Extraordinary Measures Quotes

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A life worth living might be measured in many ways, but the one way that stands above all others is living a life of no regrets.
Gary Keller (The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results)
It's an extraordinary thing to meet someone who you can bare your soul to and accept you for what you are. I've been waiting, for what seems like a very long time, to get beyond what I am. With Bella I feel like I can finally begin. So I'd like to propose a toast to my beautiful bride. No measure of time with you will be long enough. But let's start with forever.
Stephenie Meyer (Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, #4))
Forever is a measure of time used by people who share an ordinary love. Our extraordinary love is immeasurable...for us, forever just won’t do.
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it will begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that won’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
Buffett found it 'extraordinary' that academics studied such things. They studied what was measurable, rather than what was meaningful. 'As a friend [Charlie Munger] said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Roger Lowenstein (Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist)
Each day offers you an opportunity to overcome obstacles and fears in your life. Those victories, however small they appear, are significant and don’t need to be measured against or compared with those of someone else. They stand on their own as important measures of your own personal capabilities.
Steve Pemberton (The Lighthouse Effect: How Ordinary People Can Have an Extraordinary Impact in the World)
Never exaggerate. It is a matter of great importance to forego superlatives, in part to avoid offending the truth, and in part to avoid cheapening your judgment. Exaggeration wastes distinction and testifies to the paucity of your understanding and taste. Praise excites anticipation and stimulates desire. Afterwards when value does not measure up to price, disappointment turns against the fraud and takes revenge by cheapening both the appraised and the appraise. For this reason let the prudent go slowly, and err in understatement rather than overstatement. The extraordinary of every kind is always rare, wherefore temper your estimate.
Baltasar Gracián (The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle)
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
David Foster Wallace (This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life)
The more we delve into quantum mechanics the stranger the world becomes; appreciating this strangeness of the world, whilst still operating in that which you now consider reality, will be the foundation for shifting the current trajectory of your life from ordinary to extraordinary. It is the Tao of mixing this cosmic weirdness with the practical and physical, which will allow you to move, moment by moment, through parallel worlds to achieve your dreams.
Kevin Michel (Moving Through Parallel Worlds To Achieve Your Dreams)
A meeting is that measure whereby a large number of people gather and some say things that they don't think and others think things that they don't say.
Vladimir Voinovich (The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (European Classics))
One's desire to be alone, biologists have found, is partially genetic and to some degree measurable. If you have low levels of the pituitary peptide oxytocin--sometimes called the master chemical of sociability-- and high quantities of the hormone vasopressin, which may suppress your need for affection, you tend to require fewer interpersonal relationships.
Michael Finkel (The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit)
But you know what the bravest thing of all is? The most extraordinary thing? To live by your own standards and no one else's. To be happy by your own measure.
Tarah DeWitt (Savor It)
is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Michael Finkel (The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit)
Our lives are measured in moments, and defining moments are the ones that endure in our memories.
Chip Heath (The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact)
My son, war is horrific and dehumanizing. It numbs us to suffering, pain, and death. Therefore, it requires average citizens to take extraordinary measures. For if we don’t do what we can to minimize the suffering of others, we will lose our humanity.
Ellen Oh (Finding Junie Kim)
Previously I had thought of pain as a blemish of creation, God's one great mistake. Tommy Lewis taught me otherwise. Seen from his point of view, pain stands out as an extraordinary feat of engineering valuable beyond measure.
Paul Brand
When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain the whole result, nor even the largest part of it; no, it is the atmosphere in which the talent was cradled that explains; it is the training it received while it grew, the nurture it got from reading, study, example, the encouragement it gathered from self-recognition and recognition from the outside at each stage of its development: when we know all these details, then we know why the man was ready when his opportunity came.
Mark Twain (How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson and Other Tales of Rebellious Girls and Daring Young Women)
Pride measures prosperity not by her own advantages but by the disadvantages of others. She would not even wish to be a goddess unless there were some wretches left whom she could order about and lord it over, whose misery would make her happiness seem all the more extraordinary, whose poverty can be tormented and exacerbated by a display of her wealth. This infernal serpent, pervading the human heart, keeps men from reforming their lives, holding them back like a suckfish.
Thomas More (Utopia)
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Michael Finkel (The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit)
Real success or victory is measured by the quality of that very process of attention and mindful involvement, practice, and commitment.
Chungliang Al Huang (Thinking Body, Dancing Mind: Taosports for Extraordinary Performance in Athletics, Business, and Life)
filling their weekends with gardening and book clubs and tennis, those simple pleasures made all the more pleasurable for feeling so ordinary in an extraordinary time.
Nikki Erlick (The Measure)
As Wendell Berry warned: “The most destructive of ideas is that extraordinary times justify extraordinary measures. This is the ultimate relativism, and we are hearing it from all sides.
Russell D. Moore (Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America)
Instead of seeing all of this as God's extraordinary grace, we come to expect the comfort and joys that God gives us as the baseline, the measure of what we believe to be our due. When our comfort level drops below our expectations, we are shocked and angered, and even foolishly express our outrage to God Himself.
R.C. Sproul Jr. (The Call to Wonder: Loving God like a Child)
More than 2,000 books are dedicated to how Warren Buffett built his fortune. Many of them are wonderful. But few pay enough attention to the simplest fact: Buffett’s fortune isn’t due to just being a good investor, but being a good investor since he was literally a child. As I write this Warren Buffett’s net worth is $84.5 billion. Of that, $84.2 billion was accumulated after his 50th birthday. $81.5 billion came after he qualified for Social Security, in his mid-60s. Warren Buffett is a phenomenal investor. But you miss a key point if you attach all of his success to investing acumen. The real key to his success is that he’s been a phenomenal investor for three quarters of a century. Had he started investing in his 30s and retired in his 60s, few people would have ever heard of him. Consider a little thought experiment. Buffett began serious investing when he was 10 years old. By the time he was 30 he had a net worth of $1 million, or $9.3 million adjusted for inflation.16 What if he was a more normal person, spending his teens and 20s exploring the world and finding his passion, and by age 30 his net worth was, say, $25,000? And let’s say he still went on to earn the extraordinary annual investment returns he’s been able to generate (22% annually), but quit investing and retired at age 60 to play golf and spend time with his grandkids. What would a rough estimate of his net worth be today? Not $84.5 billion. $11.9 million. 99.9% less than his actual net worth. Effectively all of Warren Buffett’s financial success can be tied to the financial base he built in his pubescent years and the longevity he maintained in his geriatric years. His skill is investing, but his secret is time. That’s how compounding works. Think of this another way. Buffett is the richest investor of all time. But he’s not actually the greatest—at least not when measured by average annual returns.
Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
That Beethoven was capable of producing the ultimate musical definition of heroism in this context is itself extraordinary, for he was able to evoke a dream of heroism that neither he nor his native Germany nor his adopted Vienna could express in reality. Perhaps we can only measure the heroism of the Eroica by the depth of fear and uncertainty from with it emerged.
Maynard Solomon
I see the cultural messaging everywhere that says an ordinary life is a meaningless life. . . . I know the yearning to believe that what I'm doing matters and how easy it is to confuse that with the drive to be extraordinary. I know how seductive it is to use the celebrity culture yardstick to measure the smallness of our lives. And I also understand how grandiosity, entitlement, and admiration-seeking feel like just the right balm to soothe the ache of being too ordinary and inadequate.
