Glasses Attitude Quotes

I consider myself a stained-glass window. And this is how I live my life. Closing no doors and covering no windows; I am the multi-colored glass with light filtering through me, in many different shades. Allowing light to shed and fall into many many hues. My job is not to direct anything, but only to filter into many colors. My answer is destiny and my guide is joy. And there you have me.

You better have a massive dick to back up that attitude or else people will be mighty disappointed.”  “Care to bring out a ruler and test your theory?”  “I left my magnifying glass at home, so maybe tomorrow.

There is nothing that can happen TO you that can’t also happen FOR you…if you’ll let it.

McCleary was an unpolished, semi attractive man in his late thirties or early forties. His hair was grey. His suit was cheap. His cologne was cheaper and his attitude was a hundred percent asshole. He have me an instant boner.

Living in this skin is hard and painful, most of the times, because I never volunteered to take this on. The daily sacrifice of heart over mind, the forever ongoing task of explaining this and that, and why I don’t want to look like this and be like that but still here I am and if this is the body I’ve been given I’m sure as hell gonna make it work.

When my now-adult daughter was a child, another child once hit her on the head with a metal toy truck. I watched that same child, one year later, viciously push his younger sister backwards over a fragile glass-surfaced coffee table. His mother picked him up, immediately afterward (but not her frightened daughter), and told him in hushed tones not to do such things, while she patted him comfortingly in a manner clearly indicative of approval. She was out to produce a little God-Emperor of the Universe. That’s the unstated goal of many a mother, including many who consider themselves advocates for full gender equality. Such women will object vociferously to any command uttered by an adult male, but will trot off in seconds to make their progeny a peanut-butter sandwich if he demands it while immersed self-importantly in a video game. The future mates of such boys have every reason to hate their mothers-in-law. Respect for women? That’s for other boys, other men—not for their dear sons.

Try to roll with the punches. Keep your chin up. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Vote Democrat in every election. Ride your bike in the park. Dream about my perfect, golden body. Take your vitamins. Drink eight glasses of water a day. Pull for the Mets. Watch a lot of movies. Don’t work too hard at your job. Take a trip to Paris with me. Come to the hospital when Rachel has her baby and hold my grandchild in your arms. Brush your teeth after every meal. Don’t cross the street on a red light. Defend the little guy. Stick up for yourself. Remember how beautiful you are. Remember how much I love you. Drink one Scotch on the rocks every day. Breathe deeply. Keep your eyes open. Stay away from fatty foods. Sleep the sleep of the just. Remember how much I love you.

Nothing is harder yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born. Spoken by Albertus Secundus in "Das Glasperlenspiel

The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity.

A pessimist says the glass is half empty, an optimist says the glass is half full, and an engineer says the glass is too big.

I believe that if one person is watching a huge calamity, let’s say a conflagration, a fire, there are always three principle options. 1. Run away, as far away and as fast as you can and let those who cannot run burn. 2. Write a very angry letter to the editor of your paper demanding that the responsible people be removed from office with disgrace. Or, for that matter, launch a demonstration. 3. Bring a bucket of water and throw it on the fire, and if you don’t have a bucket, bring a glass, and if you don’t have a glass, use a teaspoon, everyone has a teaspoon. And yes, I know a teaspoon is little and the fire is huge but there are millions of us and each one of us has a teaspoon. Now I would like to establish the Order of the Teaspoon. People who share my attitude, not the run away attitude, or the letter attitude, but the teaspoon attitude – I would like them to walk around wearing a little teaspoon on the lapel of their jackets, so that we know that we are in the same movement, in the same brotherhood, in the same order, The Order of the Teaspoon.

Ten Best Song to Strip 1. Any hip-swiveling R&B fuckjam. This category includes The Greatest Stripping Song of All Time: "Remix to Ignition" by R. Kelly. 2. "Purple Rain" by Prince, but you have to be really theatrical about it. Arch your back like Prince himself is daubing body glitter on your abdomen. Most effective in nearly empty, pathos-ridden juice bars. 3. "Honky Tonk Woman" by the Rolling Stones. Insta-attitude. Makes even the clumsiest troglodyte strut like Anita Pallenberg. (However, the Troggs will make you look like even more of a troglodyte, so avoid if possible.) 4. "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard. The Lep's shouted choruses and relentless programmed drums prove ideal for chicks who can really stomp. (Coincidence: I once saw a stripper who, like Rick Allen, had only one arm.) 5. "Amber" by 311. This fluid stoner anthem is a favorite of midnight tokers at strip joints everywhere. Mellow enough that even the most shitfaced dancer can make it through the song and back to her Graffix bong without breaking a sweat. Pass the Fritos Scoops, dude. 6. "Miserable" by Lit, but mostly because Pamela Anderson is in the video, and she's like Jesus for strippers (blonde, plastic, capable of parlaying a broken nail into a domestic battery charge, damaged liver). Alos, you can't go wrong stripping to a song that opens with the line "You make me come." 7. "Back Door Man" by The Doors. Almost too easy. The mere implication that you like it in the ass will thrill the average strip-club patron. Just get on all fours and crawl your way toward the down payment on that condo in Cozumel. (Unless, like most strippers, you'd rather blow your nest egg on tacky pimped-out SUVs and Coach purses.) 8. Back in Black" by AC/DC. Producer Mutt Lange wants you to strip. He does. He told me. 9. "I Touch Myself" by the Devinyls. Strip to this, and that guy at the tip rail with the bitch tits and the shop teacher glasses will actually believe that he alone has inspired you to masturbate. Take his money, then go masturbate and think about someone else. 10. "Hash Pipe" by Weezer. Sure, it smells of nerd. But River Cuomo is obsessed with Asian chicks and nose candy, and that's just the spirit you want to evoke in a strip club. I recommend busting out your most crunk pole tricks during this one.

Style is all about how you carry yourself and project yourself to the world. More than what you're wearing, it's about an overall attitude and sense of ease with yourself.

There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, as least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught. There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won’t fall down or airplanes that won’t suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don’t want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits the ground. That’s all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.

Lysandra flapped onto the top of a nearby statue and clicked her beak rather saucily.

Don’t aim to break the glass ceiling; aim to shatter it.

There's something about evening service in a country church that makes a fellow feel drowsy and peaceful. Sort of end-of-a-perfect-day feeling. Old Heppenstall was up in the pulpit, and he has a kind of regular, bleating delivery that assists thought. They had left the door open, and the air was full of a mixed scent of trees and honeysuckle and mildew and villagers' Sunday clothes. As far as the eye could reach, you could see farmers propped up in restful attitudes, breathing heavily; and the children in the congregation who had fidgeted during the earlier part of the proceedings were now lying back in a surfeited sort of coma. The last rays of the setting sun shone through the stained-glass windows, birds were twittering in the trees, the women's dresses crackled gently in the stillness. Peaceful. That's what I'm driving at. I felt peaceful. Everybody felt peaceful.

What curious attitudes he goes into!' (For the messenger kept skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel, as he came along, with his great hands spread out like fans on each side.)'Not at all,' said the King. 'He's an Anglo-Saxon Messenger-and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He only does them when he's happy.

You go out into your world, and try and find the things that will be useful to you. Your weapons. Your tools. Your charms. You find a record, or a poem, or a picture of a girl that you pin to the wall and go, "Her. I'll try and be her. I'll try and be her - but here." You observe the way others walk, and talk, and you steal little bits of them - you collage yourself out of whatever you can get your hands on. You are like the robot Johnny 5 in Short Circuit, crying, "More input! More input for Johnny 5! as you rifle through books and watch films and sit in front of the television, trying to guess which of these things that you are watching - Alexis Carrington Colby walking down a marble staircase; Anne of Green Gables holding her shoddy suitcase; Cathy wailing on the moors; Courtney Love wailing in her petticoat; Dorothy Parker gunning people down; Grace Jones singing "Slave to the Rhythm" - you will need when you get out there. What will be useful. What will be, eventually, you? And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager slowly urging you toward the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone. And some versions of you will end in dismal failure - many prototypes won't even get out the front door, as you suddenly realize that no, you can't style-out an all-in-one gold bodysuit and a massive attitude problem in Wolverhampton. Others will achieve temporary success - hitting new land-speed records, and amazing all around you, and then suddenly, unexpectedly exploding, like the Bluebird on Coniston Water. But one day you'll find a version of you that will get you kissed, or befriended, or inspired, and you will make your notes accordingly, staying up all night to hone and improvise upon a tiny snatch of melody that worked. Until - slowly, slowly - you make a viable version of you, one you can hum every day. You'll find the tiny, right piece of grit you can pearl around, until nature kicks in, and your shell will just quietly fill with magic, even while you're busy doing other things. What your nature began, nature will take over, and start completing, until you stop having to think about who you'll be entirely - as you're too busy doing, now. And ten years will pass without you even noticing. And later, over a glass of wine - because you drink wine now, because you are grown - you will marvel over what you did. Marvel that, at the time, you kept so many secrets. Tried to keep the secret of yourself. Tried to metamorphose in the dark. The loud, drunken, fucking, eyeliner-smeared, laughing, cutting, panicking, unbearably present secret of yourself. When really you were about as secret as the moon. And as luminous, under all those clothes.

We tend to think of coolness as a pose that you strike with a pair of sunglasses, a nonchalant attitude, and drink in hand. But maybe we didn’t choose these social accessories at random. Maybe we’ve adopted dark glasses, relaxed body language, and alcohol as signifiers precisely because they camouflage signs of a nervous system on overdrive.

