“
Not too long ago thousands spent their lives as recluses to find spiritual vision in the solitude of nature. Modern man need not become a hermit to achieve this goal, for it is neither ecstasy nor world-estranged mysticism his era demands, but a balance between quantitative and qualitative reality. Modern man, with his reduced capacity for intuitive perception, is unlikely to benefit from the contemplative life of a hermit in the wilderness. But what he can do is to give undivided attention, at times, to a natural phenomenon, observing it in detail, and recalling all the scientific facts about it he may remember. Gradually, however, he must silence his thoughts and, for moments at least, forget all his personal cares and desires, until nothing remains in his soul but awe for the miracle before him. Such efforts are like journeys beyond the boundaries of narrow self-love and, although the process of intuitive awakening is laborious and slow, its rewards are noticeable from the very first. If pursued through the course of years, something will begin to stir in the human soul, a sense of kinship with the forces of life consciousness which rule the world of plants and animals, and with the powers which determine the laws of matter. While analytical intellect may well be called the most precious fruit of the Modern Age, it must not be allowed to rule supreme in matters of cognition. If science is to bring happiness and real progress to the world, it needs the warmth of man's heart just as much as the cold inquisitiveness of his brain.
”
”
Franz Winkler
“
I have given no definition of love. This is impossible, because there is no higher principle by which it could be defined. It is life itself in its actual unity. The forms and structures in which love embodies itself are the forms and structures in which love overcomes its self-destructive forces.
”
”
Paul Tillich (The Protestant Era)
“
Most parents try really hard to give their kids the best possible life. They give them the best food and clothes they can afford, take their own kind of take on training kids to be honest and polite. But what they don't realize is no matter how much they try, their kids will get out there. Out to this complicated little world. If they are lucky they will survive, through backstabbers, broken hearts, failures and all the kinds of invisible insane pressures out there. But most kids get lost in them. They will get caught up in all kinds of bubbles. Trouble bubbles. Bubbles that continuously tell them that they are not good enough. Bubbles that get them carried away with what they think is love, give them broken hearts. Bubbles that will blur the rest of the world to them, make them feel like that is it, that they've reached the end. Sometimes, even the really smart kids, make stupid decisions. They lose control. Parents need to realize that the world is getting complicated every second of every day. With new problems, new diseases, new habits. They have to realize the vast probability of their kids being victims of this age, this complicated era. Your kids could be exposed to problems that no kind of therapy can help. Your kids could be brainwashed by themselves to believe in insane theories that drive them crazy. Most kids will go through this stage. The lucky ones will understand. They will grow out of them. The unlucky ones will live in these problems. Grow in them and never move forward. They will cut themselves, overdose on drugs, take up excessive drinking and smoking, for the slightest problems in their lives.
You can't blame these kids for not being thankful or satisfied with what they have. Their mentality eludes them from the reality.
”
”
Thisuri Wanniarachchi (COLOMBO STREETS)
“
I believe the vital ingredient is love—a state of caring and compassion that is so deep and genuine that the barriers we erect around the self are transcended.
”
”
Larry Dossey (Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing)
“
Of course, we know that the world sees this wedding as a historical event. The first recorded marriage union between a Lunar and an Earthen since the second era. And maybe that is important. Maybe the love and compassion these two people have for each other is symbolic of hope for the future. Maybe this wedding signifies the possibility that someday our two races will not only learn to tolerate each other, but to love and appreciate each other as well. Or, maybe…” Kai’s eyes glinted. "… this relationship has absolutely nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with our shared human need to find someone who will care for us as much as we care for them. To find a partner who complements us and teaches us. Who makes us stronger. Who makes us want to be our best possible self.
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Stars Above (The Lunar Chronicles, #4.5))
“
Many of the early explorers in my field—Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, John Bowlby—concluded that early trauma, even dating back to preverbal eras, takes its toll, often an indelible toll, on the comfort, the ease, the self-esteem, of the adult, even into late stages of life.
”
”
Irvin D. Yalom (A Matter of Death and Life: Love, Loss and What Matters in the End)
“
The pendulum has overcorrected from the cruel era of rapping a disobedient child’s knuckles with a ruler to
giving every child a trophy for showing up. Every child should have the experience of being loved unconditionally, supported, and encouraged,
but this requires more than a standing ovation every time he or she enters the room.
”
”
Ramani Durvasula (Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist)
“
Would you rather work forty hours a week at a job you hate or eighty hours a week doing work you love?
”
”
Jay Samit (Disrupt You!: Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation)
“
Remember, your biggest weapons against them are self-love, self-valuation, and an accurate understanding of who you are, and part of this means acknowledging to yourself that you are enough. Chapter
”
”
Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
“
În ziua în care m-am iubit cu adevărat, am înțeles că în toate împrejurările, mă aflam la locul potrivit, în momentul potrivit.