Brené Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection)
If you want to know if your kid is going to be fast, the best genetic test right now is a stopwatch. Take him to the playground and have him face the other kids.' Foster's point is that, despite the avant-garde allure of genetic testing, gauging speed indirectly is foolish and inaccurate compared with testing it directly - like measuring a man's height by dropping a ball from a roof and using the time it takes to hit him in the head to determine how tall he is. Why not just use a tape measure?
David Epstein (The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance)
It's an extraordinary thing to meet someone who you can bare your soul to. And who will accept you for what you are. I've been waiting, what seems like a very long time, to get beyond what I am. And with Bella, I feel like I can finally begin. So I'd like to propose a toast to my beautiful bride. No measure of time with you will be long enough. But let's start with forever.
Breaking Dawn Part 1 Film
Life shouldn’t be measured in hours for the vagueness in which they exist, but moments; moments are memorable and we could easily say that a short life filled with a stock of extraordinary memories is worth a thousand times what a long, boring and loveless one is.
Emiliano Campuzano (Cielo Por Tu Luz)
By any measure the mathematics of the engagement were preposterously against them. The Yamato displaced nearly seventy thousand tons. She alone matched almost exactly in weight all thirteen ships of Taffy 3. Each of her three main gun turrets weighed more than an entire Fletcher-class destroyer.
James D. Hornfischer (The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour)
The sacred rowan is a woman born long, long ago, a woman whose refusal to see love cost first her lover's life, then the lives of her family, her clan, her people. But not her own life. Not quite. In pity and punishment she was turned into an undying tree, a rowan that weeps only in the presence of transcendent love; and the tears of the rowan are blossoms that confer extraordinary grace upon those who can see them. When enough tears are wept, the rowan will be free. She waits inside a sacred ring that can be neither weighed or measured nor touched. She waits for love that is worth her tears. The rowan is waiting still.
Elizabeth Lowell (Enchanted (Medieval, #3))
Nothing is ordinary,' said the tyger. 'Everything is extraordinary. In all of infinity and eternity, that flower exists only in this world; this precise posi- tion in space and time. Everywhere else, there is a different flower, or no flower at all. And the same is true of you. Nothing special? You are miraculous beyond measure, both of you.
S.F. Said (Tyger)
One’s desire to be alone, biologists have found, is partially genetic and to some degree measurable. If you have low levels of the pituitary peptide oxytocin—sometimes called the master chemical of sociability—and high quantities of the hormone vasopressin, which may suppress your need for affection, you tend to require fewer interpersonal relationships.
Michael Finkel (The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit)
If your environment makes you feel stable, balanced, and grounded, you’re more likely to feel confident taking measured risks and exploring new opportunities.
Ingrid Fetell Lee (Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness)
One measure of a person is the degree to which they’ll do the right thing when it goes against the popular belief.
Shane Parrish (Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results)
(Had Vincent succeeded? She felt that by any rational measure she was living an extraordinary life, but on the other hand she wasn’t sure what the goal had been.
Emily St. John Mandel (The Glass Hotel)
The Indian writer Jiddu Krishnamurti has been quoted as saying, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Michael Finkel (The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit)
The virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his every-day conduct.
Blaise Pascal
Too, the elite often believe that if they themselves are not in control, the situation is out of control, and in their fear take repressive measures that become secondary disasters.
Rebecca Solnit (A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster)
But he and his compatriots would soon assess the cost of Taffy 3’s audacious resistance, the effectiveness of which no tactician could ever have foreseen and no statistician could have measured.
James D. Hornfischer (The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour)
Virtually every natural feature in Maine, pond to peak, has a proper name, but Knight saw such titles as human impositions and preferred not to know them. He sought a purity to his retreat beyond all measure.
Michael Finkel (The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit)
has regrets. Life isn’t about counting those and rehashing them, it’s about loving who you are and finding your place. You were born extraordinary—that is your normal. Let go of the ideal because no one can measure
Katie Graykowski (Place Your Betts (The Marilyns, #1))
I couldn't suppress a smile. It was inconceivable that I was here, in a place as extraordinary as the fantasy books Sophie loved. Maybe...just maybe those stories are based on a measure of truth. Maybe one day I'd write our story.
Heather L.L. FitzGerald (The Tethered World (The Tethered World Chronicles, #1))
Science prides itself on explaining the parts of our life that can be measured and tested. Objectivity is, rightly so, the backbone of science. But I’d argue that subjectivity is its flesh and blood. Each is necessary but not sufficient alone.
Helen Thomson (Unthinkable: What the World's Most Extraordinary Brains Can Teach Us About Our Own)
discovery and settlement of the New World resulted in: “a dietary revolution unparalleled in history save possibly for the first application of fire to the cooking of edibles.” He continued, “Picture the long centuries when the Old World existed without white and sweet potatoes, tomatoes, corn and the many varieties of beans, and you have some notion of the extraordinary gastronomic advance. Add, for good measure, such dishes as pumpkins, squashes, turkeys, cranberries, maple syrup,
Vine Deloria Jr. (Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria Jr. Reader)
Law 5: Upgrade your systems for living. Extraordinary minds consistently spend time discovering, upgrading, and measuring new systems for living applied to life, work, heart, and soul. They are in a perpetual state of growth and self-innovation.
Vishen Lakhiani (The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms)
Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suite you, aren't becoming to you. You will begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.
J.D. Salinger
False hope drives us to push on in the face of dismal odds. It means that we set aside one of the most important tools in medicine, palliative care, until, I would argue, the window for effective palliative measures has mostly closed and it is too late to undo extraordinary suffering.
Blair Bigham (Death Interrupted: How Modern Medicine Is Complicating the Way We Die)
By any measure, we live in an extraordinary and extreme time. Language can no longer describe the world in which we live. With antique ideas and old formulas, we continue to describe a world that is no longer present. In this loss of language, the word gives way to the image as the 'language' of exchange, in which critical thought disappears to a diabolic regime of conformity - the hyper-real, the omnipresent image. Language, real place gives way to numerical code, the real virtual; metaphor to metamorphosis; body to disembodiment; natural to supernatural; many to one. Mystery disappears, replaced by the illusion of certainty in technological perfection.
Godfrey Reggio
Meanwhile, the extraordinary measures we take to stay abreast of each minuscule change to the data stream end up magnifying the relative importance of these blips to the real scheme of things. Investors trade, politicians respond, and friends judge based on the micromovements of virtual needles. By dividing our attention between our digital extensions, we sacrifice our connection to the truer present in which we are living. The tension between the faux present of digital bombardment and the true now of a coherently living human generated the second kind of present shock, what we're calling digiphrenia—digi for "digital," and phrenia for "disordered condition of mental activity.
Douglas Rushkoff (Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now)
else. One’s desire to be alone, biologists have found, is partially genetic and to some degree measurable. If you have low levels of the pituitary peptide oxytocin—sometimes called the master chemical of sociability—and high quantities of the hormone vasopressin, which may suppress your need for affection, you tend to require fewer interpersonal relationships.
Michael Finkel (The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit)
It was the only commonality I could find in all the cases of EOs that are even close to well-documented. Anyway, bodies react in strange ways under stress. Adrenaline and all that, as you know. I figured that trauma could cause the body to chemically alter.” He began to speak faster. “But the problem is, trauma is such a vague word, right? It’s a whole blanket, really, and I needed to isolate a thread. Millions of people are traumatized daily. Emotionally, physically, what-have-you. If even a fraction of them became ExtraOrdinary, they would compose a measurable percentage of the human population. And if that were the case EOs would be more than a thing in quotation marks, more than a hypothesis; they’d be an actuality. I knew there had to be something more specific.