God’s grace is all around us if we choose to see it. Put on the glasses of gratitude, and you’ll be surprised how much your attitude is changed by a new perspective.

The glass ceilings are made to be flown through!

One thing many people who don’t live with daily pain don’t understand, is that your whole world and your whole attitude shifts when you are in constant pain. There are no rose colored glasses when you wake up and go to sleep in unending pain. It’s very stressful and very depressing, and it eventually affects all aspects of your life, whether it want it to or not.

A critical attitude, like activity, is one of the fundamental characteristics of our time. Both are interdependent. If the critical attitude should dwindle, there would be more peace and less intelligence, to the benefit of the essential. Neither criticism nor activity, however, can steer the course in such a direction - this means that higher forces are involved.

You better have a massive dick to back up that attitude or else people will be mighty disappointed.”  “Care to bring out a ruler and test your theory?”  “I left my magnifying glass at home, so maybe tomorrow.” I’m pretty sure the angel on my shoulder has left the building.  Something shifts between us. His eyes darken as they assess me. I’m not sure if he wants to choke me, fire me, or fuck me into submission. “Are you always this impossible?” “I don’t know. Are you always this much of an asshole?”  One second he’s scowling at me and the next his lips are slamming into mine.

Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed. It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook. It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor. The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one. As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude. There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images. Dust rose, insects fell. In the stones of the Opera House tiny particles of quartz danced briefly... Then there was silence, broken by the occasional thud and tinkle. Nanny grinned. 'Ah,' she said, 'now the opera's over.

The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. The grace of a minuet by Handel or Couperin, the sensuality sublimated into delicate gesture to be found in many Italian composers or in Mozart, the tranquil, composed readiness for death in Bach – always there may be heard in these works a defiance, a death-defying intrepidity, a gallantry, and a note of superhuman laughter, of immortal gay serenity. Let that same note also sound in our Glass Bead Games, and in our whole lives, acts, and sufferings.

You better have a massive dick to back up that attitude or else people will be mighty disappointed.”  “Care to bring out a ruler and test your theory?”  “I left my magnifying glass at home, so maybe tomorrow.” I’m pretty sure the angel on my shoulder has left the building.

This young lady loves you with an H,” the King said, introducing Alice in the hope of turning off the Messenger’s attention from himself—but it was no use—the Anglo-Saxon attitudes only got more extraordinary every moment, while the great eyes rolled wildly from side to side.

Life is so nice like a innocent baby, beautiful like a flower in the desert but people ruined their life by fake things like competition, profession etc. Each one of us is independent no one is comparable that's why some are happy with a cup of tea and others with a glass of beers.

Aloof, as if looking through thick glass into an aquarium, she watched faces, fruit in storewindows, cans of vegetables, jars of olives, redhotpokerplants in a florist's, newspapers, electric signs drifting by. When they passed cross-streets a puff of air came in her face off the river. Sudden jetbright glances of eyes under straw hats, attitudes of chins, thick lips, pouting lips, Cupid's bows, hungry shadow under cheekbones, faces of girls and young men nuzzled fluttering against her like moths as she walked with her stride even to his through the tingling yellow night.

If you keep lamenting your misfortune, you will never be happy, since you see the world through misfortune-tinted glasses. Everything and everyone looks wrong to you. Those who live under 'normal' circumstances look far more fortunate than you are, and seemingly look down on you. These people who feel they are unfortunate reject others, unless they are regarded to have a similar fate. Some of these people are able to abandon this attitude as they realize they are not the only unfortunate people in the world. However some of them gather in groups, lament even further and thus drown more deeply into misfortune.

It is hard for a writer to call an editor great, because it is natural for him to think of the editor as a writer manqué. It is like asking a thief to approve a fence, or a fighter to speak highly of a manager. “Fighters are sincere,” a fellow with the old pug’s syndrome said to me at a bar once as head wobbled and the hand that held his shot glass shook. “Managers are pimps, they sell our blood.” In the newspaper trade, confirmed reporters think confirmed editors are mediocrities who took the easy way out. These attitudes mark an excess of vanity coupled with a lack of imagination; it never occurs to a writer that anybody could have wanted to be anything else.

In any case I fully endorse the singer's attitude towards the booklet that he will write and the child he wishes to educate, for not only am I familiar with the passion for education but the desire to write a small book has for a long time also not been far from my thoughts, and now that I am free of my office this desire has assumed the proportions of a precious and alluring promise—to write a book in all good-humor and at my leisure, a pamphlet, an insignificant booklet for my friends and fellow thinkers.' 'And upon what subject, may I ask?' put in Designori with curiosity. 'Oh the subject would not matter so much. It would merely be an opportunity for me to weave my thoughts around some theme and to enjoy the good fortune of having a great deal of free time. The chief thing in my case would be the tone—a tone not of scholarship but a decorous mean between respect and intimacy, between gravity and playfulness, a friendly communication and utterance of sundry things that I believe I have experienced and learned… In the immediate future I cannot anticipate the joys and problems of writing my little book, for I have to prepare myself the luxury of blossoming into authorship, as I see it, with a comfortable but careful presentation of things, not for my solitary pleasure but always bearing in mind a few good friends and readers.

We tend to think of coolness as a pose that you strike with a pair of sunglasses, a nonchalant attitude, and drink in hand. But maybe we didn't choose these social accessories at random. Maybe we've adopted dark glasses, relaxed body language, and alcohol as signifiers precisely because they camouflage signs of a nervous system on overdrive. Sunglasses prevent others from seeing our eyes dilate with surprise or fear; we know from Kagan’s work that a relaxed torso is a hallmark of low reactivity; and alcohol removes our inhibitions and lowers our arousal levels. When you go to a football game and someone offers you a beer, says the personality psychologist Brian Little, “they’re really saying hi, have a glass of extroversion.

Life is so nice like a innocent baby, beautiful like a flower in the desert but people ruined their life by fake things like competition, profession,luxury, each one of us is independent no one is comparable, some are happy with a cup of tea and some with a glass of beers yet both are enjoying the moments.Each one of us have different dreams some wants money, some wants love.

The Work of Art. When I watch the audience at a concert or the crowd in the picture gallery I ask myself sometimes what exactly is their reaction towards the work of art. It is plain that often they feel deeply, but I do not see that their feeling has any effect, and if it has no effect its value is slender. Art to them is only a recreation or a refuge. It rests them from the work which they consider the justification of their existence or consoles them in their disappointment with reality. It is the glass of beer which the labourer drinks when he pauses in his toil or the peg of gin which the harlot takes to snatch a moment's oblivion from the pain of life. Art for art's sake means no more than gin for gin's sake. The dilettante who cherishes the sterile emotions which he receives from the contemplation of works of art has little reason to rate himself higher than the toper. His is the attitude of the pessimist. Life is a struggle or a weariness and in art he seeks repose or forgetfulness. The pessimist refuses reality, but the artist accepts it. The emotion caused by a work of art has value only if it has an effect on character and so results in action. Whoever is so affected is himself an artist. The artist's response to the work of art is direct and reasonable, for in him the emotion is translated into ideas which are pertinent to his own purposes, and to him ideas are but another form of action. But I do not mean that it is only painters, poets and musicians who can respond profitably to the work of art; the value of art would be much diminished; among artists I include the practitioners of the most subtle, the most neglected and the most significant of all the arts, the art of life.

Then she sent Schweik for lunch and wine. And before he returned, she put on a filmy gown which made her extremely attractive and alluring. At lunch she drank a bottle of wine and smoked several Memphis cigarettes. And while Schweik was in the kitchen feasting on army bread which he soaked in a glass of brandy she retired to rest. "Schweik," she shouted from the bedroom. "Schweik!" Schweik opened the door and beheld the young lady in an enticing attitude among the cushions. "Come here." He stepped up to the bed, and with a peculiar smile she scrutinized his sturdy build. Then, she pulled aside the thin covering which had hitherto concealed her person. And so it came about that when the lieutenant returned from the barracks, the good soldier Schweik was able to inform him: "Beg to report, sir, I carried out all the lady's wishes and treated her courteously, just as you instructed me." "Thank you, Schweik," said the lieutenant. "And did she want many things done?" "About six," replied Schweik.

Each of our actions, our words, our attitudes is cut off from the ‘world,’ from the people who have not directly perceived it, by a medium the permeability of which is of infinite variation and remains unknown to ourselves; having learned by experience that some important utterance which we eagerly hoped would be disseminated … has found itself, often simply on account of our anxiety, immediately hidden under a bushel, how immeasurably less do we suppose that some tiny word, which we ourselves have forgotten, or else a word never uttered by us but formed on its course by the imperfect refraction of a different word, can be transported without ever halting for any obstacle to infinite distances … and succeed in diverting at our expense the banquet of the gods. What we actually recall of our conduct remains unknown to our nearest neighbor; what we have forgotten that we ever said, or indeed what we never did say, flies to provoke hilarity even in another planet, and the image that other people form of our actions and behavior is no more like that which we form of them ourselves, than is like an original drawing a spoiled copy in which, at one point, for a black line, we find an empty gap, and for a blank space an unaccountable contour. It may be, all the same, that what has not been transcribed is some non-existent feature, which we behold, merely in our purblind self-esteem, and that what seems to us added is indeed a part of ourselves, but so essential a part as to have escaped our notice. So that this strange print which seems to us to have so little resemblance to ourselves bears sometimes the same stamp of truth, scarcely flattering, indeed, but profound and useful, as a photograph taken by X-rays. Not that that is any reason why we should recognize ourselves in it. A man who is in the habit of smiling in the glass at his handsome face and stalwart figure, if you show him their radiograph, will have, face to face with that rosary of bones, labeled as being the image of himself, the same suspicion of error as the visitor to an art gallery who, on coming to the portrait of a girl, reads in his catalogue: “Dromedary resting.” Later on, this discrepancy between our portraits, according as it was our own hand that drew them or another, I was to register in the case of others than myself, living placidly in the midst of a collection of photographs which they themselves had taken while round about them grinned frightful faces, invisible to them as a rule, but plunging them in stupor if an accident were to reveal them with the warning: “This is you.