Și atunci, am putut să mă liniștesc.
Astăzi, știu că aceasta se numește – Respect pentru mine
În ziua în care m-am iubit cu adevărat, am realizat că neliniștea și suferința mea emoțională, nu erau nimic altceva decât semnalul că merg împotriva convingerilor mele.
Astăzi, știu că aceasta se numește … Autenticitate.
În ziua în care m-am iubit cu adevărat, am încetat să doresc o viață diferită și am început să înțeleg că tot ceea ce mi se întâmplă, contribuie la dezvoltarea mea personală.
Astăzi, știu că aceasta se numeste … Maturitate.
În ziua în care m-am iubit cu adevărat, am început să realizez că este o greșeală să forțez o situație sau o persoană, cu singurul scop de a obține ceea ce doresc, știind foarte bine că nici acea persoană, nici eu însumi nu suntem pregătiți și că nu este momentul …
Astăzi, știu că aceasta se numește … Respect.
În ziua în care m-am iubit cu adevărat, am început să mă eliberez de tot ceea ce nu era benefic … persoane, situații, tot ceea ce îmi consumă energia. La început, rațiunea mea numea asta egoism.
Astăzi, știu că aceasta se numește … Amor propriu.
În ziua în care m-am iubit cu adevărat, am încetat să-mi mai fie teamă de timpul liber și am renunțat să mai fac planuri mari, am abandonat Mega-proiectele de viitor.
Astăzi fac ceea ce este corect, ceea ce îmi place, când îmi place și în ritmul meu.
Astăzi, știu că aceasta se numește … Simplitate.
În ziua în care m-am iubit cu adevărat, am încetat să mai caut să am întotdeauna dreptate şi mi-am dat seama de cât de multe ori m-am înșelat.
Astăzi, am descoperit … Modestia.
În ziua în care m-am iubit cu adevărat, am încetat să retrăiesc trecutul şi să mă preocup de viitor.
Astăzi, trăiesc prezentul, acolo unde se petrece întreaga viață. Astăzi trăiesc clipa fiecărei zile.
Și aceasta se numeste … Plenitudine.
În ziua în care m-am iubit cu adevărat, am înteles că rațiunea mă poate înşela şi dezamăgi. Dar dacă o pun în slujba inimii mele, ea devine un aliat foarte prețios.
Si toate acestea înseamnă … să ştii să trăiești cu adevărat.”
Traducere MIHAELA RADULESCU SCHWARTZENBERG.
”
”
Charlie Chaplin
“
The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak. There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead. If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe's Faustus, the similarity is striking.
”
”
C.S. Lewis
“
The foundation of morality on the human sentiments of what is acceptable behavior versus repulsive behavior has always made morals susceptible to change. Much of what was repulsive 100 years ago is normal today, and - although it may be a slippery slope - what is repulsive today is possible to be normal 100 years into tomorrow; the human standard has always been but to push the envelope. In this way, all generations are linked, and one can only hope that every extremist, self-proclaimed progressive is considering this ultimate 'Utopia' to which his kindness will lead at the end of the chain.
”
”
Criss Jami (Healology)
“
I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had. It certainly changed me for ever. Curious as it may sound, it was New Mexico that liberated me from the present era of civilization, the great era of material and mechanical development. Months spent in holy Kandy, in Ceylon, the holy of holies of southern Buddhism, had not touched the great psyche of materialism and idealism which dominated me. And years, even in the exquisite beauty of Sicily, right among the old Greek paganism that still lives there, had not shattered the essential Christianity on which my character was established. Australia was a sort of dream or trance, like being under a spell, the self remaining unchanged, so long as the trance did not last too long. Tahiti, in a mere glimpse, repelled me: and so did California, after a stay of a few weeks. There seemed a strange brutality in the spirit of the western coast, and I felt: O, let me get away!
But the moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine up over the deserts of Santa Fe, something stood still in my soul, and I started to attend. There was a certain magnificence in the high-up day, a certain eagle-like royalty, so different from the equally pure, equally pristine and lovely morning of Australia, which is so soft, so utterly pure in its softness, and betrayed by green parrot flying. But in the lovely morning of Australia one went into a dream. In the magnificent fierce morning of New Mexico one sprang awake, a new part of the soul woke up suddenly, and the old world gave way to a new.