Victoria E. Schwab (Vicious (Villains, #1))
However, the experience of the world as one individual is so fleeting it is barely even measurable; especially when held up against the great passage of time felt since Earth’s conception. As humans, we arrive and pass like a mayfly spiralling on a breath of wind for its single day of life in the sun. Our lives are so short when measured against something like the formation of a granite slab, lying out on my garden path; so short, in fact, that the revelation of this brevity can make you feel like your life is even a little pointless – but the other side of this, quite extraordinary, humbling, is to see your time as the most wonderful gift of all. And if it is so (which it really is) then, like the mayfly with only twenty-four hours to live, I am going to open my senses to everything that this day has to offer.
Ken Smith (The Way of the Hermit: My 40 years in the Scottish Wilderness)
The bottom line is that not only are NBA players outlandishly tall, they are also preposterously long, even relative to their stature. And when an NBA player does not have the height required to fit into his slot in the athletic body types universe, he nearly always has the arm span to make up for it. In the post–Big Bang of body types era, whether with height or reach, almost no player makes the NBA without a functional size that is typical for his position and often on the fringe of humanity. Only two players from a 2010–11 NBA roster with available official measurements have arms shorter than their height. One is J. J. Redick, the Milwaukee Bucks guard who is 6'4" with a 6'3¼" arm span, downright Tyrannosaurus rex-ian in the NBA.* The other is now-retired Rockets center Yao Ming. But at a height just over 7'5", Yao, whose gargantuan parents were brought together for breeding purposes by the Chinese basketball federation, fit into his niche just fine.
David Epstein (The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance)
Wars and chaoses and paradoxes ago, two mathematicians between them ended an age d began another for our hosts, our ghosts called Man. One was Einstein, who with his Theory of Relativity defined the limits of man's perception by expressing mathematically just how far the condition of the observer influences the thing he perceives. ... The other was Goedel, a contemporary of Eintstein, who was the first to bring back a mathematically precise statement about the vaster realm beyond the limits Einstein had defined: In any closed mathematical system--you may read 'the real world with its immutable laws of logic'--there are an infinite number of true theorems--you may read 'perceivable, measurable phenomena'--which, though contained in the original system, can not be deduced from it--read 'proven with ordinary or extraordinary logic.' Which is to say, there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio. There are an infinite number of true things in the world with no way of ascertaining their truth. Einstein defined the extent of the rational. Goedel stuck a pin into the irrational and fixed it to the wall of the universe so that it held still long enough for people to know it was there. ... The visible effects of Einstein's theory leaped up on a convex curve, its production huge in the first century after its discovery, then leveling off. The production of Goedel's law crept up on a concave curve, microscopic at first, then leaping to equal the Einsteinian curve, cross it, outstrip it. At the point of intersection, humanity was able to reach the limits of the known universe... ... And when the line of Goedel's law eagled over Einstein's, its shadow fell on a dewerted Earth. The humans had gone somewhere else, to no world in this continuum. We came, took their bodies, their souls--both husks abandoned here for any wanderer's taking. The Cities, once bustling centers of interstellar commerce, were crumbled to the sands you see today.
Samuel R. Delany (The Einstein Intersection)
Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't sit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
As stated in the opening paragraph, be excited! You are about to embark on an incredible journey that provides extraordinary opportunities and offers valuable rewards. The journey to become a physical therapist often is not easy, and it will not come without roadblocks and detours. The challenges do not end once you have graduated; they simply change. However, as many seasoned clinicians can attest, these challenges pale in comparison to the reward of knowing how many patients’ lives you have profoundly impacted. The unexpected gift is how profoundly they will impact yours.
Stacie J. Fruth (Fundamentals of the Physical Therapy Examination: Patient Interview and Tests & Measures)
The end of World War II and the dismantling of the New Deal meant the U.S. government cut its spending by an astonishing 75% between 1944 and 1948, and it also removed most price controls for good measure. And yet, the U.S. economy witnessed an extraordinary boom during these years. The roughly ten million men who were mobilized for the war came back home and were almost seamlessly absorbed into the labor force, as economic production boomed, flying in the face of all Keynesian predictions and utterly obliterating the ridiculous notion that the level of spending is what determines output in the economy.
Saifedean Ammous (The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking)
Knowing I might never visit the archives again, I had hit on a solution to get at Mezzofanti's proficiency: I'd count the letters he received in each language. If he got many, he must have been writing a lot, and that, maybe, pointed to a great deal of practice, then to a high degree of proficiency. It was a fair social science hypothesis. I told Pasti about my plan. The librarian smirked at me. "You're a positivist, I think," he said. A positivist is someone who believes you can get at truths only through what can be counted, measured, and observed. I was shocked - I've been called names before, but never that.
Michael Erard (Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners)
Berkman called no witnesses of his own. Instead, with the aid of an ill-trained interpreter, he began to read his long speech. “Some may wonder why I have declined a legal defense,” Berkman said. “My reasons are twofold. In the first place, I am an anarchist: I do not believe in man-made laws, designed to enslave and oppress humanity. Secondly, an extraordinary phenomenon like an attentat cannot be measured by the narrow standards of legality.” In short, Berkman said, he would explain the deed, and by doing so, society itself would be put on trial. An hour into his presentation, much of which was heard only in mangled English, Judge McClung’s patience came to an end. He ordered Berkman to finish by the rapidly approaching hour of one o’clock. “I can have all the time I want for my defense and will take all the time I need,” Berkman replied. “No, you haven’t,” said the judge. “We’ll teach you different if you think you can dictate to us.” Berkman and his interpreter sputtered on. At 1:10 the judge stopped Berkman and gave the prosecutor the floor. Holding the dagger in his hands, he urged the jury to convict Berkman. The jury didn’t even stir from the box. It immediately pronounced Berkman guilty on all counts. McClung sentenced him to 22 years of confinement.