If you think a lad of thirteen would have been so childish, you must be an exceptionally wise man, who, although you are devoted to a civil calling, requiring you to look bland rather than formidable, yet never, since you had a beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude, and frowned before the looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a "public.

Errors are even more likely when we see the world through trauma glasses. We may see a threat directed toward us personally when there is no threat. When we are mindful, we aim to notice these judgments as they happen. To wisely and skillfully navigate daily life, especially after trauma, it is quite useful to notice and set aside judgments that can fuel suffering. In doing so, we can take in our experiences more fully and objectively. As much as possible, we aim to view all experiences with an impartial or neutral attitude. This is one way to keep our rational mind working when our emotional mind would otherwise shut it down.

I have since thought a great deal about how people are able to maintain two attitudes in their minds at once. Take the colonel: He had come fresh from a world of machetes, road gangs, and random death and yet was able to have a civilized conversation with a hotel manager over a glass of beer and let himself be talked out of committing another murder. He had a soft side and a hard side and neither was in absolute control of his actions. It would have been dangerous to assume that he was this way or that way at any given point in the day. It was like those Nazi concentration camp guards who could come home from a day manning the gas chambers and be able to play games with their children, put a Bach record on the turntable, and make love to their wives before getting up to kill to more innocents. And this was not the exception—this was the rule. The cousin of brutality is a terrifying normalcy. So I tried never to see these men in terms of black or white. I saw them instead in degrees of soft and hard. It was the soft that I was trying to locate inside them; once I could get my fingers into it, the advantage was mine. If sitting down with abhorrent people and treating them as friends is what it took to get through to that soft place, then I was more than happy to pour the Scotch.

Little girls ought to be taught and brought up with boys, so that they might be always together. A woman ought to be trained so that she may be able, like a man, to recognise when she's wrong, or she always thinks she's in the right. Instil into a little girl from her cradle that a man is not first of all a cavalier or a possible lover, but her neighbour, her equal in everything. Train her to think logically, to generalise, and do not assure her that her brain weighs less than a man's and that therefore she can be indifferent to the sciences, to the arts, to the tasks of culture in general. The apprentice to the shoemaker or the house painter has a brain of smaller size than the grown-up man too, yet he works, suffers, takes his part in the general struggle for existence. We must give up our attitude to the physiological aspect, too -- to pregnancy and childbirth, seeing that in the first place women don't have babies every month; secondly, not all women have babies; and, thirdly, a normal countrywoman works in the fields up to the day of her confinement and it does her no harm. Then there ought to be absolute equality in everyday life. If a man gives a lady his chair or picks up the handkerchief she has dropped, let her repay him in the same way. I have no objection if a girl of good family helps me to put on my coat or hands me a glass of water --

I wanted to tell Donna that it wasn’t her business what that family bought or ate or wore and that I hated when cashiers at the supermarket said, “On your EBT?” loud enough for people in line behind me to hear. I wanted to tell her that undocumented people couldn’t receive food benefits or tax refunds, even though they paid taxes. They couldn’t receive any government benefits at all. Those were available only for people who were born here or who had obtained the documents to stay. So those children, whose parents had risked so much to give them a good life, were citizens who deserved every bit as much government help as my daughter did. I knew this because I’d sat beside them in countless government offices. I overheard their conversations with caseworkers sitting behind glass, failing to communicate through a language barrier. But these attitudes that immigrants came here to steal our resources were spreading, and the stigmas resembled those facing anyone who relied on government assistance to survive. Anyone who used food stamps didn’t work hard enough or made bad decisions to put them in that lower-class place. It was like people thought it was on purpose and that we cheated the system, stealing the money they paid toward taxes to rob the government of funds. More than ever, it seemed, taxpayers—including my client—thought their money subsidized food for lazy poor people.

Never play the princess when you can be the queen: rule the kingdom, swing a scepter, wear a crown of gold. Don’t dance in glass slippers, crystal carving up your toes -- be a barefoot Amazon instead, for those shoes will surely shatter on your feet. Never wear only pink when you can strut in crimson red, sweat in heather grey, and shimmer in sky blue, claim the golden sun upon your hair. Colors are for everyone, boys and girls, men and women -- be a verdant garden, the landscape of Versailles, not a pale primrose blindly pushed aside. Chase green dragons and one-eyed zombies, fierce and fiery toothy monsters, not merely lazy butterflies, sweet and slow on summer days. For you can tame the most brutish beasts with your wily wits and charm, and lizard scales feel just as smooth as gossamer insect wings. Tramp muddy through the house in a purple tutu and cowboy boots. Have a tea party in your overalls. Build a fort of birch branches, a zoo of Legos, a rocketship of Queen Anne chairs and coverlets, first stop on the moon. Dream of dinosaurs and baby dolls, bold brontosaurus and bookish Belle, not Barbie on the runway or Disney damsels in distress -- you are much too strong to play the simpering waif. Don a baseball cap, dance with Daddy, paint your toenails, climb a cottonwood. Learn to speak with both your mind and heart. For the ground beneath will hold you, dear -- know that you are free. And never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.

Have you ever heard a friend returning from a party describe how merry it was? Unless you're very, very old, I suspect not. The word survives in American usage almost exclusively as a vestigial reminder of certain obligatory feelings of good cheer around Christmastime. But merriment itself seems to belong to a place beyond the looking glass - something we can imagine wistfully as we step into the world of Austen or Dickens, but can't bring back into the milieu of the contemporary cocktail party. Merriment seems to evoke two conditions of community life we have largely lost: a common sense of what there is to laugh about, and a certain mental health - what Williams James would have called "healthy-mindedness" - that understands darkness, but doesn't succumb to cynicism. Merriment has fallen into near extinction by a disuse that both signals and hastens the demise of such attitudes.

I also suspect that he loves you." Trying to suppress the anguished hope that flared in her heart, Lauren turned her face to the stained-glass window near their table. "What makes you think so?" "To begin with, he isn't treating you the way he normally treats the women in his life." "I know that. He's nice to the others," Lauren said bitterly. "Exactly!" Mary agreed. "He's always treated his women with an attitude of amused indulgence...of tolerant indifference. While an affair lasts he's attentive and charming. When a woman begins to bore him he courteously but firmly dismisses her from his life. Not once to my knowledge has any woman touched an emotion in him deeper than affection or desire. I've seen them try in the most inventive ways to make him jealous,yet he has reacted with nothing stronger than amusement, or occasionally exasperation. Which brings us to you." Lauren blushed at being correctly categorized with the other woen Nick had taken to bed,but she knew it was useless to deny it. "You," Mary continued quietly, "have evoked genuine anger in him.He is furious with you and with himself. Yet he doesn't dismiss you fro his life; he doesn't even send you downstairs. Doesn't it seem odd to you that he won't let you work for Jim,and simply have you come upstairs to act as translator when Rossi's call finally comes through?" "I think he's keeping me up there for revenge," Lauren said grimly. "i think he is too.Perhaps he's trying to get back at you for what you're making him feel.Or possibly he's trying to find fault with you,so that he won't feel the way he does any longer. I don't know. Nick is a complex man. Jim, Ericka and I are all very close to him, and yet he keeps each one of us at a slight distance. There's a part of himself that he will not share with others, not even us.

Directly Mr Pye stepped ashore he heard her voice. 'The name is Dredger,' it said. Mr Pye lifted his head again, his thorn-shaped nose veering towards her and the rest of his round face following it, as a ship must follow its bowsprit. His little mouth continued to smile gently but it gave nothing away. As he remained silent, Miss Dredger raised her voice as though to establish the fact of her forthright nature from the outset. 'Mr Pye, I imagine!' Her new acquaintance removed his glasses, wiped them carefully, and re-set them on his nose. 'Who else?' he murmured. 'Who else, dear lady?' As Miss Dredger could not think 'who' else could possibly be Mr Pye, and had no wish to follow so foolish a train of conjecture, she blew some smoke out of her nostrils. Mr Pye watched the smoke-jets with interest, ad then, as though he were suggesting an alternative attitude to life, he drew a little box from his waistcoat pocket and helped himself to a fruit-drop. At this, Miss Dredger raised one of her black eyebrows, and as she did so she caught sight of young Pépé - and seeing him reminded her of Mr Pye's luggage. She turned to Mr Pye, her scrubbed hands on her tweed hips. 'What have you brought with you?' she said. Mr Pye turned his gaze upon her. 'Love,' he said. 'Just ... Love ...' and then he transferred the fruit-drop from one cheek to the other with a flick of his experience tongue. His fat little hands that held the lapels of his coat were quite green with the light reflected from the harbour water. Miss Dredger's face had turned the most dreadful colour and she had shut her eyes. The smoke drifted out of her nostrils with no enthusiasm. There were some things that simply are not mentioned - unless one wishes to be offensive and embarrassing. Religion, Art, and now this new horror - Love. What on earth did the man mean?

There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won’t fall down or airplanes that won’t suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don’t want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits the ground. That’s all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.