”
”
D.H. Lawrence
“
Werewolves had been so rationalized and medicalized by the year 1000 that they became subject to a medieval type of “heroin chic” romanticism in literature, in which they were frequently portrayed as attractive, lonely, suffering, victimized, self-sacrificing, chivalrous heroes in fictional and mythological tales emerging during the Grail romance era. The “chivalrous werewolf” narratives often feature a noble knight or prince who transforms into a werewolf to protect the subject of his romantic love, but while he is a werewolf she betrays him by stealing his transformative device—either a potion, a ring, a belt or his clothes—trapping him forever in his lovelorn werewolf state.25
”
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Peter Vronsky (Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present)
“
- Durham, amo-te.
Riu-se cinicamente.
- É verdade: sempre te amei...
- Boa-noite, boa-noite.
- Digo-te, é verdade...vim cá para tu dizer...exactamente da mesma maneira que tu: sempre fui como os Gregos sem o saber.
- Desenvolve esta afirmação.
As palavras abandoram-no de imediato. Só conseguia falar quando não lhe era pedido.
p.74, MAURICE, E.M. FORSTER
--------------------------------------------------
Durham, I love you."
He laughed bitterly.
"I do — I have always —"
"Good night, good night."
"I tell you, I do — I came to say it — in your very own way — I have always been like the Greeks and didn't know."
"Expand the statement."
Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.
”
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E.M. Forster (Maurice)
“
Yet weakness—or neediness—is a valuable asset in God’s community. Jesus introduced a new era in which weakness is the new strength. Anything that reminds us that we are dependent on God and other people is a good thing. Otherwise, we trick ourselves into thinking that we are self-sufficient, and arrogance is sure to follow. We need help, and God has given us his Spirit and each other to provide it.
”
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Edward T. Welch (Side by Side: Walking with Others in Wisdom and Love)
“
Al tempo non lo sapevo, che eravamo scuciti entrambi, rattoppati in modi diversi per resistere alla vita quanto bastava. Eravamo troppo giovani per realizzare che nel nostro disegno era stato cancellato qualcosa di fondamentale e che i nostri corpi cadevano male sulle nostre anime, mettendo in risalto ogni difetto. Lui, nella solidità della sua forma, conteneva a stento venti in tempesta; io avevo ossa sporgenti pronte a bucarmi la pelle e riversare fuori il dentro: la tristezza, l’indefinito, il bisogno.
”
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Donatella Ceglia (Il corpo che indosso)
“
The Gini coefficient, devised by the Italian sociologist Corrado Gini in 1912, is a measure of income or wealth disparity in a population. It is usually expressed as a fraction between 0 and 1, and it seems easy to understand, because 0 is the coefficient if everyone owned an equal amount, while 1 would obtain if one person owned everything and everyone else nothing. In our real world of the mid-twenty-first century, countries with a low Gini coefficient, like the social democracies, are generally a bit below 0.3, while highly unequal countries are a bit above 0.6. The US, China, and many other countries have seen their Gini coefficients shoot up in the neoliberal era, from 0.3 or 0.4 up to 0.5 or 0.6, this with barely a squeak from the people losing the most in this increase in inequality, and indeed many of those harmed often vote for politicians who will increase their relative impoverishment. Thus the power of hegemony: we may be poor but at least we’re patriots! At least we’re self-reliant and we can take care of ourselves, and so on, right into an early grave, as the average lifetimes of the poorer citizens in these countries are much shorter than those of the wealthy citizens. And average lifetimes overall are therefore decreasing for the first time since the eighteenth century. Don’t think that the Gini coefficient alone will describe the situation, however; this would be succumbing to monocausotaxophilia, the love of single ideas that explain everything, one of humanity’s most common cognitive errors. The
”
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Kim Stanley Robinson (The Ministry for the Future)
“
Gervex's painting had a lurid and well-known literary source: it was based on Alfred de Musset's poem "Rolla," published in 1833 and 1840. The poem, a paradigm of July Monarchy romanticism, chronicles the disgrace that befalls Jacques Rolla, a son of the bourgeoisie, in the big city. The narrative of his decline — he squandered his fortune and committed suicide — is interleaved with lamentations over the moral and spiritual decadence of contemporary life. Thenineteen-year-old Rolla becomes the "most debauched man" in Paris, "where vice is the cheapest, the oldest and the most fertile in the world."
The poem tells a second story as well, that of Marie (or Maria or Marion), a pure young girl who becomes a degraded urban prostitute. Her story amplifies the poet's theme — a world in moral disarray - and provides the instrument of, and a sympathetic companion for, Rolla's climactic self-destruction. Musset is clear about his young prostitute's status: she was forced into a prostitution de la misère by economic circumstances ("what had debased her was, alas, poverty /And not love of gold"), and he frequently distinguishes her situation from that of the venal women of the courtesan rank ("Your loves are golden, lively and poetic; . . . you are not for sale at all"). He is also insistent about the tawdry circumstances in which the young woman had to practice her miserable profession ("the shameful curtains of that foul retreat," "in a hovel," "the walls of this gloomy and ramshackle room").