James McGrath Morris (Revolution By Murder: Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and the Plot to Kill Henry Clay Frick (Kindle Single))
Among the enormous multiplicity of phenomena to be observed in an organic being, that part which becomes conscious is a mere means: and the particle of "virtue," "self abnegation," and other fanciful inventions, are denied in a most thoroughgoing manner by the whole of the remaining phenomena. We would do well to study our organism in all its immorality.... The animal functions are, as a matter of fact, a million times more important than all beautiful states of the soul and heights of consciousness: the latter are an overflow, in so far as they are not needed as instruments in the service of the animal functions. The whole of conscious life: the spirit together with the soul, the heart, goodness, and virtue; in whose service does it work? In the greatest possible perfection of the means (for acquiring nourishment and advancement) serving the fundamental animal functions: above all, the ascent of the line of Life. That which is called "flesh" and "body" is of such incalculably greater importance, that the rest is nothing more than a small appurtenance. To continue the chain of life so that it becomes ever more powerful—that is the task. But now observe how the heart, the soul, virtue, and spirit together conspire formally to thwart this purpose: as if they were the object of every endeavour! ... The degeneration of life is essentially determined by the extraordinary fallibility of consciousness, which is held at bay least of all by the instincts, and thus commits the gravest and profoundest errors. Now could any more insane extravagance of vanity be imagined than to measure the value of existence according to the pleasant or unpleasant feelings of this consciousness? It is obviously only a means: and pleasant or unpleasant feelings are also no more than means. According to what standard is the objective value measured? According to the quantity of increased and more organised power alone.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power)
Gin, often referred to as ‘Madam Geneva’ (and sometimes as ‘Kill-Grief’), was a national obsession. It had first arrived in England in the 1680s, along with William of Orange. Fifty years later, as many as one in ten London properties was a gin shop. According to official records, nearly 7 million gallons were consumed in 1730, and this figure excludes the vast quantities of low-grade gin sold from wheelbarrows, which was often adulterated with turpentine.7 The sale of spirits was officially prohibited in 1736, but the measure was so unsuccessful that prohibition was lifted seven years later, and a more pragmatic approach resulted in the Gin Act of 1751,
Henry Hitchings (Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary)
I have from my youth up, desired and prayed unto God for pure and sound wisdom and understanding of truths natural and artificial, so that God's wisdom, goodness, and power bestowed in the frame of the world might be brought in some bountiful measure under the talent of my capacity... So for many years and in many places, far and near, I have sought and studied many books in sundry languages, and have conferred with sundry men, and have laboured with my own reasonable discourse, to find some inkling, gleam, or beam of those radical truths. But after all my endeavours I could find no other way to attain such wisdom but by the Extraordinary Gift, and not by any vulgar school, doctrine, or human invention
John Dee
the Ku Klux Klan Act. He had planned a California trip that spring, but canceled it in the belief that he couldn’t sidestep this historic moment. The strong new measure laid down criminal penalties for depriving citizens of their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, including holding office, sitting on a jury, or casting a vote. The federal government could prosecute such cases when state governments refused to act. The law also endowed Grant with extraordinary powers to suspend habeas corpus, declare martial law, and send in troops. To halt night riders, the act made it illegal “to conspire together, or go in disguise upon the public highway . . . for the purpose . . . of depriving any person . . . of equal protection of the law.
Ron Chernow (Grant)
To live without comparison, to live without any kind of measurement inwardly, never to compare what you are with what you should be. The word 'meditation' means not only to ponder, to think over, to probe, to look, to weigh; it also has a much deeper meaning in Sanskrit - to measure, which is `to become'. In meditation there must be no measurement. This meditation must not be a conscious meditation in deliberately chosen postures. This meditation must be totally unconscious, never knowing that you are meditating. If you deliberately meditate it is another form of desire, as any other expression of desire. The objects may vary; your meditation may be to reach the highest, but the motive is the desire to achieve, as the business man, as the builder of a great cathedral. Meditation is a movement without any motive, without words and the activity of thought. It must be something that is not deliberately set about. Only then is meditation a movement in the infinite, measureless to man, without a goal, without an end and without a beginning. And that has a strange action in daily life, because all life is one and then becomes sacred. And that which is sacred can never be killed. To kill another is unholy. It cries to heaven as a bird kept in a cage. One never realizes how sacred life is, not only your little life but the lives of millions of others, from the things of nature to extraordinary human beings. And in meditation which is without measurement, there is the very action of that which is most noble, most sacred and holy.
J. Krishnamurti (Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal)
Some people live longer than they ought to by any known measures. As Jo Marchant notes in her book Cure, Costa Ricans have only about one-fifth the personal wealth of Americans, and have poorer health care, but live longer. Moreover, people in one of the poorest regions of Costa Rica, the Nicoya Peninsula, live longest of all, even though they have much higher rates of obesity and hypertension. They also have longer telomeres. The theory is that they benefit from closer social bonds and family relationships. Curiously, it was found that if they live alone or don’t see a child at least once a week, the telomere length advantage vanishes. It is an extraordinary fact that having good and loving relationships physically alters your DNA. Conversely, a 2010 U.S. study found, not having such relationships doubles your risk of dying from any cause.
Bill Bryson (The Body: A Guide for Occupants)
Our most holy religion is founded on faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial, as it is, by no means, fitted to endure. To make this more evident, let us examine those miracles, related in scripture; and not to lose ourselves in too wide a field, let us confine ourselves to such as we find in the Pentateuch, which we shall examine, according to the principles of these pretended Christians, not as the word or testimony of God himself, but as the production of a mere human writer and historian. Here then we are first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts, which every nation gives of its origin. Upon reading this book, we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It gives an account of a state of the world and of human nature entirely different from the present: Of our fall from that state: Of the age of man, extended to near a thousand years: Of the destruction of the world by a deluge: Of the arbitrary choice of one people, as the favourites of heaven; and that people the countrymen of the author: Of their deliverance from bondage by prodigies the most astonishing imaginable: I desire any one to lay his hand upon his heart, and after a serious consideration declare, whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book, supported by such a testimony, would be more extraordinary and miraculous than all the miracles it relates; which is, however, necessary to make it be received, according to the measures of probability
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
We can sacrifice ourselves in order to save lives, to spread messages of freedom, hope, and dignity. That is our Buddha Nature, our Christ Nature – people who have embodied the principles of love and compassion and have taken extraordinary measures to change the world for the better. We call them heroes and heroines - for example, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Malala Yousafzai, along with the nameless aid workers, neonatal surgeons, and ordinary parents who make extraordinary choices in life-threatening circumstances. And we admire them. Those are the people who we want to occupy our Jewel Tree, letting their nectar rain down upon us in a shower of blessing and inspiration. They are the people who have discovered interdependence, wisdom, and compassion, have seen through the illusion of separation and come out the other side with the hero‘s elixir for the welfare of others. If we don‘t believe we can do it, if we don‘t have the confidence, that‘s the last hurdle. We believe there is something special about the hero and something deficient about us, but the only difference is that the Bodhisattva has training, has walked the Lam Rim, has reached the various milestones that each contemplation is designed to evoke, and collectively those experiences have brought confidence. Our natures are the same. It‘s in your DNA to become a hero. As heretical as it may sound to some, there is no inherent specialness to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is not inherently different from you. If you had his modeling, training, support, and devotional refuge, you too could be a paragon of hope and goodwill. Now, hopefully you will recognize cow critical it is for you to embrace your training (the Bodhisattva Path), so that we can shape-shift civilization through the neural circuitry of living beings. (pp. 139 - 140)
Miles Neale
