Inspiration Daily Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Inspiration Daily. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
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Mahatma Gandhi
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Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.
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Walt Whitman
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Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
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Victor Hugo
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It's never too late to change your life for the better. You don't have to take huge steps to change your life. Making even the smallest changes to your daily routine can make a big difference to your life.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
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John Wooden
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Dream as if you will live forever; Live as if you will die today.
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James Dean
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Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.
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John Wesley
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We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problemsβ€”the ones that make you truly who you areβ€”that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: it's got to be the right wrong personβ€”someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, β€œThis is the problem I want to have.” I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.
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Andrew Boyd (Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe)
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Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.
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Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)
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It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.
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Bruce Lee
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Enjoy every step you take. If you're curious, there is always something new to be discovered in the backdrop of your daily life.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Seven Steps to Success 1) Make a commitment to grow daily. 2) Value the process more than events. 3) Don't wait for inspiration. 4) Be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity. 5) Dream big. 6) Plan your priorities. 7) Give up to go up.
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John C. Maxwell
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Toni's Talk: When you invest in yourself, you have instant credibility with your biggest critic...you! As soon as you let doubt creep in---you lose that investment. Make a daily commitment to assess your worth with positive affirmations and watch your investment grow.
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C. Toni Graham
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Whenever I am in a difficult situation where there seems to be no way out, I think about all the times I have been in such situations and say to myself, "I did it before, so I can do it again.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.
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Albert Einstein
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When you work on something that only has the capacity to make you 5 dollars, it does not matter how much harder you work – the most you will make is 5 dollars.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by lifeβ€”daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
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Viktor E. Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning)
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My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
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May I share with you a formula that in my judgment will help you and help me to journey well through mortality... First, fill your mind with truth; second, fill your life with service; and third, fill your heart with love.
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Thomas S. Monson
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Let your creative and imaginative mind run freely; it will take you places you never dreamed of and provide breakthroughs that others once thought were impossible.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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You make the world a better place by making daily improvements to become the best version of yourself.
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Roy T. Bennett
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Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love – for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you from misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
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Max Ehrmann (Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life)
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Whenever you are going through life’s challenges, remember that for iron to be cast into its desired form, it must first go through intense heat.
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Idowu Koyenikan (All You Need Is a Ball: What Soccer Teaches Us about Success in Life and Business)
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If you walked away from a toxic, negative, abusive, one-sided, dead-end low vibrational relationship or friendship β€” you won.
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Lalah Delia
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A daily dose of daydreaming heals the heart, soothes the soul, and strengthens the imagination.
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Richelle E. Goodrich (Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year)
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It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
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Marcus Tullius Cicero
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I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
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Haim G. Ginott (Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers)
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I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.
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Haim G. Ginott
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The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a patter of systems.
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Bruce Lee (Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living (The Bruce Lee library))
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If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day... You don't go to a well once but daily. You don't skip a child's breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning...
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Walter Mosley
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Today is a new day and it brings with it a new set of opportunities for me to act on. I am attentive to the opportunities and I seize them as they arise. I have full confidence in myself and my abilities. I can do all things that I commit myself to. No obstacle is too big or too difficult for me to handle because what lies inside me is greater than what lies ahead of me. I am committed to improving myself and I am getting better daily. I am not held back by regret or mistakes from the past. I am moving forward daily. Absolutely nothing is impossible for me.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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Today I plan to smile a lot, only so people who know me will be freaked the fuck out.
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R.D. Ronald
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The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? No, thank you,' he will think. 'Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.
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Viktor E. Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning)
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Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.
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Albert Einstein
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Affirmations are our mental vitamins, providing the supplementary positive thoughts we need to balance the barrage of negative events and thoughts we experience daily.
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Tia Walker (The Inspired Caregiver: Finding Joy While Caring for Those You Love)
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I am a strong and powerful woman. I am proud to be a woman and I celebrate the qualities that I have as a woman. I am not defined by other people’s opinion of who I should be or what I should do as a woman. I determine that, not anyone else. I am not passed up for a position, title, or promotion because I am a woman. I fully deserve all the good things that comes my way. Irrespective of what anyone might think, being a woman places no boundaries or limits on my abilities. I can do anything I set my mind to. I celebrate my womanhood and I am beautiful both inside and out.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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As you go about your daily life, you will encounter many lemons. Sour expressions, sour attitudes, sour auras! The good thing is that if you don't want to be a lemon, you don't have to be! Just don't let those lemons rub themselves all over you! And you don't even have to save them! Let lemons be lemons! One of the most important things that I have ever learned, is that I don't have to save people.
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C. JoyBell C.
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May our daily choices be a reflection of our deepest values, and may we use our voices to speak for those who need us most, those who have no voice, those who have no choice.
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Colleen Patrick-Goudreau (Vegan's Daily Companion: 365 Days of Inspiration for Cooking, Eating, and Living Compassionately)
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Life’s a marathon, not a sprint.
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Phillip C. McGraw
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Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.
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Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time)
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One of the simplest ways to stay happy is letting go of the things that makes you sad.
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daily dose
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Even the smallest changes in our daily routine can create incredible ripple effects that expand our vision of what is possible.
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Charles F. Glassman (Brain Drain - The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life)
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It’s not just the big moments that count, it’s all of the small actions that feed our heart and soul on a daily basis. Cherish those moments and reflect on how to replicate them often.
