go for that 5 mile run, almost all of your body’s muscle fuel comes from fat, leaving your dietary carb intake plus gluconeogenesis from protein to meet the minor fraction of your brain’s energy need not provided from ketones. And, oh yes, after your run while on the low carb diet, your ketone levels actually go up a bit (not dangerously so), further improving fuel flow to your brain. So what does this mean for the rest of us who are not compulsive runners? Well, this illustrates that the keto-adapted state allows your body more flexibility in meeting its critical organ energy needs than a ‘balanced’ but energy-restricted diet. And in particular, this also means that your brain is a “carbohydrate dependent organ” (as claimed by the USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee as noted in Chapter 3) ONLY when you are eating a high carbohydrate diet. When carbohydrate is restricted as in the example above, your body’s appropriate production of ketones frees the brain from this supposed state of ‘carbohydrate dependency’. And because exercise stimulates ketone production, your brain’s fuel supply is better supported during and after intense exercise when on a low carbohydrate diet than when your carbohydrate intake is high (see below).
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Jeff S. Volek (The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable)
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What, in fact, do we know about the peak experience? Well, to begin with, we know one thing that puts us several steps ahead of the most penetrating thinkers of the 19th century: that P.E’.s are not a matter of pure good luck or grace. They don’t come and go as they please, leaving ‘this dim, vast vale of tears vacant and desolate’. Like rainbows, peak experiences are governed by definite laws. They are ‘intentional’.
And that statement suddenly gains in significance when we remember Thorndike’s discovery that the effect of positive stimuli is far more powerful and far reaching than that of negative stimuli. His first statement of the law of effect was simply that situations that elicit positive reactions tend to produce continuance of positive reactions, while situations that elicit negative or avoidance reactions tend to produce continuance of these. It was later that he came to realise that positive reactions build-up stronger response patterns than negative ones. In other words, positive responses are more intentional than negative ones.
Which is another way of saying that if you want a positive reaction (or a peak experience), your best chance of obtaining it is by putting yourself into an active, purposive frame of mind. The opposite of the peak experience—sudden depression, fatigue, even the ‘panic fear’ that swept William James to the edge of insanity—is the outcome of passivity. This cannot be overemphasised. Depression—or neurosis—need not have a positive cause (childhood traumas, etc.). It is the natural outcome of negative passivity.
The peak experience is the outcome of an intentional attitude. ‘Feedback’ from my activities depends upon the degree of deliberately calculated purpose I put into them, not upon some occult law connected with the activity itself. . . .
A healthy, perfectly adjusted human being would slide smoothly into gear, perform whatever has to be done with perfect economy of energy, then recover lost energy in a state of serene relaxation. Most human beings are not healthy or well adjusted. Their activity is full of strain and nervous tension, and their relaxation hovers on the edge of anxiety. They fail to put enough effort—enough seriousness—into their activity, and they fail to withdraw enough effort from their relaxation. Moods of serenity descend upon them—if at all—by chance; perhaps after some crisis, or in peaceful surroundings with pleasant associations. Their main trouble is that they have no idea of what can be achieved by a certain kind of mental effort.
And this is perhaps the place to point out that although mystical contemplation is as old as religion, it is only in the past two centuries that it has played a major role in European culture. It was the group of writers we call the romantics who discovered that a man contemplating a waterfall or a mountain peak can suddenly feel ‘godlike’, as if the soul had expanded. The world is seen from a ‘bird’s eye view’ instead of a worm’s eye view: there is a sense of power, detachment, serenity. The romantics—Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Goethe, Schiller—were the first to raise the question of whether there are ‘higher ceilings of human nature’. But, lacking the concepts for analysing the problem, they left it unsolved. And the romantics in general accepted that the ‘godlike moments’ cannot be sustained, and certainly cannot be re-created at will. This produced the climate of despair that has continued down to our own time. (The major writers of the 20th century—Proust, Eliot, Joyce, Musil—are direct descendants of the romantics, as Edmund Wilson pointed out in Axel’s Castle.) Thus it can be seen that Maslow’s importance extends far beyond the field of psychology. William James had asserted that ‘mystical’ experiences are not mystical at all, but are a perfectly normal potential of human consciousness; but there is no mention of such experiences in Principles of Psychology (or only in passing).