Yesterday while I was on the side of the mat next to some wrestlers who were warming up for their next match, I found myself standing side by side next to an extraordinary wrestler. He was warming up and he had that look of desperation on his face that wrestlers get when their match is about to start and their coach is across the gym coaching on another mat in a match that is already in progress. “Hey do you have a coach.” I asked him. “He's not here right now.” He quietly answered me ready to take on the task of wrestling his opponent alone. “Would you mind if I coached you?” His face tilted up at me with a slight smile and said. “That would be great.” Through the sounds of whistles and yelling fans I heard him ask me what my name was. “My name is John.” I replied. “Hi John, I am Nishan” he said while extending his hand for a handshake. He paused for a second and then he said to me: “John I am going to lose this match”. He said that as if he was preparing me so I wouldn’t get hurt when my coaching skills didn’t work magic with him today. I just said, “Nishan - No score of a match will ever make you a winner. You are already a winner by stepping onto that mat.” With that he just smiled and slowly ran on to the mat, ready for battle, but half knowing what the probable outcome would be. When you first see Nishan you will notice that his legs are frail - very frail. So frail that they have to be supported by custom made, form fitted braces to help support and straighten his limbs. Braces that I recognize all to well. Some would say Nishan has a handicap. I say that he has a gift. To me the word handicap is a word that describes what one “can’t do”. That doesn’t describe Nishan. Nishan is doing. The word “gift” is a word that describes something of value that you give to others. And without knowing it, Nishan is giving us all a gift. I believe Nishan’s gift is inspiration. The ability to look the odds in the eye and say “You don’t pertain to me.” The ability to keep moving forward. Perseverance. A “Whatever it takes” attitude. As he predicted, the outcome of his match wasn’t great. That is, if the only thing you judge a wrestling match by is the actual score. Nishan tried as hard as he could, but he couldn’t overcome the twenty-six pound weight difference that he was giving up to his opponent on this day in order to compete. You see, Nishan weighs only 80 pounds and the lowest weight class in this tournament was 106. Nishan knew he was spotting his opponent 26 pounds going into every match on this day. He wrestled anyway. I never did get the chance to ask him why he wrestles, but if I had to guess I would say, after watching him all day long, that Nishan wrestles for the same reasons that we all wrestle for. We wrestle to feel alive, to push ourselves to our mental, physical and emotional limits - levels we never knew we could reach. We wrestle to learn to use 100% of what we have today in hopes that our maximum today will be our minimum tomorrow. We wrestle to measure where we started from, to know where we are now, and to plan on getting where we want to be in the future. We wrestle to look the seemingly insurmountable opponent right in the eye and say, “Bring it on. - I can take whatever you can dish out.” Sometimes life is your opponent and just showing up is a victory. You don't need to score more points than your opponent in order to accomplish that. No Nishan didn’t score more points than any of his opponents on this day, that would have been nice, but I don’t believe that was the most important thing to Nishan. Without knowing for sure - the most important thing to him on this day was to walk with pride like a wrestler up to a thirty two foot circle, have all eyes from the crowd on him, to watch him compete one on one against his opponent - giving it all that he had. That is what competition is all about. Most of the times in wrestlin
JohnA Passaro
It has been noted in various quarters that the half-illiterate Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari never recorded the exact plans or dimensions for how to make one of his famous instruments. This might have been a commercial decision (during the earliest years of the 1700s, Stradivari’s violins were in high demand and open to being copied by other luthiers). But it might also have been because, well, Stradivari didn’t know exactly how to record its dimensions, its weight, and its balance. I mean, he knew how to create a violin with his hands and his fingers but maybe not in figures he kept in his head. Today, those violins, named after the Latinized form of his name, Stradivarius, are considered priceless. It is believed there are only around five hundred of them still in existence, some of which have been submitted to the most intense scientific examination in an attempt to reproduce their extraordinary sound quality. But no one has been able to replicate Stradivari’s craftsmanship. They’ve worked out that he used spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. They’ve figured out that he also treated the wood with several types of minerals, including potassium borate, sodium and potassium silicate, as well as a handmade varnish that appears to have been composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. But they still can’t replicate a Stradivarius. The genius craftsman never once recorded his technique for posterity. Instead, he passed on his knowledge to a number of his apprentices through what the philosopher Michael Polyani called “elbow learning.” This is the process where a protégé is trained in a new art or skill by sitting at the elbow of a master and by learning the craft through doing it, copying it, not simply by reading about it. The apprentices of the great Stradivari didn’t learn their craft from books or manuals but by sitting at his elbow and feeling the wood as he felt it to assess its length, its balance, and its timbre right there in their fingertips. All the learning happened at his elbow, and all the knowledge was contained in his fingers. In his book Personal Knowledge, Polyani wrote, “Practical wisdom is more truly embodied in action than expressed in rules of action.”1 By that he meant that we learn as Stradivari’s protégés did, by feeling the weight of a piece of wood, not by reading the prescribed measurements in a manual. Polyani continues, To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another.
Lance Ford (UnLeader: Reimagining Leadership…and Why We Must)
In the early 1930s a Swiss astronomer called Fritz Zwicky was studying galaxy clusters through the telescopes of the California Institute of Technology when he noticed an anomaly of extraordinary implications. Clusters are groups of gravitationally bound galaxies, and Zwicky’s work involved measuring the speeds of revolution of individual galaxies in their orbits around the core of the cluster, in order to weigh the cluster as a whole. What Zwicky observed was that the galaxies were revolving much faster than expected, especially towards the outer reaches of the cluster. At such speeds, individual galaxies should have broken their gravitational hold on one another, dispersing the cluster. There was, Zwicky determined, only one possible explanation. There had to be another source of gravity, powerful enough to hold the cluster together given the speeds of revolution of the observable bodies. But what could supply such huge gravitational field strength, sufficient to tether whole galaxies – and why could he not see this ‘missing mass’? Zwicky found no answers to his questions, but in asking them he began a hunt that continues today. His ‘missing mass’ is now known as ‘dark matter’ – and proving its existence and determining its qualities is one of the grail-quests of modern physics
Robert McFarlane
She finds herself, by some miraculous feat, no longer standing in the old nursery but returned to the clearing in the woods. It is the 'green cathedral', the place she first kissed Jack all those weeks ago. The place where they laid out the stunned sparrowhawk, then watched it spring miraculously back to life. All around, the smooth, grey trunks of ancient beech trees rise up from the walls of the room to tower over her, spreading their branches across the ceiling in a fan of tangled branches and leaves, paint and gold leaf cleverly combined to create the shimmering effect of a leafy canopy at its most dense and opulent. And yet it is not the clearing, not in any real or grounded sense, because instead of leaves, the trees taper up to a canopy of extraordinary feathers shimmering and spreading out like a peacock's tail across the ceiling, a hundred green, gold and sapphire eyes gazing down upon her. Jack's startling embellishments twist an otherwise literal interpretation of their woodland glade into a fantastical, dreamlike version of itself. Their green cathedral, more spectacular and beautiful than she could have ever imagined. She moves closer to one of the trees and stretches out a hand, feeling instead of rough bark the smooth, cool surface of a wall. She can't help but smile. The trompe-l'oeil effect is dazzling and disorienting in equal measure. Even the window shutters and cornicing have been painted to maintain the illusion of the trees, while high above her head the glass dome set into the roof spills light as if it were the sun itself, pouring through the canopy of eyes. The only other light falls from the glass windowpanes above the window seat, still flanked by the old green velvet curtains, which somehow appear to blend seamlessly with the painted scene. The whole effect is eerie and unsettling. Lillian feels unbalanced, no longer sure what is real and what is not. It is like that book she read to Albie once- the one where the boy walks through the wardrobe into another world. That's what it feels like, she realizes: as if she has stepped into another realm, a place both fantastical and otherworldly. It's not just the peacock-feather eyes that are staring at her. Her gaze finds other details: a shy muntjac deer peering out from the undergrowth, a squirrel, sitting high up in a tree holding a green nut between its paws, small birds flitting here and there. The tiniest details have been captured by Jack's brush: a silver spider's web, a creeping ladybird, a puffy white toadstool. The only thing missing is the sound of the leaf canopy rustling and the soft scuttle of insects moving across the forest floor.