The segments of the poem from which Gervex drew his story — and which were published in press reviews of the painting — are these:
With a melancholy eye Rolla gazed on
The beautiful Marion asleep in her wide bed;
In spite of himself, an unnameable and diabolical horror
Made him tremble to the bone.
Marion had cost dearly. — To pay for his night
He had spent his last coins.
His friends knew it. And he, on arriving,
Had taken their hand and given his word that
In the morning no one would see him alive.
When Rolla saw the sun appear on the roofs,
He went and leaned out the window.
Rolla turned to look at Marie.
She felt exhausted, and had fallen asleep.
And thus both fled the cruelties of fate,
The child in sleep, and the man in death!
It was a moment of inaction, then, that Gervex chose to paint - that of weary repose for her and melancholic contemplation for Rolla, following the night of paid sex and just prior to his suicide.
”
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Hollis Clayson (Painted Love: Prostitution and French Art of the Impressionist Era)
“
He strove for the diapason, the great song that should embrace in itself a whole epoch, a complete era, the voice of an entire people, wherein all people should be included—they and their legends, their folk lore, their fightings, their loves and their lusts, their blunt, grim humour, their stoicism under stress, their adventures, their treasures found in a day and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity and cruelty, their heroism and bestiality, their religion and profanity, their self-sacrifice and obscenity—a true and fearless setting forth of a passing phase of history, un-compromising, sincere; each group in its proper environment; the valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch, the range, and the mine—all this, all the traits and types of every community from the Dakotas to the Mexicos, from Winnipeg to Guadalupe, gathered together, swept together, welded and riven together in one single, mighty song, the Song of the West.
”
”
Frank Norris (The Octopus: A California Story)
“
If any actress best represents the snappy 1930s dame, it’s Joan Blondell. During that era she played a lively assortment of chorus girls, waitresses, golddiggers, reporters and secretaries in a total of 53 movies, 44 of them for Warner Bros. “Yet, for all that overwork,” Mick LaSalle writes in Complicated Women, “Blondell hardly ever had a false moment. Self-possessed, unimpressed, completely natural, always sane, without attitude or pretense … the greatest of the screen’s great broads. No one was better at playing someone both fun-loving yet grounded, ready for a great time, yet substantial, too.” She was fun-loving, but sometimes there were limits. As a flip waitress in Other Men’s Women (1931), Joan puts the breaks on a fresh customer:
BLONDELL: Anything else you guys want?
CUSTOMER (checking her out as she bends over): Yeah, give me a big slice of you—and some french fried potatoes on the side.
BLONDELL: Listen, baby, I’m A.P.O.
CUSTOMER (turning to friend): What does she mean, A.P.O.?
BLONDELL: Ain’t Putting Out.
“I was the fizz on the soda,” she once said. “I just showed my big boobs and tiny waist and acted glib and flirty.” While that’s a fair assessment of most of her early roles, it wasn’t the whole story.
”
”
Ray Hagen (Killer Tomatoes: Fifteen Tough Film Dames)
“
Despite its reputation for individualism and unbridled capitalism, the United States has a history rich in cooperation and communalism. From the colonial era to the present—and among the indigenous population for millennia—local communities have engaged in self-help, democracy, and cooperation. Indeed, the “individualistic” tradition might more accurately be called the “self-help” tradition, where “self” is defined not only in terms of the individual but in terms of the community (be it family, township, religious community, etc.). Americans are traditionally hostile to overarching authorities separate from the community with which they identify, a hostility expressed in the age-old resentment towards both government and big business. The stereotype, based on fact, is that Americans would rather solve problems on their own than rely on political and economic power-structures to do so. The following brief survey of the history substantiates this claim. While my focus is on worker cooperatives, I will not ignore the many and varied experiments in other forms of cooperation and communalism. Certain themes and lessons can be gleaned from the history. The most obvious is that a profound tension has existed, constantly erupting into conflict, between the democratic, anti-authoritarian impulses of ordinary Americans and the tendency of economic and political power-structures to grow extensively and intensively, to concentrate themselves in ever-larger and more centralized units that reach as far down into society as possible. Power inherently tries to control as much as it can: it has an intrinsic tendency toward totalitarianism, ideally letting nothing, even the most trivial social interactions, escape its oversight. Bentham’s Panopticon is the perfect emblem of the logic of power. Other social forces, notably people’s strivings for freedom and democracy, typically keep this totalitarian tendency in check. In fact, the history of cooperation and communalism is a case-study in the profound truth that people are instinctively averse to the modes of cutthroat competition, crass greed, authoritarianism, hierarchy, and dehumanization that characterize modern capitalism. Far from capitalism’s being a straightforward expression of human nature, as apologists proclaim, it is more like the very antithesis of human nature, which is evidently drawn to such things as free self-expression, spontaneous “play,”131 cooperation and friendly competition, compassion, love. The work of Marxist historians like E. P. Thompson shows how people have had to be disciplined, their desires repressed, in order for the capitalist system to seem even remotely natural: centuries of indoctrination, state violence, incarceration of “undesirables,” the bureaucratization of everyday life, have been necessary to partially accustom people to the mechanical rhythms of industrial capitalism and the commodification of the human personality.132 And of course resistance continues constantly, from the early nineteenth century to the present day. “Wage-slavery,” as workers in the nineteenth century called it, is a monstrous assault on human dignity, which is why even today, after so much indoctrination, people still hate being subordinated to a “boss” and rebel against it whenever they can.