At this moment the Unicorn sauntered by them, with his hands in his pockets. “I had the best of it this time?” he said to the King, just glancing at him as he passed. “A little—a little,” the King replied, rather nervously. “You shouldn’t have run him through with your horn, you know.” “It didn’t hurt him,” the Unicorn said carelessly, and he was going on, when his eye happened to fall upon Alice: he turned round rather instantly, and stood for some time looking at her with an air of the deepest disgust. “What—is—this?” he said at last. “This is a child!” Haigha replied eagerly, coming in front of Alice to introduce her, and spreading out both his hands towards her in an Anglo-Saxon attitude. “We only found it to-day. It’s as large as life, and twice as natural!” “I always thought they were fabulous monsters!” said the Unicorn. “Is it alive?” “It can talk,” said Haigha, solemnly. The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said “Talk, child.” Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: “Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! I never saw one alive before!” “Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?” “Yes, if you like,” said Alice.

There's no doubt, sir, that for you the truth is too tiring. Just look at yourself! The entire length of you is cut out of tissue paper, yellow tissue paper, like a silhouette, and when you walk one ought to hear you rustle. So one shouldn't get annoyed at your attitude or opinion, for you can't help bending to whatever draft happens to be in the room.' "'I don't understand that. True, several people are standing about here in this room. They lay their arms on the backs of chairs or they lean against the piano or they raise a glass tentatively to their mouths or they walk timidly into the next room, and having knocked their right shoulders against a cupboard in the dark, they stand breathing by the open window and think: There's Venus, the evening star. Yet here I am, among them. If there is a connection, I don't understand it. But I don't even know if there is a connection. — And you see, dear Fräulein, of all these people who behave so irresolutely, so absurdly as a result of their confusion, I alone seem worthy of hearing the truth about myself. And to make this truth more palatable you put it in a mocking way so that something concrete remains, like the outer walls of a house whose interior has been gutted. The eye is hardly obstructed; by day the clouds and sky can be seen through the great window holes, and by night the stars. But the clouds are often hewn out of gray stones, and the stars form unnatural constellations. — How would it be if in return I were to tell you that one day everyone wanting to live will look like me — cut out of tissue paper, like silhouettes, as you pointed out — and when they walk they will be heard to rustle? Not that they will be any different from what they are now, but that is what they will look like. Even you, dear Fräulein —

He was a good, even a shining light as a Castalian to the extent that he had a many-sided mind, tirelessly active in scholarship as well as in the art of the Glass Bead Game, and enormously hard-working; but in character, in his attitude toward the hierarchy and the morality of the Order he was a very mediocre, not to say bad Castalian. The greatest of his vices was a persistent neglect of meditation, which he refused to take seriously. The purpose of meditation, after all, is adaptation of the individual to the hierarchy, and application in it might very well have cured him of his neurasthenia. For it infallibly helped him whenever, after a period of bad conduct, excessive excitement, or melancholia, his superiors disciplined him by prescribing strict meditation exercises under supervision. Even Knecht, kindly disposed and forgiving though he was, frequently had to resort to this measure. There was no question about it: Tegularius was a willful, moody person who refused to fit into his society. Every so often he would display the liveliness of his intellect. When highly stimulated he could be entrancing; his mordant wit sparkled and he overwhelmed everyone with the audacity and richness of his sometimes somber inspirations. But basically he was incurable, for he did not want to be cured; he cared nothing for co-ordination and a place in the scheme of things. He loved nothing but his freedom, his perpetual student status, and preferred spending his whole life as the unpredictable and obstinate loner, the gifted fool and nihilist, to following the path of subordination to the hierarchy and thus attaining peace. He cared nothing for peace, had no regard for the hierarchy, hardly minded reproof and isolation. Certainly he was a most inconvenient and indigestible component in a community whose idea was harmony and orderliness. But because of this very troublesomeness and indigestiblity he was, in the midst of such a limpid and prearranged little world, a constant source of vital unrest, a reproach, an admonition and warning, a spur to new, bold, forbidden, intrepid ideas, an unruly, stubborn sheep in the herd. And, to our mind, this was the very reason his friend cherished him.

She played pretty much every sport, her favorite being volleyball. My favorite part of her: she had that smart, I'm-too-good-for-this-I-read-Vonnegut attitude about her.

In some countries that I have visited, I saw that citizens are very rude and animalistic. They have no moral, no values, and no manners. They are always starring at others, judging with their eyes of ignorance and their very small conscience, they are impolite wherever you go, and their customer service is horrible. They never say sorry for anything and even offend you when you complain about their mistakes and lack of proper attitude. Besides, eating in some of these nations often reveals to be a huge disaster. Food is often rotten, and commonly comes with either hair, stones of even glass, as I have found many times. They waste money as I have never seen anywhere else and are simultaneously very abusive in prices. Their prices are high but their quality level is not even suitable for animals. They represent a waste on foreign investments. Their youngest generation is also a disaster; Extremely ignorant, without any respect or education, undeserving of any job or even trust. Nobody in his right mind should ever employ them, marry them or befriend them. Most are always trying to use their friendships to take advantage of others, especially if such people are outsiders. Their women are gold diggers and extremely promiscuous, especially towards men of other cultures, as if their pride was built on the number of sex partners they can have from the widest variety of nations from around the globe, especially if such men are wealthy. And yet, they can also show a high predisposition for racist behaviors and ignorance in what regards the planet they live in. They are, foremost, selfish, sadistic and parasitic. These countries and their people represent the lowest level of mankind. Whenever you witness what I just described, you are experiencing a country reaching its end. Move out of it while you can, for God will set on such people Divine justice as quickly as such citizens, by their immoral behavior, approach it. Many of such countries end with the loss of their sovereignty for political reasons, invasions by foreign armies, civil wars, violent revolutions, major economical collapses leading the citizens to poverty and starvation, and much more.

Lithuanian citizens are the rudest and most animalistic I have ever seen in Europe. They have no moral, no values, and no manners. They are always starring at others, judging with their eyes of ignorance and their very small conscience, they are very rude, they are impolite wherever you go, and their customer service is horrible. They never say sorry for anything and even offend you when you complain about their mistakes and lack of proper attitude. Besides, eating in Lithuania is a huge disaster. Food is often rotten, and commonly comes with either hair, stones of even glass, as I have found many times. These people should be ashamed to be part of Europe and be removed from the European Union. They waste money as I have never seen anywhere else and are very abusive in prices. Their prices are high but their quality level is not even suitable for animals. They represent a waste on foreign investments. Their youngest generation is also a disaster: Extremely ignorant, without any respect or education, they deserve to be unemployed and starve to death. Nobody in his right mind should ever employ a Lithuanian, marry a Lithuanian or be friend with a Lithuanian. Lithuanias are always trying to use their friendships to take advantage of others, especially if such people are outsiders. Lithuanian women are gold diggers and extremely promiscuous, especially towards men of other cultures, as if their pride was built on the number of sex partners they can have from the widest variety of nations from around the globe, especially if such men are wealthy. Nevertheless, Lithuanians are also extremely racist and ignorant about the planet they live in. They are selfish, sadistic and parasitic. Probably the same could be said about all baltic countries, namely, Latvia, but for now, it is suffice to say this statement is an undoubted fact for the country in analysis. If Latvian and Lithuanian sovereignty ever end within this generation due to major unemployment, massacres and civil wars, and the vast majority of its people perish, I would say Divine justice has been made on both nations.

So it is necessary that we have a means of monitoring the tension developed by muscular activity, and equally necessary that the threshold of response for the inhibitory function of that monitor be a variable threshold that can be readily adjusted to suit many purposes, from preventing tissue damage due to overload, to providing a smooth and delicate twist of the tuning knob of a sensitive shortwave receiver. And such a marvelously adaptable tension-feedback system we do have in our Golgi tendon organs, reflex arcs which connect the sensory events in a stretching tendon directly to the motor events which control that degree of stretch, neural feed-back loops whose degree of sensory and motor stimulation may be widely altered according to our intent, our conscious training, and our unconscious habits. This ingenious device does, however, contain a singular danger, a danger unfortunately inherent in the very features of the Golgi reflex which are the cleverest, and the most indispensable to its proper function. The degree of facilitation of the feed-back loop, which sets the threshold value for the “required tension,” is controlled by descending impulses from higher brain centers down into the loop’s internuncial network in the brain stem and the spinal cord. In this way, conscious judgements and the fruits of practice are translated into precise neuromuscular values. But judgement and practice are not the only factors that can be involved in this facilitating higher brain activity. Relative levels of overall arousal, our attitudes towards our past experience, the quality of our present mood, neurotic avoidances and compulsions of all kinds, emotional associations from all quarters—any of these things can color descending messages, and do in fact cause considerable alterations in the Golgi’s threshold values. It is possible, for instance, to be so emotionally involved in an effort—either through panic or through exhilaration—that we do not even notice that our exertions have torn us internally until the excitement has receded, leaving the painful injury behind to surprise us. Or acute anxiety may drive the value of the “required tension” so high that our knuckles whiten as we grip the steering wheel, the pencil suddenly snaps in our fingers, or the glass shatters as we set it with too much force onto the table. On the other hand, timidity or the fear of being rejected can so sap us of “required tension” that it is difficult for us to produce a loud, clear knock upon a door that we tremble to enter.

Dreams are like glass - When one shatters, many more take birth. Don’t throw these pieces, embrace and nurture them. Dreams do come true...