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Colin Wilson (New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow & the Post-Freudian Revolution)
“
What I want you to understand is that when I heard your words, it was as if every single second we had spent together up to that point was a lie. Every word, every touch, every kiss. You were looking at me, but you wanted him. I was this…thing to be endured to keep your family safe. You would allow me to touch you, to make love to you all the while wishing for Colin. I thought all that passion we had between us was a complete figment of my imagination and it was a bitter pill to swallow. I hated you. Worse than I’d ever hated anyone in my life. I was determined to make you pay. I’d keep you shackled to me forever as punishment. Keep you away from your true love.” Bree stared at him, unable to fathom such cruelty. Who was this man she loved that was capable of such a thing? “And then?” He took a deep shaky breath and leaned against the edge of the desk, crossing his arms over his chest. “Then I spent all my energy trying to prove to myself by looking at you that you were lying to me, to justify what I was doing by picking up little gestures or flickers in your eyes that would prove to me that you felt nothing for me.” Bree rolled her eyes and gave a tearful snort. “And did you, after how hard I fought for you, did you get what you wanted? Did you prove to yourself what a lying bitch I am?” “No. Of course not. So I started to doubt what I heard.” “After living with Bernardo for all your life it had just occurred to you that he just may have tampered with the fucking thing?” Bree bit out, furiously.
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E. Jamie (The Betrayal (Blood Vows, #2))
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The dangerously clear logic of the Negro's position will more and more loudly assert itself in that day when increasing wealth and more intricate social organization preclude the South from being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk. Such waste of energy cannot be spared if the South is to catch up with civilization. And as the black third of the land grows in thrift and skill, unless skilfully guided in its larger philosophy, it must more and more brood over the red past and the creeping, crooked present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt and revenge and throws its new-found energies athwart the current of advance. Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments against them, but their counter-cries, lacking though they be in formal logic, have burning truths within them which you may not wholly ignore, O Southern Gentlemen! If you deplore their presence here, they ask, Who brought us? When you cry, Deliver us from the vision of intermarriage, they answer that legal marriage is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution. And if in just fury you accuse their vagabonds of violating women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The rape which your gentlemen have done against helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two millions of mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable blood. And finally, when you fasten crime upon this race as its peculiar trait, they answer that slavery was the arch-crime, and lynching and lawlessness its twin abortions; that color and race are not crimes, and yet it is they which in this land receive most unceasing condemnation, North, East, South, and West.
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W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk)
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Despite the complexity and variety of the universe, it turns out that to make one you need just three ingredients. Let’s imagine that we could list them in some kind of cosmic cookbook. So what are the three ingredients we need to cook up a universe? The first is matter—stuff that has mass. Matter is all around us, in the ground beneath our feet and out in space. Dust, rock, ice, liquids. Vast clouds of gas, massive spirals of stars, each containing billions of suns, stretching away for incredible distances.
The second thing you need is energy. Even if you’ve never thought about it, we all know what energy is. Something we encounter every day. Look up at the Sun and you can feel it on your face: energy produced by a star ninety-three million miles away. Energy permeates the universe, driving the processes that keep it a dynamic, endlessly changing place.
So we have matter and we have energy. The third thing we need to build a universe is space. Lots of space. You can call the universe many things—awesome, beautiful, violent—but one thing you can’t call it is cramped. Wherever we look we see space, more space and even more space. Stretching in all directions. It’s enough to make your head spin. So where could all this matter, energy and space come from? We had no idea until the twentieth century.
The answer came from the insights of one man, probably the most remarkable scientist who has ever lived. His name was Albert Einstein. Sadly I never got to meet him, since I was only thirteen when he died. Einstein realised something quite extraordinary: that two of the main ingredients needed to make a universe—mass and energy—are basically the same thing, two sides of the same coin if you like. His famous equation E = mc2 simply means that mass can be thought of as a kind of energy, and vice versa. So instead of three ingredients, we can now say that the universe has just two: energy and space. So where did all this energy and space come from? The answer was found after decades of work by scientists: space and energy were spontaneously invented in an event we now call the Big Bang.
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Stephen Hawking (Brief Answers to the Big Questions)
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Life sometimes is like tossing a coin in the air calling heads or tails, but it doesn’t matter what side it lands on; life goes on.
It is hard when you’ve lost the will to fight because you’ve been fighting for so long. You are smothered by the pain. Mentally, you are drained. Physically, you are weak. Emotionally, you are weighed down. Spiritually, you do not have one tiny mustard seed of faith. The common denominator is that other people’s problems have clouded your mind with all of their negativity. You cannot feel anything; you are numb. You do not have the energy to surrender, and you choose not to escape because you feel safe when you are closed in.
As you move throughout the day, you do just enough to get by. Your mindset has changed from giving it your all to—well, something is better than nothing. You move in slow motion like a zombie, and there isn’t any color, just black and white, with every now and then a shade of gray. You’ve shut everyone out and crawled back into the rabbit hole. Life passes you by as you feel like you cannot go on.
You look around for help; for someone to take the pain away and to share your suffering, but no one is there. You feel alone, you drift away when you glance ahead and see that there are more uphill battles ahead of you. You do not have the option to turn around because all of the roads are blocked.