Hannah Richell (The Peacock Summer)
First, bring your attention to the moment, and breathe deeply. Then, get your mind to your mouth, and drink as slowly and purposefully as you can. (When you drink, you rebuild the energies surrounding your Throat Chakra. Any time you feel lost in thoughts or unable to express your desires, swallow and relax your neck.)"Let yourself answer for a moment. Yeah, it's a big question— even a daunting one — but it's one you can use to step more deeply into the intended purpose of your life. The first step in understanding what you need to feel more fully alive is to recognize and express your personal truth. •       Simply sit down with it as the answer comes to you. Bring it in. Inhabit the body, and feel it. When you understand the deepest personal truths, they will open up other truths from there. Of examples, if your greatest personal reality is that energy is real, then other truths emerge: If energy is real, magic is real; if magic is real, anything is possible; if anything is possible, you are boundless; if you are boundless, your wildest dreams will come true. •       Unlimited vision, lovely girl. Know that you are treasured beyond measure and trust when you conduct yourself in service of the highest reality of All Beings. Let the true reality of harmony envelope you. •       Ask your elders and spirit guides to be with you while you absorb what you've seen as you feel connected to reality at every point. Welcome its presence as it surrounds you. They're here to help you love each other and honor yourself deeper than ever. When in this blanket of support and wisdom you feel fully enveloped, close your induction with the universal blessing: Amen.
Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
set aside more preserves, extinguished fewer species, saved the ozone layer, and peaked in their consumption of oil, farmland, timber, paper, cars, coal, and perhaps even carbon. For all their differences, the world’s nations came to a historic agreement on climate change, as they did in previous years on nuclear testing, proliferation, security, and disarmament. Nuclear weapons, since the extraordinary circumstances of the closing days of World War II, have not been used in the seventy-two years they have existed. Nuclear terrorism, in defiance of forty years of expert predictions, has never happened. The world’s nuclear stockpiles have been reduced by 85 percent, with more reductions to come, and testing has ceased (except by the tiny rogue regime in Pyongyang) and proliferation has frozen. The world’s two most pressing problems, then, though not yet solved, are solvable: practicable long-term agendas have been laid out for eliminating nuclear weapons and for mitigating climate change. For all the bleeding headlines, for all the crises, collapses, scandals, plagues, epidemics, and existential threats, these are accomplishments to savor. The Enlightenment is working: for two and a half centuries, people have used knowledge to enhance human flourishing. Scientists have exposed the workings of matter, life, and mind. Inventors have harnessed the laws of nature to defy entropy, and entrepreneurs have made their innovations affordable. Lawmakers have made people better off by discouraging acts that are individually beneficial but collectively harmful. Diplomats have done the same with nations. Scholars have perpetuated the treasury of knowledge and augmented the power of reason. Artists have expanded the circle of sympathy. Activists have pressured the powerful to overturn repressive measures, and their fellow citizens to change repressive norms. All these efforts have been channeled into institutions that have allowed us to circumvent the flaws of human nature and empower our better angels. At the same time . . . Seven hundred million people in the world today live in extreme poverty. In the regions where they are concentrated, life expectancy is less than 60, and almost a quarter of the people are undernourished.
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
TAKING A STANCE Normally the mind isn’t willing to stop and look, to stop and know itself, which is why we have to keep training it continually so that it will settle down from its restlessness and grow still. Let your desires and thought processes settle down. Let the mind take its stance in a state of normalcy, not liking or disliking anything. To reach a basic level of emptiness and freedom, you first have to take a stance. If you don’t have a stance against which to measure things, progress will be very difficult. If your practice is hit or miss—a bit of this, a little of that—you won’t get any results. So the mind first has to take a stance. When you take a stance that the mind can maintain in a state of normalcy, don’t go slipping off into the future. Have the mind know itself in the stance of the present: “Right now it’s in a state of normalcy. No likes or dislikes have arisen yet. It hasn’t created any issues. It’s not being disturbed by a desire for this or that.” Then look into the basic level of the mind to see if it’s as normal and empty. If you’re really looking inside, really aware inside, then that which is looking and knowing is mindfulness and discernment in and of itself. You don’t need to search for anything anywhere else to come and do your looking for you. As soon as you stop to see whether the mind is in a state of normalcy, then if it’s normal, you’ll know immediately that it’s normal. If it’s not, you’ll know immediately that it’s not. Take care to keep this awareness going. If you can keep knowing like this continuously, the mind will be able to keep its stance continuously as well. As soon as the thought occurs to you to check things out, you’ll immediately stop and look, without any need to go searching for knowledge anywhere else. You look, you know, right there at the mind, and you can tell whether or not it’s empty and still. Once you see that it is, then you investigate to see how it’s empty, how it’s still. It’s not the case that once it’s empty and still, that’s the end of the matter. That’s not the case at all. You have to keep watch; you have to investigate at all times. Only then will you see the changing—the arising and disbanding—occurring in that emptiness, that stillness, that state of normalcy.
Upasika Nanayon (Pure and Simple: The Extraordinary Teachings of a Thai Buddhist Laywoman)
However, it is important not to lose sight of exactly how the neoliberal system works. As David Harvey has demonstrated, by drawing on Karl Polanyi’s masterful work, the free market has never been incompatible with state intervention, and the management of crises is part of the neoliberal project. We therefore need to inquire into how this crisis was presented by recalling, if we take the American example, that President George W. Bush kept forcefully repeating that the foundations of the economy were solid. Then suddenly, in the fateful month of September, as if faced with the sudden surge of a more or less unexpected “economic hurricane,” he asked for $700 billion to avoid a severe economic meltdown. It was necessary to save the banks and businesses that were too big to fail. This complex crisis called for a reaction that was as fast as it was extreme, starting with $350 billion distributed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs. We should note in passing that this sort of crisis discourse recalls all of the exceptional measures put in place or intensified after September 11, 2001: the usa patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, illegal wiretappings, extraordinary rendition, the network of secret prisons, the redefinition of torture by the Office of Legal Council, and so on. It is not by chance that this crisis was presented as a complex and uncontrollable natural phenomenon, whose severity was largely unforeseen, for it is similar to the historical logic outlined above. By naturalizing the economy and transforming it into an autonomous authority independent of the decisions made by specific agents, this historical order promotes passivity (we can only bow before forces stronger than us), the removal of responsibility (no one can be held accountable for natural phenomena), and historical nearsightedness (the situation is so critical that we must respond quickly, without wasting time by debating over distant causes: time is short!). If we were to step back and assess the overall situation, we would see numerous specters rising up in the cemetery that is neoliberalism, and we would need to begin questioning—following Polanyi—whether the very project of laissez-faire economics has ever been anything other than socialism for the rich or, more precisely, topdown class warfare enforced by state intervention
Gabriel Rockhill (Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy)
My father had a sister, Mady, who had married badly and ‘ruined her life.’ Her story was a classic. She had fallen in love before the war with an American adventurer, married him against her family’s wishes, and been disinherited by my grandfather. Mady followed her husband romantically across the sea. In America he promptly abandoned her. By the time my parents arrived in America Mady was already a broken woman, sick and prematurely old, living a life two steps removed from destitution. My father, of course, immediately put her on an allowance and made her welcome in his home. But the iron laws of Victorian transgression had been set in motion and it was really all over for Mady. You know what it meant for a woman to have been so disgraced and disinherited in those years? She had the mark of Cain on her. She would live, barely tolerated, on the edge of respectable society for the rest of her life. A year after we arrived in America, I was eleven years old, a cousin of mine was married out of our house. We lived then in a lovely brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side. The entire house had been cleaned and decorated for the wedding. Everything sparkled and shone, from the basement kitchen to the third-floor bedrooms. In a small room on the second floor the women gathered around the bride, preening, fixing their dresses, distributing bouquets of flowers. I was allowed to be there because I was only a child. There was a bunch of long-stemmed roses lying on the bed, blood-red and beautiful, each rose perfection. Mady walked over to them. I remember the other women were wearing magnificent dresses, embroidered and bejeweled. Mady was wearing only a simple white satin blouse and a long black skirt with no ornamentation whatever. She picked up one of the roses, sniffed deeply at it, held it against her face. Then she walked over to a mirror and held the rose against her white blouse. Immediately, the entire look of her plain costume was altered; the rose transferred its color to Mady’s face, brightening her eyes. Suddenly, she looked lovely, and young again. She found a long needle-like pin and began to pin the rose to her blouse. My mother noticed what Mady was doing and walked over to her. Imperiously, she took the rose out of Mady’s hand and said, ‘No, Mady, those flowers are for the bride.’ Mady hastily said, ‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry, how stupid of me not to have realized that,’ and her face instantly assumed its usual mask of patient obligation. “I experienced in that moment an intensity of pain against which I have measured every subsequent pain of life. My heart ached so for Mady I thought I would perish on the spot. Loneliness broke, wave after wave, over my young head and one word burned in my brain. Over and over again, through my tears, I murmured, ‘Unjust! Unjust!’ I knew that if Mady had been one of the ‘ladies’ of the house my mother would never have taken the rose out of her hand in that manner. The memory of what had happened in the bedroom pierced me repeatedly throughout that whole long day, making me feel ill and wounded each time it returned. Mady’s loneliness became mine. I felt connected, as though by an invisible thread, to her alone of all the people in the house. But the odd thing was I never actually went near her all that day. I wanted to comfort her, let her know that I at least loved her and felt for her. But I couldn’t. In fact, I avoided her. In spite of everything, I felt her to be a pariah, and that my attachment to her made me a pariah, also. It was as though we were floating, two pariahs, through the house, among all those relations, related to no one, not even to each other. It was an extraordinary experience, one I can still taste to this day. I was never again able to address myself directly to Mady’s loneliness until I joined the Communist Party. When I joined the Party the stifled memory of that strange wedding day came back to me. . .