”
”
Chris Wright (Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States)
“
In a short essay called ‘Liberating Life: Women’s Revolution’, Öcalan (2013) outlines the core tenets of his sociological/historico-philosophical writings. Öcalan’s fundamental claim is that ‘mainstream civilisation’, commences with the enslavement of ‘Woman’, through what he calls ‘Housewifisation’ (2013). As such, it is only through a ‘struggle against the foundations of this ruling system’ (2013), that not only women, but also men can achieve freedom, and slavery can be destroyed. Any liberation of life, for Öcalan, can only be achieved through a Woman’s revolution. In his own words: ‘If I am to be a freedom fighter, I cannot just ignore this: woman’s revolution is a revolution within a revolution’ (2013).
For Öcalan, the Neolithic era is crucial, as the heyday of the matricentric social order. The figure of the Woman is quite interesting, and is not just female gender, but rather a condensation of all that is ‘equal’ and ‘natural’ and ‘social’, and its true significance is seen as a mode of social governance, which is non-hierarchical, non-statist, and not premised upon accumulation (2013). This can only be fully seen, through the critique of ‘civilisation’ which is equally gendered and equated with the rise of what he calls the ‘dominant male’ and hegemonic sexuality. These forms of power as coercive are embodied in the institution of masculine civilisation. And power in the matriarchal structures are understood more as authority, they are natural/organic. What further characterised the Neolithic era is the ways through which society was based upon solidarity and sharing – no surplus in production, and a respect for nature. In such a social order, Öcalan finds through his archaeology of ‘sociality’ the traces of an ecological ontology, in which nature is ‘alive and animated’, and thus no different from the people themselves.
The ways in which Öcalan figures ‘Woman’, serves as metaphor for the Kurdish nation-as-people (not nation-state). In short, if one manages to liberate woman, from the hegemonic ‘civilisation’ of ‘the dominant male’, one manages to liberate, not only the Kurds, but the world. It is only on this basis that the conditions of possibility for a genuine global democratic confederalism, and a solution to the conflicts of the Middle East can be thinkable. Once it is thinkable, then we can imagine a freedom to organise, to be free from any conception of ownership (of property, persons, or the self), a freedom to show solidarity, to restore balance to life, nature, and other humans through ‘love’, not power.
In Rojava, The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, Öcalan’s political thoughts are being implemented, negotiated and practised. Such a radical experiment, which connects theory with practice has not been seen on this scale, ever before, and although the Rojava administration, the Democratic Union Party, is different from the PKK, they share the same political leader, Öcalan. Central to this experiment are commitments to feminism, ecology and justice.
”
”
Abdullah ocalan
“
Quizá la palabra que mejor encajara en el sentimiento que me invadía era orgullo. Por primera vez en mucho tiempo, tal vez por primera vez en toda mi vida, me sentía orgullosa de mí misma.
”
”
María Dueñas (El tiempo entre costuras / Sira (Sira Quiroga, #1-2))
“
Truman was so self-absorbed that it took him a long while to realize Marella had taken him out of her life.
”
”
Laurence Leamer (Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era)
“
self-love era…
at first, this all felt like loss, like life was taking me away from places i'd felt love. but in this new place, i'm just being asked to learn to feel love… but not need permission from someone or something else to feel it.
”
”
butterflies rising
“
An important factor here is that Bond does not see himself as a victim. This feels like it should be an increasingly important aspect of the character given the extent which society consistently urges us to define ourselves in this way. This is an issue not necessarily linked to how life has treated us. […] To not be a victim does not mean that you become an oppressor. It means that you are able to accept responsibility for your actions and circumstances and are prepared to withstand pressure when necessary. It means that you are willing to stand up and use your voice even at times when to do so is futile or against your own self interest. It is to not give in to fear, to act when necessary and to not be coward by the realities of the world. This is especially appealing in an era when so many suffer from anxiety. These are usually portrayed as idealised masculine qualities but they are more universal than that. [If you] don’t act like a victim, in the modern world it can be enough to mark you out as a hero.