You stand exactly where you are without making a step. You try to think of something, but you are emotionally bankrupt.
Where do you go from here? You do not have a clue.
Standing still isn’t helping because you’ve welcomed unwanted visitors; voices are in your head, asking, “What are you waiting for? Take the leap. Jump.” They go on to say, “You’ve had enough. Your burdens are too heavy.”
You walk towards the cliff; you turn your head and look at the steep hill towards the mountain. The view isn’t helping; not only do you have to climb the steep hill, but you have to climb up the mountain too.
You take a step; rocks and dust fall off the cliff. You stumble and you move forward. The voices in your head call you a coward. You are beginning to second-guess yourself because you want to throw in the towel. You close your eyes; a tear falls and travels to your chin. As your eyes are closed the Great Divine’s voice is louder; yet, calmer, soothing; and you feel peace instantly. Your mind feels light, and your body feels balanced. The Great Divine whispers gently and softly in your ear:
“Fallen Warrior, I know you have given everything you’ve got, and you feel like you have nothing left to give.
Fallen Warrior, I know it’s been a while since you smiled.
Fallen Warrior, I see that you are hurting, and I feel your pain.
Fallen Warrior, this is not the end. This is the start of your new beginning.
Fallen Warrior, do not doubt My or your abilities; you have more going for you than you have going against you.
Fallen Warrior, keep moving, you have what it takes; perseverance is your middle name.
Fallen Warrior, you are not the victim! You are the victor!
You step back because you know why you are here. You know why you are alive. Sometimes you have to be your own Shero.
As a fallen warrior, you are human; and you have your moments. There are days when you have more ups than downs, and some days you have more downs than ups. I most definitely can relate.
I was floating through life, but I had to change my mindset. During my worst days, I felt horrible, and when I started to think negatively I felt like I was dishonoring myself. I felt sick, I felt afraid, fear began to control my every move. I felt like demons were trying to break in and take over my life.
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Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
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this reaction. This was on college campuses, exactly the kind of environment where I had expected curiosity, lively debate, and, yes, the thrill and energy of like-minded activists. Instead almost every campus audience I encountered bristled with anger and protest. I was accustomed to radical Muslim students from my experience as an activist and a politician in Holland. Any time I made a public speech, they would swarm to it in order to shout at me and rant in broken Dutch, in sentences so fractured you wondered how they qualified as students at all. On college campuses in the United States and Canada, by contrast, young and highly articulate people from the Muslim student associations would simply take over the debate. They would send e-mails of protest to the organizers beforehand, such as one (sent by a divinity student at Harvard) that protested that I did not “address anything of substance that actually affects Muslim women’s lives” and that I merely wanted to “trash” Islam. They would stick up posters and hand out pamphlets at the auditorium. Before I’d even stopped speaking they’d be lining up for the microphone, elbowing away all non-Muslims. They spoke in perfect English; they were mostly very well-mannered; and they appeared far better assimilated than their European immigrant counterparts. There were far fewer bearded young men in robes short enough to show their ankles, aping the tradition that says the Prophet’s companions dressed this way out of humility, and fewer girls in hideous black veils. In the United States a radical Muslim student might have a little goatee; a girl may wear a light, attractive headscarf. Their whole demeanor was far less threatening, but they were omnipresent. Some of them would begin by saying how sorry they were for all my terrible suffering, but they would then add that these so-called traumas of mine were aberrant, a “cultural thing,” nothing to do with Islam. In blaming Islam for the oppression of women, they said, I was vilifying them personally, as Muslims. I had failed to understand that Islam is a religion of peace, that the Prophet treated women very well. Several times I was informed that attacking Islam only serves the purpose of something called “colonial feminism,” which in itself was allegedly a pretext for the war on terror and the evil designs of the U.S. government. I was invited to one college to speak as part of a series of
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations)
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Music of the Grid:
A Poem in Two Equations
_________________________
The masses of particles sound the frequencies with which space vibrates, when played. This Music of the Grid betters the old mystic mainstay, "Music of the Spheres," both in fantasy and in realism.
LET US COMBINE Einstein's second law
m=E/C^2 (1)
with another fundamental equation, the Planck-Einstein-Schrodinger formula
E = hv
The Planck-Einstein-Schrodinger formula relates the energy E of a quantum-mechanical state to the frequency v at which its wave function vibrates. Here h is Planck's constant. Planck introduced it in his revolutionary hypothesis (1899) that launched quantum theory: that atoms emit or absorb light of frequency v only in packets of energy E = hv. Einstein went a big step further with his photon hypothesis (1905): that light of frequency v is always organized into packets with energy E = hv. Finally Schrodinger made it the basis of his basic equation for wave functions-the Schrodinger equation (1926). This gave birth to the modern, universal interpretation: the wave function of any state with energy E vibrates at a frequency v given by v = E/h.