Vivian Gornick (The Romance of American Communism)
This means that the high performance habits you’ll learn in this book are deliberate habits. These must be consciously chosen, willed into existence, and continually revisited to strengthen your character and increase your odds of success. Deliberate habits usually won’t come easily. You have to practice them with real mental focus, especially in changing environments. Every time you feel stuck, every time you start a new project, every time you measure your progress, every time you try to lead others, you must deliberately think about the high performance habits. You’ll have to use them as a checklist, just as a pilot uses a preflight checklist before every takeoff. I believe this is a good thing, too. I don’t want my clients getting ahead unconsciously, reactively, or compulsively. I want them to know what they do to win, and do it with full intention and purpose. That way, they are captains of their own fate, not slaves to their impulses. I want you in charge, conscious, and clear about what you’re doing, so you can see your performance get better and better—and so you can help others get better, too. It’s going to take a lot of work to deploy the high performance habits you’re about to learn, but don’t shy from the effort. When you knock on the door of opportunity, do not be surprised that it is Work who answers.
Brendon Burchard (High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way)
For formal recognition programs, they recommend using objective measurements, such as sales volume,
Chip Heath (The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact)
God does not honor these men no matter how earnestly they keep their laws. His laws are the laws of this universe, intended for all to follow, for all to act on. He did not create these laws as a measuring rod, but as an example one must follow to find the extraordinary life. We all inhabit his world and as much as they hate to hear it, my God is the same God they claim to worship.
Michael V. Ivanov (The Mount of Olives: 11 Declarations To An Extraordinary Life)
But Kelly and Hagin got what they wanted: Johnny gone and the opportunity to plug their own spy—Jordan Karem—into that job. By any historical measure, he was a strange fit for the role, which usually goes to a single young man in his twenties. Karem was in his mid-thirties and recently married. But he fit the one description that Kelly and Hagin cared about: he was loyal to them over the President.
Cliff Sims (Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House)
The ancients were obsessed with measures, and the number eleven is central in their metrological scheme. Shown opposite is the extraordinary fact that the size of the Moon relates to the size of the Earth as does three to eleven. What this means is that if we draw down the Moon to the Earth, as shown, then a heavenly circle through the moon will have a circumference equal to the perimeter of a square around the Earth. This is called 'squaring the circle'. Quite how the old druids worked this out we may never know, but they clearly did, for the Moon and the Earth are best measured in miles, as shown. A double rainbow also magically squares the circle.
John Martineau (Quadrivium: The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music, & Cosmology)
The lion's share of individuals who are thinking about a story covering or paint for their carport, for the most part, envision an exhausting ship dark shading. On the off chance that you need to have a carport that looks better since you need to offer it quicker or you truly get a kick out of the chance to claim decent things, at that point this dim shading can't do anything for you. The uncovered cement is as of now dim so why considerably try touching it up? All things considered, if this is your state of mind, at that point you are in awesome good fortune. Presently, you can have an epoxy floor paint in a greater number of hues than you at any point thought conceivable. In actuality, you can have any shading you wish in the event that you are sufficiently quiet to look at all potential outcomes. Presently, what are the things you ought to recollect when you pick? There are three boss approaches to coordinate hues that individuals need to make as they paint their floor. To start with, they will get a shading that would match be able to or compliment the house paint. This can truly enhance the controlling claim each time the carport entryway is opened. Many individuals will go for a shading that matches their vehicle. This is extremely unsurprising for individuals who possess a show auto or only an auto that they are exceptionally pleased with. A complimentary shading can really make your "road pole" seem like it just fell off the showroom floor. At last, in settling on the shade of your epoxy carport floor covering, many individuals pick a shading that would cover be able to up stains and earth. Cases of these hues are earth tones or shading that they might be inclined toward. Regardless, it's your own inclination for your carport since you claim it. On the off chance that you have any arrangements to chip away at your autos or whatever else inside the carport at that point consider my recommendation. Lift a shading that will appear any nuts or fasteners you drop regardless of how little. More often than not, this is a light shading. As you end up plainly more seasoned and your visual perception has debased, you will be grateful to me for this wisdom. Any shade of your decision would make be able to this venture an extraordinary movement this mid-year. When you prepare to do this venture make sure you invest the required measure of the energy of the prep work for the floor. Like all paint extends, the fallen angel is in the arrangement with regards to landing a position that looks extraordinary as well as keeps going quite a while. Invest the energy in the prep and you will be content with the outcomes.
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If you tell me the size of a mammal, I can use the scaling laws to tell you almost everything about the average values of its measurable characteristics: how much food it needs to eat each day, what its heart rate is, how long it will take to mature, the length and radius of its aorta, its life span, how many offspring it will have, and so on. Given the extraordinary complexity and diversity of life, this is pretty amazing.
Geoffrey West (Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies)
One measure of how deeply these myths express elemental human concerns is the extent to which they are both timeless and universal. Mythologists and anthropologists see the same themes, situations, and stories played out again and again, across the ages and around the globe. Perhaps
Margaret Mark (The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes)
The course which the rector had pursued was speedily the subject of universal conversation in Stilborough. Many were the speculations as to the cause of Mr. Gray’s extraordinary conduct. Some asserted it was because Mr. Newland believed everybody went to heaven, and that he had told the clergyman to his teeth that there was no bottomless pit burning forever with fire and brimstone. Others asserted it was because he had a different Bible. Some said it was because he didn’t believe in Jesus Christ, and others that it was because he made too much of Him and wanted to put Him in the first place in the Trinity. The wildest possible guesses were made by the simple people, and the measure in which they loved Mr. Newland determined the amount of pity which they felt for so good a man so deeply plunged into false doctrine, heresy, and schism.