”
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John Higgs (Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles, and the British Psyche)
“
Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.
At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas. Usually so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three milleniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out. Yet it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States. Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction.
”
”
Henning W. Prentis, Industrial Management in a Republic, p. 22, 1943
“
Jesus and Women As we look at Jesus and how He interacted with women, we see Him dignifying, validating, and championing them—all in contrast to a misogynist culture. In addition, women played a prominent role in Jesus’ earthly ministry. As John Bunyan put it, “They were women that wept when he was going to the cross, and women that followed him from the cross, and that sat by his sepulcher when he was buried. They were women that was [sic] first with him at his resurrection morn, and women that brought tidings first to his disciples that he was risen from the dead.”2 In an ancient world, where many disregarded the testimony of women, Jesus’ high regard for them bordered on the scandalous. The fact that all these accounts are included in the Canon of Scripture actually verify the resurrection accounts of Christ. Remember, God saw fit that the first eyes to behold the risen Jesus were those of a woman—all during an era where a woman’s testimony had no credibility in a court of law. Women, therefore, were the first evangelists. The only way a man can discover how to treat a woman is by looking at how Jesus interacted with them. Your Lord was the defender of women. He stepped in to save a broken, scandalized woman from the murderous plot of a group of self-righteous men. He lifted the weight of her shame, writing a new destiny for her in the dirt. He saw value in an “unclean” Samaritan woman who was disregarded, despised, and viewed as damaged goods. He honored a prostitute in the house of a Pharisee. He healed a pariah woman whose flow of blood excommunicated her. He exalted a woman who anointed Him for burial by commissioning her story to be rehearsed wherever the gospel message was heard. He never talked down to a woman, but made them heroes in His parables. And that for which Jesus came to die was a woman . . . His woman, the very bride of Christ. Put simply, your Lord is in the business of loving, honoring, and defending women.3 And God chose the womb of a woman to enter this world.
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Frank Viola (The Day I Met Jesus: The Revealing Diaries of Five Women from the Gospels)
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Winning Expo 2020 marked the city’s coronation and the world could no longer deny Dubai its rightful status as one of the era’s more illustrious cities. The people who flocked there were looking for some sort of magic to occur in their lives, and life on the beach under these concrete gazebos offered many blessings. Some found riches. Some found religion. Some found love. And some, most importantly of all, found themselves.
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Soroosh Shahrivar (The Rise of Shams)
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ANNALS OF LANGUAGE WORD MAGIC How much really gets lost in translation? BY ADAM GOPNIK Once, in a restaurant in Italy with my family, I occasioned enormous merriment, as a nineteenth-century humorist would have put it, by confusing two Italian words. I thought I had, very suavely, ordered for dessert fragoline—those lovely little wild strawberries. Instead, I seem to have asked for fagiolini—green beans. The waiter ceremoniously brought me a plate of green beans with my coffee, along with the flan and the gelato for the kids. The significant insight the mistake provided—arriving mere microseconds after the laughter of those kids, who for some reason still bring up the occasion, often—was about the arbitrary nature of language: the single “r” rolled right makes one a master of the trattoria, an “r” unrolled the family fool. Although speaking feels as natural as breathing, the truth is that the words we use are strange, abstract symbols, at least as remote from their objects as Egyptian hieroglyphs are from theirs, and as quietly treacherous as Egyptian tombs. Although berries and beans may be separated by a subtle sound within a language, the larger space between like words in different languages is just as hazardous. Two words that seem to indicate the same state may mean the opposite. In English, the spiritual guy is pious, while the one called spirituel in French is witty; a liberal in France is on the right, in America to the left. And what of cultural inflections that seem to separate meanings otherwise identical? When we have savoir-faire in French, don’t we actually have something different from “know-how” in English, even though the two compounds combine pretty much the same elements? These questions, about the hidden traps of words and phrases, are the subject of what may be the weirdest book the twenty-first century has so far produced: “Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon,” a thirteen-hundred-page volume, originally edited in French by the French philologist Barbara Cassin but now published, by Princeton University Press, in a much altered English edition, overseen by the comp-lit luminaries Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood. How weird is it? Let us count the ways. It is in part an anti-English protest, taking arms against the imperializing spread of our era’s, well, lingua franca—which has now been offered in English, so that everyone can understand it. The book’s presupposition is that there are significant, namable, untranslatable differences between tongues, so that, say, “history” in English, histoire in French, and Geschichte in German have very different boundaries that we need to grasp if we are to understand the texts in which the words occur. The editors, propelled by this belief, also believe it to be wrong. In each entry of the Dictionary, the differences are tracked, explained, and made perfectly clear in English, which rather undermines the premise that these terms are untranslatable, except in the dim sense that it sometimes takes a few words in one language to indicate a concept that is more succinctly embodied in one word in another. Histoire in French means both “history” and “story,” in a way that “history” in English doesn’t quite, so that the relation between history and story may be more elegantly available in French. But no one has trouble in English with the notion that histories are narratives we make up as much as chronicles we discern. Indeed, in the preface, the editors cheerfully announce that any strong form of the belief to which their book may seem to be a monument is certainly false: “Some pretty good equivalencies are always available. . . . If there were a perfect equivalence from language to language, the result would not be translation; it would be a replica. . . . The constant recourse to the metaphor of loss in translation is finally too easy.” So their Dictionary is a self-exploding book,
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Anonymous
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Close my eyes, watch the universe and above the ground, I'm watching all peoples running to build their lifestyle.