By combining Einstein with Schrodinger we arrive at a marvelous bit of poetry:
(*) v = mc^2/h (*)
The ancients had a concept called "Music of the Spheres" that inspired many scientists (notably Johannes Kepler) and even more mystics. Because periodic motion (vibration) of musical instruments causes their sustained tones, the idea goes, the periodic motions of the planets, as they fulfill their orbits, must be accompanied by a sort of music. Though picturesque and soundscape-esque, this inspiring anticipation of multimedia never became a very precise or fruitful scientific idea. It was never more than a vague metaphor, so it remains shrouded in equation marks: "Music of the Spheres."
Our equation (*) is a more fantastic yet more realistic embodiment of the same inspiration. Rather than plucking a string, blowing through a reed, banging on a drumhead, or clanging a gong, we play the instrument that is empty space by plunking down different combinations of quarks, gluons, electrons, photons,... (that is, the Bits that represent these Its) and let them settle until they reach equilibrium with the spontaneous activity of Grid. Neither planets nor any material constructions compromise the pure ideality of our instrument. It settles into one of its possible vibratory motions, with different frequencies v, depending on how we do the plunking, and with what. These vibrations represent particles of different mass m, according to (*). The masses of particles sound the Music of the Grid.
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Frank Wilczek (The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces)
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Nu se poate atenua şi nici nu se poate înfrânge suferinţa prin concentrare intelectuală. Cum o să te poţi concentra asupra unei probleme impersonale, când suferinţa te cheamă în fiecare clipă la actualitatea ta personală, la existenţa ta concretă şi individuală? Nu există o salvare prin gând. Şi nu există, şi din motivul că îţi pare inutil să te gândeşti la orice altceva decât la suferinţa ta, pe care gândul numai ţi-o adânceşte, ajungând la esenţa suferinţei. Aceia care susţin că s-au eliberat de chinuri prin preocupări obiective n-au cunoscut durerea adevărată, ci numai nişte trecătoare nelinişti spirituale, care n-au avut nicio adâncime şi nicio bază organică. Toate incertitudinile legate de vârstă, care dau individului o senzaţie de nelinişte provizorie, n-au nicio valoare. Totul este să ai sentimentul ireparabilului în esenţa şi pe întreaga sferă a vieţii tale. Gândul limpezeşte alte gânduri, dar nu limpezeşte suferinţele. Căci pentru aceasta nu există explicaţii; sau dacă există, ele nu dovedesc nimic şi nu le fac cu nimic mai suportabile. Filozofia este expresia neliniştii oamenilor impersonali. De aceea ea oferă atât de puţin pentru înţelegerea trăirilor totale, dramatice şi ultime. Pentru cei care, fără să vrea, au depăşit viaţa, filozofia e prea puţin. Niciun gând n-a suprimat o durere şi nicio idee n-a alungat frica de moarte. De aceea, lasă gandurile şi începe teroarea împotriva ta însuţi, cu furie şi cu o exaltare disperată. Căci ideile n-au salvat şi nici n-au pră-buşit pe nimeni. Din centrul fiinţei tale, din zona din care eşti iresponsabil, fiindcă e prea adâncă, izbucneşte într-o explozie feroce, scoate atâta energie din intunericul tău încât să nu mai rămână decât lumină. Şi în demonia aceasta, să se nască în tine mândria de-a nu mai avea idei, ci numai clocot, obsesii şi nebunie. Să fii atât de frenetic, încât vorbele tale să ardă, şi expresiile tale să fie atât de limpezi, încât să semene transparenţei arzătoare a lacrimilor. Aruncă peste neliniştea ta teroarea ta şi fă ca în acest fel totul să tremure într-un apocalips intern, zguduitor şi dramatic. Aducându-ţi întreg organismul la un nivel atât de ridicat şi la o vibraţie atât de mare, ritmul intens şi accelerat înghite durerea în încordările lui, o topeşte şi o integrează în evoluţiile lui, astfel că o mare nebunie ne scapă temporar de o mare durere. Lumea nu s-a convins nici acum că nu există decât metode brutale de luptă împotriva durerii, că în acest domeniu este necesar un radicalism dus până la bestialitate. Dar oare suferinţa nu este un fapt bestial? Suferinţele sunt inadmisibile, şi cu toate acestea sunt legate de viaţă mai mult decât bucuriile. Cine are regretul unei purităţi vitale nu poate să nu se sperie de aceste pete care sunt suferinţele şi care se întind pe sfera vieţii pentru a o întuneca.
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Emil M. Cioran (Cartea amăgirilor)