It cannot be disputed that glass is manufactured in Nouffi. That previous to the introduction of Islamism in Soudan arts and sciences had reached a respectable attitude, is attested by the ruins of several towns in Bornou, Mariadi, Nouffi and other countries. The ruins of Gambarou, the Bisnia of geographers, covers an immense area, the walls of which were built of burnt clay, extensive palaces, gardens, and other works of art flourished.

The less you see of your toxic friends and the more you see of your enthusiastic friends, the better you will feel about yourself, and the better you will become. We are such social creatures that we all tend to become like the people we hang out with. It is human nature. So spend your days in the company of people who build you up and who see your mountain as achievable. It is why I pick team members on big expeditions so carefully. I don’t pick people just for their skills - the world is full of skilful people. I pick those who have that rare combination of good skills and even better attitudes. Those who see the glass as half full; those who will see an obstacle as a challenge not a problem; those who help others, who encourage others and who will watch my back when it is turned. Picking friends and expedition members who are better than you is a sure way to grow yourself. It elevates us, it inspires us, and together we all get stronger. But most people do the opposite: they pick friends or team members who are just a little ‘lower’ down the pecking order than they are, because it makes them feel superior. But that is not the path of growth - it is the path of mediocrity. The true champion, the true summiteer, hangs out with those who help and inspire them to be even better - through encouragement, through their actions and through their attitudes.

He couldn't manage to tear himself loose in order to "Look at her!" as she wanted. At the library he checked in books and checked out others as he stamped them. He cataloged new books, inspected old ones, and took a keen interest in the new computer system, in which everything was to be entered, and which heralded a new era and completely new routines. But he could not "Look at her!" Why not? Because he regarded it as an impossible demand and assumed she knew this. When she shouted like that, she was shouting for an obligatory action on his part, and when he therefore turned toward her, she knew that she was seeing a Singer who was looking at her in an obligatory way and that is noninvasive amiability was a plea to be understood in a different manner. But if she didn't want to understand and be understood, in this different manner, there was little he could do, and that too she knew, or so he assumed, in a glass like way, which combined with other glass-like ways of relating to life, in this distant attitude of his, which was his way of living and withstanding that which he, perhaps all alone in the world, experienced as unbearable.

It’s your job to keep your window clean. Sure, I can give you a little encouragement. And other people can encourage you, too. But in the end, nobody else can do it for you. You see, you always have a choice. You can leave the filth on your window and look at life through a smeared glass. But there are consequences to that approach—and they’re not very pretty. You’ll go through life negative and frustrated. You’ll be unhappy. You’ll achieve only a fraction of what you’re capable of achieving. There’s a better way. When you choose to take out your squeegee and clean your window, life will be brighter and sunnier. You’ll be healthier and happier. You’ll set some ambitious goals

Seeing the Worm Instead of the Apple Another thought pattern that makes you keep your partner at a distance is “seeing the worm instead of the apple.” Carole had been with Bob for nine months and had been feeling increasingly unhappy. She felt Bob was the wrong guy for her, and gave a multitude of reasons: He wasn’t her intellectual equal, he lacked sophistication, he was too needy, and she didn’t like the way he dressed or interacted with people. Yet, at the same time, there was a tenderness about him that she’d never experienced with another man. He made her feel safe and accepted, he lavished gifts on her, and he had endless patience to deal with her silences, moods, and scorn. Still, Carole was adamant about her need to leave Bob. “It will never work,” she said time and again. Finally, she broke up with him. Months later she was surprised by just how difficult she was finding things without him. Lonely, depressed, and heartbroken, she mourned their lost relationship as the best she’d ever had. Carole’s experience is typical of people with an avoidant attachment style. They tend to see the glass half-empty instead of half-full when it comes to their partner. In fact, in one study, Mario Mikulincer, dean of the New School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and one of the leading researchers in the field of adult attachment, together with colleagues Victor Florian and Gilad Hirschberger, from the department of psychology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, asked couples to recount their daily experiences in a diary. They found that people with an avoidant attachment style rated their partner less positively than did non-avoidants. What’s more, they found they did so even on days in which their accounts of their partners’ behavior indicated supportiveness, warmth, and caring. Dr. Mikulincer explains that this pattern of behavior is driven by avoidants’ generally dismissive attitude toward connectedness. When something occurs that contradicts this perspective—such as their spouse behaving in a genuinely caring and loving manner—they are prone to ignoring the behavior, or at least diminishing its value. When they were together, Carole used many deactivating strategies, tending to focus on Bob’s negative attributes. Although she was aware of her boyfriend’s strengths, she couldn’t keep her mind off what she perceived to be his countless flaws. Only after they broke up, and she no longer felt threatened by the high level of intimacy, did her defense strategies lift. She was then able to get in touch with the underlying feelings of attachment that were there all along and to accurately assess Bob’s pluses.

see rainbows in rainstorms and opportunities in disasters. When life hands me lemons, I whip up a lemon meringue pie. Challenges? Just plot twists in my epic saga, and setbacks are setups for my grand comeback. Where others see roadblocks, I see shortcuts to awesomeness. My glass isn’t just half full; it’s practically overflowing with optimism. So, while the world tosses curveballs, I’m here with my metaphorical bat, ready to hit them out of the park and do a victory dance.

If a woman can be the attorney general or the secretary of state, what’s keeping you from climbing up the career ladder? You want to complain about the glass ceiling, the lack of childcare, or your boss’s assumption that you don’t deserve a promotion because women don’t perform well under pressure? People in our postfeminist world don’t want to hear about it. They want you to find a way around the impediment. Whining about obstacles won’t solve anything, so get over it. Adjust your attitude. You’re not one of those uptight feminists, are you? Don’t you know that gender equality has been accomplished? Haven’t you heard that feminists keep women down by making them insecure about their ability to compete as men’s equals? They are a defeatist bunch, complaining about minor issues. Surely you won’t let trivial hindrances conquer you! Surely you’ll find a way to make something of yourself. Surely you’ll beat the odds.

Just so you know,” Yrene hissed as she shut the doors loudly behind him, “your piss-poor attitude helps no one and nothing.

1 = Very important. Do this at once. 2 = Worth doing but takes more time. Start planning it. 3 = Yes and no. Depends on how it’s done. 4 = Not very important. May even be a waste of effort. 5 = No! Don’t do this. Fill in those numbers before you read further, and take your time. This is not a simple situation, and solving it is a complicated undertaking. Possible Actions to Take ____ Explain the changes again in a carefully written memo. ____ Figure out exactly how individuals’ behavior and attitudes will have to change to make teams work. ____ Analyze who stands to lose something under the new system. ____ Redo the compensation system to reward compliance with the changes. ____ “Sell” the problem that is the reason for the change. ____ Bring in a motivational speaker to give employees a powerful talk about teamwork. ____ Design temporary systems to contain the confusion during the cutover from the old way to the new. ____ Use the interim between the old system and the new to improve the way in which services are delivered by the unit—and, where appropriate, create new services. ____ Change the spatial arrangements so that the cubicles are separated only by glass or low partitions. ____ Put team members in contact with disgruntled clients, either by phone or in person. Let them see the problem firsthand. ____ Appoint a “change manager” to be responsible for seeing that the changes go smoothly. ____ Give everyone a badge with a new “teamwork” logo on it. ____ Break the change into smaller stages. Combine the firsts and seconds, then add the thirds later. Change the managers into coordinators last. ____ Talk to individuals. Ask what kinds of problems they have with “teaming.” ____ Change the spatial arrangements from individual cubicles to group spaces. ____ Pull the best people in the unit together as a model team to show everyone else how to do it. ____ Give everyone a training seminar on how to work as a team. ____ Reorganize the general manager’s staff as a team and reconceive the GM’s job as that of a coordinator. ____ Send team representatives to visit other organizations where service teams operate successfully. ____ Turn the whole thing over to the individual contributors as a group and ask them to come up with a plan to change over to teams. ____ Scrap the plan and find one that is less disruptive. If that one doesn’t work, try another. Even if it takes a dozen plans, don’t give up. ____ Tell them to stop dragging their feet or they’ll face disciplinary action. ____ Give bonuses to the first team to process 100 client calls in the new way. ____ Give everyone a copy of the new organization chart. ____ Start holding regular team meetings. ____ Change the annual individual targets to team targets, and adjust bonuses to reward team performance. ____ Talk about transition and what it does to people. Give coordinators a seminar on how to manage people in transition. There are no correct answers in this list, but over time I’ve

Your attitude should not settle for the average when you have what it takes to become the best. You excel by choice and you must be focused like a laser beam. Even the sun, powerful as it is, will not be able to burn a hole into a piece of paper until a magnifying glass is used to channel the power of its rays onto one spot. Focus your intellect and your knowledge to get excellent results.

What is workplace optimism? If you think it’s viewing the proverbial glass half full through rose-colored glasses and thinking positive thoughts, you’re mistaken. It is more than a positive attitude. Workplace optimism shapes attitudes. It shapes a person’s and even a team’s spirit. It is the spark that fuels esprit de corps. It evokes positive emotions in team members toward their work and others. Workplace optimism is a characteristic of climate. The climate feels optimistic. People are inspired by their work and the possibilities inherent in it. Workplace optimism is the belief that good things will come from hard work. Research shows that you can transform the work experience by focusing on the best positive potential realities.9 Rather than spend time focusing on what’s wrong or missing in the workplace, you can choose to focus on what’s right and possible in the workplace. Rather than ignoring the climate, you can observe how it’s influencing work quality and relationships. You can transform the work experience by simply recognizing and leveraging human nature.