James Spilling (Our Society: A New Church without an Old Ecclesiasticism)
God the Creator is present in each thing and sustains it in existence. He has foreseen each, and knows it through and through with all its changes and destinies. By the might of his omnipotence he can do with each, at every moment, whatever he pleases. He can leave it to its own laws and the normal flow of events. He can also intervene with extraordinary measures. God dwells in this manner in every human soul, also. He knows each one from all eternity, with all the mysteries of her being and every wave that breaks over her life. She is in his power. It is up to him whether he leaves her to herself and the course of worldly events or whether, with his strong hand, he will interfere in her destiny. Such a marvel of his power is every rebirth of a soul through sanctifying grace.
Edith Stein (The Science of the Cross (The Collected Works of Edith Stein Vol. 6))
In 2015, CEO Bob Chapman and co-author Raj Sisodia published Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family, a book whose title concisely declares the company's mission to “measure success by the way we touch the lives of people.” Caring for employees – “team members” in Barry-Wehmiller-speak – using tangible measures of employee well-being has proved to be a sure recipe for establishing a psychologically safe workplace where learning and growth thrive.
Amy C. Edmondson (The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth)
Silicon Valley’s response to the pandemic—swift, reasonable, measured—is a precise example of this idea, evidencing that all along, tech companies could have taken steps to mitigate harms … but chose not to, instead focusing their attention on the things that governments and other powerful entities wanted them to censor. The fact is that when the potential harm to Americans is big enough, these companies will act. When the harm to foreigners is big enough, they will act only in the face of extraordinary pressure. And sometimes not even then. *
Jillian York (Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism)
This “moment-spotting” habit can be unnatural. In organizations, for instance, we are consumed with goals. Time is meaningful only insofar as it clarifies or measures our goals. The goal is the thing.
Chip Heath (The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact)
Nothing is measured; nothing is perfect
Ingrid Fetell Lee (Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness)
Even among the uninitiated - men and women who were unaware of how a day's labor had been defined through years of tense negotiation - extracting such large drafts of labor required extraordinarily coercive measures. Violent confrontations between masters and slaves seemed to grow as the lower Mississippi Valley became a slave society. Wielding the lash with greater frequency if not greater force, planters struggled to bend slaves to the new order. Slaves resisted with equal ferocity. Unrest increased and rumors of rebellion boiled to the surface. During the 1790s and into the new century, the lower Mississippi Valley was alive with news of revolt, as one intrigue after another came to light. In 1791, 1795, and again in 1804 and 1805, planters uncovered major conspiracies. They responded with the lash, mutilating many rebels and suspected rebels, deporting others, and executing still others, often after grotesque torture. Yet behind this bloody facade, master and slave began to renegotiate the terms under which slaves lived and worked. Many of these involved the pace of labor; others originated in the organization of labor and the authority of the masters' subalterns, as overseers became a fixture on the largest estates. From the planters' perspective, the large units on which sugar and cotton were grown made movement from plantation to plantation - a prominent feature of slave life in eighteenth-century Louisiana - unnecessary and undesirable. But perhaps the most intense conflicts arose over the slaves' economy: their free Sundays and half-Saturdays, their gardens and provision grounds, and their right to sell their labor and market its product. Slaves in the lower Mississippi Valley had a long tradition of independent productive activities. Planters, who once saw advantages in allowing slaves to subsist themselves, pressed for an allowance society in which rations replaced gardens and the right to market. ... Under the new regime, plantation slaves frequently worked from dawn to noon and then, after a two hour break, until 'the approach of night.' As the planters' demands intensified, the time left for slaves to work their gardens grew shorter. Sustaining them took an extraordinary commitment. The frantic pace at which slaves worked in their own plots was captured by an emigre from Saint Domingue in 1799, who observed that a slave returning form the field 'does not lose his time. He goes to work at a bit of the land which he has planted with provisions for his own use, while his companion, if he has one, busies herself in preparing some for him, herself, and their children.' 'Many of the owners take off a part of that ration,' noted another visitor. Slaves 'must obtain the rest of their food, as well as their clothing, from the results of their Sunday labors.' Planters who supplied their slaves with clothes forced them to work on Sunday 'until they have been reimbursed for their advances,' so that the cash that previously went into the slaves' pockets went to the masters'.
Ira Berlin (Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves)
Senior Wal-Mart officials concentrated on setting goals, measuring progress, and maintaining communication lines with employees at the front lines and with official agencies when they could. In other words, to handle this complex situation, they did not issue instructions. Conditions were too unpredictable and constantly changing. They worked on making sure people talked. Wal-Mart’s emergency operations team even included a member of the Red Cross. (The federal government declined Wal-Mart’s invitation to participate.) The team also opened a twenty-four-hour call center for employees, which started with eight operators but rapidly expanded to eighty to cope with the load. Along the way, the team discovered that, given common goals to do what they could to help and to coordinate with one another, Wal-Mart’s employees were able to fashion some extraordinary solutions. They set up three temporary mobile pharmacies in the city and adopted a plan to provide medications for free at all of their stores for evacuees with emergency needs—even without a prescription. They set up free check cashing for payroll and other checks in disaster-area stores. They opened temporary clinics to provide emergency personnel with inoculations against flood-borne illnesses. And most prominently, within just two days of Katrina’s landfall, the company’s logistics teams managed to contrive ways to get tractor trailers with food, water, and emergency equipment past roadblocks and into the dying city. They were able to supply water and food to refugees and even to the National Guard a day before the government appeared on the scene. By the end Wal-Mart had sent in a total of 2,498 trailer loads of emergency supplies and donated $3.5 million in merchandise to area shelters and command centers. “If the American government had responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis,” Jefferson Parish’s top official, Aaron Broussard, said in a network television interview at the time.
Atul Gawande (The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right)
These extraordinary measures were not about me being treated the same as other people; they were about me being treated worse.
Paris Hilton (Paris: The Memoir)
And Sam Schechner and Emily Glazer were studying how activists had spread baseless doubts about the COVID vaccine so effectively that Facebook had to reimpose its Break the Glass measures in May 2021—the third time it had done so in the United States in six months. I chipped in on all these stories, but I spent the bulk of my time focusing on two: revealing the existence of XCheck, Facebook’s program to give preferential treatment to VIP users, and then examining its response to January 6. In Puerto Rico, Haugen and I had discussed the merits of publishing the stories slowly, releasing one damning article each week over the span of months, giving the complex issues in each story the attention they deserved. Senior editors at the Journal, unsurprisingly, had other ideas. They wanted stories published daily, dominating a solid week of tech news, a way to clearly demonstrate that the project was something extraordinary.
Jeff Horwitz (Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets)
We will not do this again," he said. They took measure of each other's damp faces and turbulent eyes, and without any more words being exchanged they both knew that they would absolutely do this again.
Evie Dunmore (The Gentleman's Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women, #4))
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No,” she whispered. “But it makes it easy to think anything good about myself is simply neutralizing all the darkness in my head. I’ve done nothing extraordinary—all of my energy goes toward trying to atone for the negative energy I put into the world every time the voice awakens.” He huffed a laugh. “That’s not how things work, angel. Life is not measured in good or bad thoughts—it’s how you treat the world around you despite them. All the people who only do good deeds because of what that might gain them in the afterlife are no better than those who indulge in a little sin every once in a while.
Kaylie Smith (Phantasma (Wicked Games, #1))