Fuck! So we don't need only food on our table. So are craving for lifestyle.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! We're good in caves man, I think i born in wrong era.
”
”
@lastcigarettemusic
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She was lovely, of course. But it wasn’t that which had beguiled him so thoroughly against his will -- against his self-interest and his reason. It was the softness of her. The tender gravity in her gaze, and the reticence in her manner.
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Mimi Matthews (A Lady of Conscience (Somerset Stories, #5))
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To describe his method, Gandhi coined the expression satyagraha, literally, ‘holding on to truth’ or, as he variously described it, truth-force, love-force or soul-force. He disliked the English term ‘passive resistance’ because satyagraha required activism, not passivity. If you believed in Truth and cared enough to obtain it, Gandhi felt, you could not afford to be passive: you had to be prepared actively to suffer for Truth. So non-violence, like many later concepts labelled with a negation, from non-cooperation to non-alignment, meant much more than the denial of an opposite; it did not merely imply the absence of violence. Non-violence was the way to vindicate the truth not by the infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on one’s self. It was essential to willingly accept punishment in order to demonstrate the strength of one’s convictions.
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Shashi Tharoor (An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India)
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Em sentia bella i poderosa, més que mai. Però, per alguna raó, tenia menys control sobre la meva bellesa que mai, necessitava tots aquells retocs, més que mai, necessitava agradar-li a aquell home, més que mai. I tot això, per què? Doncs perquè necessitava tenir el control, perquè creia tenir el control. Un control fràgil, molt fràgil. Un control determinat, tan sols, per la impressió que un altre s'emportés de mi; un control, que doncs, no era meu-
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JUDIT VARELA MARTÍNEZ (BITERNA (Catalan Edition))
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To past generations,
You grew up in a time of tall trees and flowers. Stumbled through the dark, blameless and carefree. When you were at fault, you answered only to yourself. The pain you’ve caused others—now inconsequential—because no one was watching. You belong to a world of forgotten transgressions. Our generation blooms in the era of eyes and judgment. Where our mistakes are timestamped; our broken hearts livestreamed. But does this give you a right to throw stones at us? Self-growth is a long and winding road, and the ground we are treading is unlike any other. Please be patient with us. Be kind. Understand that we must lose our way, over and over, before we can find the best version of ourselves.
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Lang Leav (September Love)
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The historical changes in American marriage—from the pragmatic to the love-based to the self-expressive eras—exhibit striking parallels to the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs.
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Eli J. Finkel (The All-or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work)
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The subject of unmarried mothers was even addressed by the mainstream advice columnist Ann Landers (1961) who believe that “single girls who hang on to their babies” displayed a “sick kind of love” and “an unwholesome blend of self-pity mixed with self-destruction and a touch of martyrdom.
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Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh (The Baby Scoop Era: Unwed Mothers, Infant Adoption, and Forced Surrender)
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He believed that narcissism is a chronic search for self-preservation and the need to protect the psyche. In his telling, the origin of narcissism is likely some form of unresolved conflict from childhood that is playing out in adulthood. In one of the wisest descriptions of narcissism, Freud stated, “Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.
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Ramani Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
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Beauty is all around, waiting at our doorstep, we merely need to open the door. Walk out to open to the new within me and you.
Beauty lets light in, while opening us up to love, love, love-
loving within and so without.
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Ulonda Faye (Sutras of the Heart: Spiritual Poetry to Nourish the Soul)
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A dress could usher in the dawn of a new era.