I am not going to help you start a dynasty of giant babies.” “I never said you had to be willing.” “And you wonder why you have a hard time getting a woman.” She rolled her eyes. “You know, it is precisely that attitude that has made me revise my plan to abscond with you and make you my bride.” “About time. But if you’re not here to kidnap me, what the heck are you doing here then? And why isn’t anyone tossing you out on your striped ear?” “I was invited.” “Who was stupid enough to do that?” she asked. “I was.” Spinning on her heel, she finally found Leo, holding two bottles of sweating beer, one brown and skunky, the other pale with a wedge of lime shoved inside the glass. She grabbed the dark one and chugged it before he could saddle her with the girly one. Once she’d satisfied her thirst— without belching because she was, after all, a lady— she asked, “Why did you invite the king of misogyny?” “So I could show him this.” This comprised of Leo spinning Meena in his arms and plastering her mouth with his. A surprise smooch. A welcome lashing of tongues. An unimpressed audience. A gagging noise ruined the mood. “Is that necessary? I’ve already withdrawn my suit for the lady.” “Just making sure you get the point,” Leo remarked when he came up for air. “And to think I’d heard you were the sporting one,” Dmitri said in a dry tone of voice. Leo fixed Dmitri with a stare, a cold and menacing one. So hot. “I might be sporting, but I play to win. I also don’t share. Meena is mine.

Holly Berries A Confederate Christmas Story by Refugitta There was, first, behind the clear crystal pane, a mammoth turkey, so fat that it must have submitted to be killed from sheer inability to eat and move, hung all around with sausage balls and embowered in crisp white celery with its feathered tops. Many a belated housekeeper or father of a family, passing by, cast loving glances at the monster bird, and turned away with their hands on depleted purses and arms full of brown paper parcels. Then there were straw baskets of eggs, white and shining with the delightful prospect of translation into future eggnogs; pale yellow butter stamped with ears of corn, bee hives, and statuesque cows with their tails in an attitude. But these were all substantials, and the principal attraction was the opposition window, where great pyramids of golden oranges, scaly brown pineapples, festoons of bananas, boxes of figs and raisins with their covers thrown temptingly aside, foreign sauces and pickles, cheeses, and gilded walnuts were arranged in picturesque regularity, jut, as it seemed, almost within reach of one’s olfactories and mouth, until a closer proximity realized the fact of that thick plate glass between. Inside it was just the same: there were barrels and boxes in a perfect wilderness; curious old foreign packages and chests, savory of rare teas and rarer jellies; cinnamon odors like gales from Araby meeting you at every turn; but yet everything, from the shining mahogany counter under the brilliant gaslight, up to the broad, clean, round face of the jolly grocer Pin, was so neat and orderly and inviting that you felt inclined to believe yourself requested to come in and take off things by the pocketful, without paying a solitary cent. I acknowledge that it was an unreasonable distribution of favors for Mr. Pin to own, all to himself, this abundance of good things. Now, in my opinion, little children ought to be the shop keepers when there are apples and oranges to be sold, and I know they will all agree with me, for I well remember my earliest ambition was that my papa would turn confectioner, and then I could eat my way right through the store. But our friend John Pin was an appreciative person, and not by any means forgetful of his benefits. All day long and throughout the short afternoon, his domain had been thronged with busy buyers, old and young, and himself and his assistant (a meager-looking young man of about the dimensions of a knitting needle) constantly employed in supplying their demands. From the Southern Illustrated News.

I appreciate that you’re all entertained by this…little surprise.” She swallowed hard and looked at Cooper as she added, “But there’s not going to be another McCrae wedding.” There was a collective groan from the audience, and someone shouted, “Come on, don’t break the guy’s heart.” Someone else added, “That’s cold, Kerry. Even for you.” She might have blanched a little at that. Cold. She wasn’t cold. She just wasn’t…overly friendly. At least not in the way some of the men in the place--and not only the single ones--hoped she’d be. “Come on now,” she said. “I’m not breaking anything here. You get what you see with me. No subterfuge, no leading anyone to believe anything that isn’t true. You all know that.” She didn’t bother looking at Hardy, though it couldn’t hurt to get him the message again, too. She did look at Cooper again, though, as she added, “Anyone who knows me, knows that.” His laser-beam gaze didn’t falter for even a blink. She drew in a steadying breath and pasted a big smile on her face. “So then,” she said, clapping her hands together and keeping her fingers woven tightly in front of her, her damp palms belying her I’m-so-in-control-here attitude. “The entertainment portion of the evening is over. Nothing to see here. Let’s shoot some pool, throw some darts, and a round for everyone, on the house.” That got the rousing cheer she knew it would and she quickly hopped down behind the bar and immediately began setting up glasses. She knew her grand--and not inexpensive--gesture would quiet them for a bit, but she also knew life in the Cove was going to be rife with all sorts of gossip for the next day or two, until something else came along to replace it on their juicy little grapevine. She had no idea where Fergus had suddenly gotten to and was surprised he hadn’t tried to orchestrate something, anything, between Kerry and Cooper. Hopefully with her little demonstration just now, he’d never have the chance.

Evelyn, see there. The eldest from the Ralstons. I hear they have a lovely collection of stained-glass windows.” Ah, yes, just my type: a stiff, prideful lord-to-be with impeccable, cold deportment to prove his perfect breeding. “Set a date,” I declared solemnly with a wave of my hand. “I shall marry him immediately.” Rose choked back her giggle, but Mother was far less amused. “Not this childish behavior again,” she said through her teeth, which were still arranged in a polite smile for the guests. “You will give these men more than a second’s thought or deeply regret this attitude in a few years’ time.” “Yes, when I’m crying next to, God forbid, a plain window,

That’s what happens, friends. It gets so damned depressing, coming up against the cultural hari-kiri we keep committing, that cynicism becomes the only supportable attitude. And then the kids prove they’ve got it. Even I, anxious to give them every possible point, begin to suspect the rot goes from top to bottom, young and old alike. And then the kids do me in. They come up with solid gold, and make me feel like the idiot I certainly am, on occasion.

Bronson finally wandered off. Trevor handed me a Sprite and sat on the ottoman next to my chair. “Are you having a good time?” he asked, gulping down his own drink.  I couldn’t tell what he was drinking since the glass was opaque, but I hoped he was keeping his word that his partying days were behind him. I sipped at my soda. “It's okay. I don't really know anybody though.” “It's getting close to midnight. Do you want to get out of here?” Relieved he had made the suggestion, I smiled. “Yes, please.”  He took my hand as we walked out to his car. “Where should we go?” I asked as I put on my seatbelt. “I know just the place.” He grinned as he started the engine. We drove for a while and when we stopped we were overlooking the valley. Even though it was cold outside, the view was spectacular.  Trevor left the car running so we could stay warm. Even so, I cuddled up to him. He gazed at me, the black of his pupils enlarged in his blue eyes. “It's midnight, Lily.” His voice was husky as he reached out and cradled my face in his hands. I closed my eyes, ready to accept his kiss. He pressed his lips against mine, gently at first, then more urgently. “I don't think I can wait four more weeks,” he groaned. “We're practically married now. Do we really need to wait?” I pulled back. “But we’re not actually married.” He stared at me in the dim moonlight. “You’re one stubborn girl.” Wanting to change the subject, I groped around in my mind for something else to talk about. The messages I'd received popped into my head and they wouldn't leave. “Trevor, I got a weird e-mail the other day.” “Oh, yeah?” He said without much enthusiasm.  “Yes. They were about you.” That got his attention. He sat up straighter. “Who sent them?” “I don't know,” I said. “Okay. What did they say?” “Basically, they told me not to marry you.”  “What?” He shifted in his seat to face me more squarely.  “That's right. This time I sent an e-mail back, though,” I smiled, proud I had taken some sort of action. “And did you get a response?” “Not yet.” His hand shot out and grabbed me by the arm. “Tell me if you do. Will you promise me?” Startled by his response, I said, “Okay, if that's what you want.” He let go of my arm and I rubbed it where he had squeezed.  “It's getting late. I'd better get you home.” Trevor put the car in gear and we drove toward my apartment. His sudden change in attitude concerned me. What did he know that he wasn’t telling me? The spring semester started a few days later. I was excited to begin my new classes and went eagerly to my first one. It was a required Humanities course. I was surprised to find Justin sitting in the classroom. There was an empty seat beside him and I pulled it out and sat down. “What are you doing in this class?” I said. “Oh, hey, Lily. How's it going?” His smile was warm and friendly. “Great. How about you? I hear you and Pamela are getting serious.”  “Yeah, but not as serious as you, I hear.”  I noticed he seemed very pleased to hear about my own engagement and was surprised. I guess he's over me, I thought. That's good, I suppose. “Yes. Three and a

Psychologists define cognitive dissonance as “The state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs or attitudes; especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change”.  Perhaps nowhere is this cerebral flexibility on better display than in religious claims of divine intervention.  As atheists we are constantly baffled by an acquaintance crediting god with some minor convenience in their lives, seemingly unaware of the horrible moral contradictions that arise when one asserts that a god concerns itself with finding their lost glasses but not with the children sold into sexual slavery.

You look beautiful,” Caleb said softly, laying his hands on the sides of her slender waist. Lily smiled at his reflection in the glass. “Don’t you try to flatter me, Caleb Halliday,” she warned. “I think you’re a brute with a despicable attitude toward women.” He cupped her breasts in his hands. “I love women,” he said, bending to nibble at the exposed flesh of her neck. “When they obey, of course.” “Of course,” Caleb replied. He was untying the ribbon of Lily’s hat, taking it from her head, setting it back in its box. “You needn’t think you’re going to take me to bed,” Lily said airily. “Not, that is, until you apologize to me and tell Rupert you won’t lend him the money to build a boarding school unless he allows girls to attend.” Caleb turned Lily to face him. “You’re free to disagree with my opinions any time you like, Mrs. Halliday, but you will not refuse me your bed. Is that understood?” Lily’s cheeks heated. “I don’t guess you give a damn about my opinions,” she said, “but you’ll come around soon enough.” “Sometimes I think you enjoy baiting me. It makes the pleasure more intense when I lay you down and take you, doesn’t it, Lily?” She raised her hand to slap him, then thought better of the idea. “You are reprehensible.” Caleb

But I'm grateful for their presence, because it reminds me that the old saying about beauty being the light of the heart is not just a greeting card cliche. What makes these people "old" is their attitude, not how they look, and the reason I don't connect with them has nothing to do with their age, but with how they behave.

Mead and other symbolic interactionists refer to the composite person in our mind with whom we are in dialogue as our generalized other. [...] I believe he'd regard the hours we're glued to a screen and the responses we receive through social media as playing a big part in shaping the content of that inner dialogue. Those mental conversations are important because: The generalized other is an organized set of information that the individual carries in her or his head about what the general expectation and attitudes of the social group are. We refer to this generalized other whenever we try to figure out how to behave or how to evaluate our behavior in a social situation. We take the position of the generalized other and assign meaning to ourselves and our actions. [...] Mead saw society as consisting of individual actors who make their own choices- society-in-the-making rather than society-by-previous-design. Yet these individuals align their actions with what others are doing to form [...] societal institutions in which they take part. It is unclear [...] whether Mead regarded the generalized other as an overarching looking-glass self that we put together from the reflections we see in everyone we know or the institutional expectations, rules of the game, or accepted practices within society that influence every conversation that takes place in people's minds. Either way, the generalized other shapes how we think and interact within the community.

Going over to the side of the principle of Evil implies making a choice in every sphere that is not only critical but also criminal. In any society, even a liberal one (such as ours!), this kind of choice cannot be publicly expressed. A stated position in support of the non-human or of the principle of Evil will be rejected by any value system (by 'principle of Evil' here I mean nothing more than the simple stating of a few hard truths concerning values, law, power, reality, etc.). In this respect there is no difference at all between East, West, North or South. And there is not the slightest chance of seeing an end to this intolerant attitude, as opaque and crystalline as a glass wall, which no progress in the sphere of either morality or immorality has managed to modify. The world is so full of positive feelings, naive sentimentality, self-important rectitude and sycophancy that irony, mockery and the subjective energy of evil are always in the weaker position. At this rate every last negative sentiment will soon be forced into a clandestine existence. Already the merest gibe tends to meet with incomprehension. It will soon be impossible to express reservations about anything at all. We shall have nothing left but disgust and consternation.

The invitation came from Studio Morra in Naples: Come and perform whatever you want. It was early 1975. With the scandalized reactions of the Belgrade press fresh in my mind, I planned a piece in which the audience would provide the action. I would merely be the object, the receptacle. My plan was to go to the gallery and just stand there, in black trousers and a black T-shirt, behind a table containing seventy-two objects: A hammer. A saw. A feather. A fork. A bottle of perfume. A bowler hat. An ax. A rose. A bell. Scissors. Needles. A pen. Honey. A lamb bone. A carving knife. A mirror. A newspaper. A shawl. Pins. Lipstick. Sugar. A Polaroid camera. Various other things. And a pistol, and one bullet lying next to it. When a big crowd had gathered at eight P.M., they found these instructions on the table: There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility. Duration: 6 hours (8pm - 2am) Slowly at first and then quickly, things began to happen. It was very interesting: for the most part, the women in the gallery would tell the men what to do to me, rather than do it themselves (although later on, when someone stuck a pin into me, one woman wiped the tears from my eyes). For the most part, these were just normal members of the Italian art establishment and their wives. Ultimately I think the reason I wasn’t raped was that the wives were there. As evening turned into late night, a certain air of sexuality arose in the room. This came not from me but from the audience. We were in southern Italy, where the Catholic Church was so powerful, and there was this strong Madonna/whore dichotomy in attitudes toward women. After three hours, one man cut my shirt apart with the scissors and took it off. People manipulated me into various poses. If they turned my head down, I kept it down; if they turned it up, I kept it that way. I was a puppet—entirely passive. Bare-breasted, I stood there, and someone put the bowler hat on my head. With the lipstick, someone else wrote IO SONO LIBERO—“I am free”—on the mirror and stuck it in my hand. Someone else took the lipstick and wrote END across my forehead. A guy took Polaroids of me and stuck them in my hand, like playing cards. Things got more intense. A couple of people picked me up and carried me around. They put me on the table, spread my legs, stuck the knife in the table close to my crotch. Someone stuck pins into me. Someone else slowly poured a glass of water over my head. Someone cut my neck with the knife and sucked the blood. I still have the scar. There was one man—a very small man—who just stood very close to me, breathing heavily. This man scared me. Nobody else, nothing else, did. But he did. After a while, he put the bullet in the pistol and put the pistol in my right hand. He moved the pistol toward my neck and touched the trigger. There was a murmur in the crowd, and someone grabbed him. A scuffle broke out. Some of the audience obviously wanted to protect me; others wanted the performance to continue. This being southern Italy, voices were raised; tempers flared. The little man was hustled out of the gallery and the piece continued. In fact, the audience became more and more active, as if in a trance. And then, at two A.M., the gallerist came and told me the six hours were up. I stopped staring and looked directly at the audience. “The performance is over,” the gallerist said. “Thank you.” I looked like hell. I was half naked and bleeding; my hair was wet. And a strange thing happened: at this moment, the people who were still there suddenly became afraid of me. As I walked toward them, they ran out of the gallery.

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink. The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove. The alcoholic may say to himself in the most casual way, “It won’t burn me this time, so here’s how!” Or perhaps he doesn’t think at all. How often have some of us begun to drink in this nonchalant way, and after the third or fourth, pounded on the bar and said to ourselves, “For God’s sake, how did I ever get started again?” Only to have that thought supplanted by “Well, I’ll stop with the sixth drink.” Or “What’s the use anyhow?” When this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with alcoholic tendencies, he has probably placed himself beyond human aid, and unless locked up, may die or go permanently insane. These stark and ugly facts have been confirmed by legions of alcoholics throughout history. But for the grace of God, there would have been thousands more convincing demonstrations. So many want to stop but cannot. There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed. The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences* which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God’s universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves. If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution. We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help. This we did because we honestly wanted to, and were willing to make the effort.

It is a huge slab of dark stone, square and rough, like the rocks at the bottom of the chasm. A large crack runs through the middle of it, and there are streaks of lighter rock near the edges. Suspended above the slab is a glass tank of the same dimensions, full of water. A light placed above the center of the tank shines through the water, refracting as it ripples. I hear a faint noise, a drop of water hitting the stone. It comes from a small tube running through the center of the tank. At first I think the tank is just leaking, but another drop falls, then a third, and a fourth, at the same interval. A few drops collect, and then disappear down a narrow channel in the stone. They must be intentional. “Hello.” Zoe stands on the other side of the sculpture. “I’m sorry, I was about to go to the dormitory for you, then saw you heading this way and wondered if you were lost.” “No, I’m not lost,” I say. “This is where I meant to go.” “Ah.” She stands beside me and crosses her arms. She is about as tall as I am, but she stands straighter, so she seems taller. “Yeah, it’s pretty weird, right?” As she talks I watch the freckles on her cheeks, dappled like sunlight through dense leaves. “Does it mean something?” “It’s the symbol of the Bureau of Genetic Welfare,” she says. “The slab of stone is the problem we’re facing. The tank of water is our potential for changing that problem. And the drop of water is what we’re actually able to do, at any given time.” I can’t help it—I laugh. “Not very encouraging, is it?” She smiles. “That’s one way of looking at it. I prefer to look at it another way—which is that if they are persistent enough, even tiny drops of water, over time, can change the rock forever. And it will never change back.” She points to the center of the slab, where there is a small impression, like a shallow bowl carved into the stone. “That, for example, wasn’t there when they installed this thing.” I nod, and watch the next drop fall. Even though I’m wary of the Bureau and everyone in it, I can feel the quiet hope of the sculpture working its way through me. It’s a practical symbol, communicating the patient attitude that has allowed the people here to stay for so long, watching and waiting. But I have to ask. “Wouldn’t it be more effective to unleash the whole tank at once?” I imagine the wave of water colliding with the rock and spilling over the tile floor, collecting around my shoes. Doing a little at once can fix something, eventually, but I feel like when you believe that something is truly a problem, you throw everything you have at it, because you just can’t help yourself.

Use imagery, which stimulates the right hemisphere of your brain. For example, if I’m with someone who’s getting intense, I might imagine myself as a deeply rooted tree, with the other person’s attitudes and emotions blowing through my leaves and shaking them—but winds always come to an end, and my tree remains standing. Or I’ll imagine that there is a picket fence between us—or, if need be, a glass wall that’s a foot thick. In addition to the benefits that come from the particular images themselves, activating the right hemisphere encourages a sense of the whole that is larger than any part—including that part of your experience which might feel uncomfortable with closeness. Be Mindful of Your Inner World

Caution, folks! This package comes with a "handle with care" label, but let me tell you, I'm not just fragile glass; I'm a delicate balance of wit, charm, and cleverness. Treat me like a precious gem, and you'll unlock a treasure trove of laughter and amusement. But beware, mishandle me, and you might unleash a whirlwind of snarky comebacks! So, be gentle, be kind, and prepare for an adventure with this quirky, witty wonder!