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Okechukwu Nzelu (The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney)
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THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER THE Royal Physician’s Visit PER OLOV ENQUIST Translated from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally Set in Denmark in the 1760s, The Royal Physician’s Visit magnificently recasts the dramatic era of Danish history when Johann Friedrich Struensee, a German doctor from Altona, student of Enlightenment philosophers Diderot and Voltaire, and court physician to mad young King Christian, stepped through the aperture history had opened for him and became for two years the holder of absolute power in Denmark. Dr. Struensee, tall, handsome, and charismatic, introduced hundreds of reforms, many of which would become hallmarks of the French Revolution twenty years later, including freedom of the press and improvement of the treatment of the peasantry. He also took young Queen Caroline Mathilde—unsatisfied by her unstable, childlike husband—as his mistress. He was a brilliant intellectual and brash reformer, yet Struensee lacked the cunning and subtlety of a skilled politician and, most tragically, lacked the talent to choose the right enemies at court, a flaw which would lead to his torture and execution. An international sensation sold in twenty countries, The Royal Physician’s Visit is a view from the seat of absolute power, a gripping tale, vividly and entertainingly told. Enquist’s talent is in full force as he brilliantly explores the connections that will always run between political theory and practice, power, sex, love, and the life of the mind. “A great book, a powerful book—it effortlessly and self-confidently surmounts the standard works of fiction.” —Die Zeit “Incomparably exciting in its uncompromising lucidity and at the same time unsettling.” —Suddeutsche Zeitung “Time and time again the story takes to the air on the wings of fantasy … a magnificent adventure.” —Upsala Nya Tidning “The erotic scenes are among the most beautiful I have read in modern literature.” —Kvällsposten
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Per Olov Enquist (The Royal Physician's Visit)
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In a rare moment of self-awareness, the young woman even understood that her dependence was probably unhealthy. Henry, she declared, was a man 'whom I love too much for my peace.
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Nancy Rubin Stuart (Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married)
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Porque estar sozinho era bem melhor do que ser rejeitado, deixado ou abandonado.
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Laura Kaye (Love in the Light (Hearts in Darkness, #2))
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This phenomenon of secondary narcissism manifests as a person who becomes isolated from society and the people within it. In his description, these narcissistic individuals will have low self-esteem because they cannot successfully love other people or be loved. He also clearly delineated dynamics of guilt and shame typically observed in narcissists, as well as their reliance on defenses such as projection.
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Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
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And, since the narcissistic and toxic relationship undercuts any sense of confidence and fills people with self-doubt, they no longer trust their judgment. It becomes easy to think that the problems are “temporary” or perhaps that you are “overreacting,” and it can become quite simple to fall into the trap of “trying harder,” “loving more,” and “making more sacrifices.” A courtship with a narcissist is more of an indoctrination than a love story.
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Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
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When you put your insecure self out there, the likelihood you will receive narcissists increases, because they are the best mirrors for insecurity. Fear and love do not belong in the same sentence…always remember that.
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Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
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Ironically, the greatest antidote to narcissism is self-love, self-compassion, or self-valuation.
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Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
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narcissism is, in essence, the opposite of self-love; it may, in fact, be a form of self-loathing, pathological insecurity, and hollow self-aggrandizement.
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Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
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Something about our culture results in the opposite of self-love or self-valuation. It could be argued, in line with the research on materialism and consumerism, that self-love means that we will not consume.
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Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
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Self-love is a sort of psychological “condom” that protects us from the toxic stuff around us and gives us the strength to walk away from it, close the door before it even gets in, and remain serene and strong in the presence of it.
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Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
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—Yo también siento haber perdido el control. No quiero organizar
tu vida. Quiero que te hagas feliz.
Eso me gustó. «Quiero que te hagas feliz» no era una promesa
Disney de príncipes de cuento que velan por la felicidad de sus
princesas. No era nada irreal. Era undeseo de carne y hueso, que me abrazaba con fuerza, que se
preocupaba, viendo cómo yo me tambaleaba en una cuerda floja,
entre hacer las cosas que quería y el miedo
a no conseguirlas jamás
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Elísabet Benavent. Alguien como tú (Mi elección #2)
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In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So, we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.
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Sonya Renee Taylor (The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love)
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author Michelle Alexander. She details the comparison in her groundbreaking book The New Jim Crow: In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So, we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.6
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Sonya Renee Taylor (The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love)
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During that time, the word love—a deep word communicating all kinds of messages about permanence, commitment, self-abnegation, and sacrifice—began to be used to describe situations and encounters that were shallow, short-lived, casual, and self-serving. Simultaneously, the word peace, an equally deep word that, especially when partnered with love, gets to the heart of contentment, serenity, gratitude, and joy, was hauled into the shallows, where it came to mean mostly an “absence of war” and nonjudgmental permissiveness. The irony escapes many, but peace and love were the pretty-but-empty, wallpapery buzzwords that framed an era of riot and social revolution that is still resonating within our society. Cultural and religious disorder has reigned ever since.
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Elizabeth Scalia (Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life)