An attitude of total acceptance and peace of mind doesn’t come naturally to me. I must remain diligently on guard to prevent my feelings, thoughts and actions from being controlled by people and circumstances. My serenity, like finely spun glass, is extremely fragile. My natural tendency is to find fault, see the defect, disapprove, then not accept what I see. I completely forget that acceptance does not imply approval.

For years, we knew the double-storey at the bottom of Albermarle Street as the Gandhi House. In the decade before the Great War, we'd been told, Gandhi lived here with his family. Now the house has lost its claim on history 9but not its plaque from the National Monuments Council). An enterprising researcher, with nothing to gain by his unmasking except the truth, has shown that Gandhi did not live here after all, but up the road at No. 11. One of Gandhi's descendants, who visited the house as a child, has provided confirmation. The people at No. 11 should have that plaque moved to their wall. Both the Gandhi Houses, the true and the false, are double-storeys set on a promontory between two thoroughfares, but the attitudes of the streets could not differ more. Hillier and Albermarle Streets approach the impostor rather Kindly, cupping it in leafy palms, whereas Albermarle and Johannes grip the genuine article like an egg in a nutcracker. No. 11 has a handsome corrugated-iron roof and a wide, shady balcony. I recall an orante wrought-iron finial, the ECG of a Victorian heartbeat, dancing along the roof ridge, but it must have been removed by the renovators. I cannot remember ever seeing a person on the balcony, perfectly suited though it is to reading the paper or chatting over sundowners, but for a few years there were shop-window mannequins leaning on the parapet. Perhaps they were scarecrows for thieves? At night, with the lighted windows behind them, they always deceived the eye. Something in the atmosphere, a bit of lace around the neck, a reddish tinge of the light from the doorway, made them look like whores. Apparently, the Mahatma used to take his rest on the balcony on summer nights. It is easy to picture him there with sleep in his eyes, buffing his little round glasses on the hem of a bed sheet.

There were certain people in the hardcore traditional or revivalist folk movement who saw us as perhaps encroaching on their territory and taking liberties with “their” music,’ says Simon Nicol. ‘It’s a preposterous attitude, because they’re just songs, they don’t exist under glass, they’re not exhibits in a museum that you have to preserve in amber.’ In any case, remembers Swarbrick, the English folk circuit was in a pretty stagnant state by the end of the decade. ‘I used to go out with Ian Campbell to pubs and all you could hear was the dominoes clinking. It was an effort to get things going.

and at the very bottom, a world of caverns whose walls are black with soot, a world of cesspools and sloughs, a world of grubs and beasts, of eyeless beings who drag animal carcasses behind them, of demoniacal monsters with bodies of birds, swine, and fish, of dried-out corpses and yellow-skinned skeletons arrayed in attitudes of the living, of forges manned by dazed Cyclopses in black leather aprons, their single eyes shielded by metal-rimmed blue glass, hammering their brazen masses into dazzling shields.

There are two types of people in this world. Those who see the glass half empty and those who see the glass half full. In sales, it is important that we stay optimistic and focused and not get off into the forest of Defeat and Pessimism. If we are honest, we must remind ourselves often that much of what we do in life has to do with our attitude and belief system.

You can always call me at work,” he said. “It was nice to hear your voice. It’s always nice to hear something besides people screaming in pain.” “What?” “Just some dentist humor,” he said. “There’s such a thing as dentist humor?” “Ask me sometime for my routine about wisdom teeth versus stupid teeth.” Megan laughed. “Gotcha,” he said. “If you like that, you’ll love the whole routine. It’s better if my hands are in your mouth so you can’t beg me to stop.” She waggled her eyebrows. “I’d never tell you to stop.” She nodded at the walk-in cooler. “Want to take this conversation in there and see if we can fog up all the glass?” “Yes,” he said. “But regrettably, I do have to get back to work, and I can’t show up with grass stains all over my clothes.” “We don’t have any grass in that cooler, but I can’t make any promises about pollen staining your nice suit or rose petals getting into your crevices.” “Rose petals in my crevices? That sounds uncomfortable,” he said. “If you’re going to have that kind of an attitude about it, it probably will be.

He reached into his jacket, grabbed a box, and put it on her knee. “There.” She blinked and then frowned unhappily at it. “Is this a proposal?” Suddenly, he was feeling unsure of himself. He shifted nervously in his seat. “Sorta.” She threw the box firmly back onto his lap. “You’re not proposing to me when there’s blood smeared all across the glass in front of us. Not at a hockey game at all, and not with that blasé attitude. I want fancy romance! I want a bent knee. I don’t want you in your old hockey letterman shirt like you think you’re the Fonz.

Life is like water in a glass. Drop by drop the glass empties and it run out to source a great big puddle

A loving heart doesn’t color your world like rose-colored glasses; it alters it. William James wrote, “The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

One sometimes find themselves wholeheartedly concerned with whether the glass is half empty or is the glass half full. Ignoring completely the presence of the glass. The trials and tribulations we encounter are our glass half empty. The opportunities we are accorded sees our glass half full But when do we focus on us ? ...... The receptacle. When do we clean our glass? Take heart; after each set back.... Reflect, regroup and find solace in the growth that has taken place. For we never pour fresh champagne in yesterdays dirty glass So should keeping our receptacle clean be our daily task.

One sometimes find themselves wholeheartedly concerned with whether the glass is half empty or is the glass half full. Ignoring completely the presence of the glass. The trials and tribulations we encounter are our glass half empty. The opportunities we are accorded sees our glass half full But when do we focus on us ? ...... The receptacle. When do we clean our glass? Take heart; after each set back.... Reflect, regroup and find solace in the growth that has taken place. For we never pour fresh champagne in yesterdays dirty glass So should keeping our receptacle clean be our daily task.

Literally speaking, every person with whom you come in contact is a mental looking-glass in which you may see a perfect reflection of your own mental attitude.

There are those of us who won’t put faith in others because we are just plain scared. Mothers with this problem resort to putting people off right up front. They can be edgy, curt, and a bit frightening to others. They’re so frightened that others will let them down that they will keep their distance through their attitude. Many women are afraid to put faith in their husbands to make enough money, to help parent their kids well, or to treat them with respect. They convince themselves that they, as moms, can be enough for themselves and their kids. They pull back and wall themselves off into an isolated independence that may feel good at times but in the end doesn’t work well for them. They try to live behind a glass wall of distrust and while they may appear competent, strong, and complete, they know that a life devoid of trust in anyone but themselves just doesn’t work.

The world doesn't stop spinning for people like me to jump back on the ride. It carries on. I was left in space.

That proverbial glass of water that contains fifty percent of its capacity is either half full or half empty, depending on your attitude.

If your needs are not attainable through safe instruments, the solution is not to increase the rate of return by upping the level of risk. Instead, goals may be revised, savings increased, or income boosted through added years of work. . . . Somebody has to care about the consequences if uncertainty is to be understood as risk. . . . As we’ve seen, the chances of loss do decline over time, but this hardly means that the odds are zero, or negligible, just because the horizon is long. . . . In fact, even though the odds of loss do fall over long periods, the size of potential losses gets larger, not smaller, over time. . . . The message to emerge from all this hype has been inescapable: In the long run, the stock market can only go up. Its ascent is inexorable and predictable. Long-term stock returns are seen as near certain while risks appear minimal, and only temporary. And the messaging has been effective: The familiar market propositions come across as bedrock fact. For the most part, the public views them as scientific truth, although this is hardly the case. It may surprise you, but all this confidence is rather new. Prevailing attitudes and behavior before the early 1980s were different. Fewer people owned stocks then, and the general popular attitude to buying stocks was wariness, not ebullience or complacency. . . . Unfortunately, the American public’s embrace of stocks is not at all related to the spread of sound knowledge. It’s useful to consider how the transition actually evolved—because the real story resists a triumphalist interpretation. . . . Excessive optimism helps explain the popularity of the stocks-for-the-long-run doctrine. The pseudo-factual statement that stocks always succeed in the long run provides an overconfident investor with more grist for the optimistic mill. . . . Speaking with the editors of Forbes.com in 2002, Kahneman explained: “When you are making a decision whether or not to go for something,” he said, “my guess is that knowing the odds won’t hurt you, if you’re brave. But when you are executing, not to be asking yourself at every moment in time whether you will succeed or not is certainly a good thing. . . . In many cases, what looks like risk-taking is not courage at all, it’s just unrealistic optimism. Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don’t know the odds. It’s a big difference.” Optimism can be a great motivator. It helps especially when it comes to implementing plans. Although optimism is healthy, however, it’s not always appropriate. You would not want rose-colored glasses in a financial advisor, for instance. . . . Over the long haul, the more you are exposed to danger, the more likely it is to catch up with you. The odds don’t exactly add, but they do accumulate. . . . Yet, overriding this instinctive understanding, the prevailing investment dogma has argued just the reverse. The creed that stocks grow steadily safer over time has managed to trump our common-sense assumption by appealing to a different set of homespun precepts. Chief among these is a flawed surmise that, with the passage of time, downward fluctuations are balanced out by compensatory upward swings. Many people believe that each step backward will be offset by more than one step forward. The assumption is that you can own all the upside and none of the downside just by sticking around. . . . If you find yourself rejecting safe investments because they are not profitable enough, you are asking the wrong questions. If you spurn insurance simply because the premiums put a crimp in your returns, you may be destined for disappointment—and possibly loss.