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C. Toni Graham
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It's about living in the moment and appreciating the smallest things. Surrounding yourself with the things that inspire you and letting go of the obsessions that want to take over your mind. It is a daily struggle sometimes and hard work but happiness begins with your own attitude and how you look at the world.
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Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project)
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Strive to make small changes and learn something new daily, because there is always these experiences you have had to tap into for the future.
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Roy T. Bennett
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The question is very understandable, but no one has found a satisfactory answer to it so far. Yes, why do they make still more gigantic planes, still heavier bombs and, at the same time, prefabricated houses for reconstruction? Why should millions be spent daily on the war and yet there's not a penny available for medical services, artists, or for poor people? Why do some people have to starve, while there are surpluses rotting in other parts of the world? Oh, why are people so crazy?
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Anne Frank
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You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.
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Mike Murdock
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Shout out to everyone transcending a mindset, mentality, desire, belief, emotion, habit, behavior or vibration, that no longer serves them.
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Lalah Delia
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When we understand people; when we understand situations; when we understand what matters; when we understand the why’s, the what’s and the how’s; when we understand the trigger of actions, we least inflict pain on ourselves and unto others.
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Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
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When we feel devastated sometimes by the deafening noise of the daily commotion, the voices of the sea may help us to elope into a haven of new dimensions. Through our "third ear," we can hear inspirational sounds in the symphony of our expectations while discovering uncharted alleys in the chaos of our mind. ("Voices of the sea")
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Erik Pevernagie
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Inside every woman, is a crazy girl. And we all know what I'm talking about. That part of you that is entangled with insecurities, fears, and absolute insanity! The art of femininity lies in the molding, pounding, and defeating of that crazy girl on a daily basis! Look at any woman, and you're looking at a woman fighting a daily battle, wielding her weapons in war, every day! I have said it before and I'll say it again: it is never easy being a woman! And if we could only pound that crazy, insecure girl out of ourselves, it would make such the difference!
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C. JoyBell C.
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The road of life is strewn with the bodies of promising people. People who show promise, yet lack the confidence to act. People who make promises they are unable to keep. People who promise to do tomorrow what they could do today. Promising young stars, athletes, entrepreneurs who wait for promises to come true. Promise without a goal and a plan is like a barren cow. You know what she could do if she could do it, but she can't. Turn your promise into a plan. Make no promise for tomorrow if you are able to keep it today. And if someone calls you promising, know that you are not doing enough today.
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Iyanla Vanzant (Acts of Faith: Daily Meditations for People of Color)
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Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.
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Aldous Huxley (Island)
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Yoga is the space where flower blossoms.
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Amit Ray (Yoga The Science of Well-Being)
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My young sisters, we have such hope for you. We have such great expectations for you. Don't settle for less than what the Lord wants you to be... Give me a young woman who loves home and family, who reads and ponders the scriptures daily, who has a burning testimony of the Book of Mormon... Give me a young woman who is virtuous and who has maintained her personal purity, who will not settle for less than a temple marriage, and I will give you a young woman who will perform miracles for the Lord now and throughout eternity.
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Ezra Taft Benson
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The beauty of traveling is understood along the way rather than at the end of the journey, just as the purpose of marriage isn’t about becoming Mr. and Mrs.’s, but is about the love that is expressed on a daily basis between two lovers. A journey is not made up of the destinations that we arrive at, but is composed within every step and each breath we make.
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Forrest Curran
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I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy.
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Marie Curie
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β€ŽBy 2100, our destiny is to become like the gods we once worshipped and feared. But our tools will not be magic wands and potions but the science of computers, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and most of all, the quantum theory.
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Michio Kaku (Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100)
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Take time daily to reflect on how much you have. It may not be all that you want but remember someone somewhere is dreaming to have what you have.
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Germany Kent
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Just because you feel lost doesn't mean that you are. Sometimes you just have to relax, breathe deep, and trust the path you're on.
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Lalah Delia
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Inspiration is a God thing. Inspiration is God Himself speaking into the human spirit.
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Cindy Trimm (Commanding Your Morning Daily Devotional: Unleash God's Power in Your Life--Every Day of the Year)
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My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope.
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H.G. Wells (The Island of Dr. Moreau)
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Love yourself, even a little bit each day, and your life will bloom into infinite joy.
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Amy Leigh Mercree
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Sometime we get so addicted to murmuring about the past and blaming the past for everything that we miss our whole future. You're not going to enjoy your future, and you're not going to enjoy your right now, if all you can do is be guilty and ashamed and afraid of your past.
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Joyce Meyer (The Confident Woman Devotional: 365 Daily Inspirations)
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The possibility of the dream gives strength.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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No matter how dysfunctional your background, how broke or broken you are, where you are today, or what anyone else says, YOU MATTER, and your life matters!
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Germany Kent
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I love to walk. Walking is a spiritual journey and a reflection of living. Each of us must determine which path to take and how far to walk; we must find our own way, what is right for one may not be for another. There is no single right way to deal with late stage cancer, to live life or approach death, or to walk an old mission trail.
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Edie Littlefield Sundby (The Mission Walker: I was given three months to live...)
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Others can't always define your true identity. They see what they 'want' to see but beyond your mess, God sees the beauty He created and still thinks it's good!
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Chinonye J. Chidolue
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Don't settle for being an option; become a priority.
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Matt Mitchell
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The farmer has patience and trusts the process. He just has the faith and deep understanding that through his daily efforts, the harvest will come.And then one day, almost out of nowhere, it does.
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Robin S. Sharma (The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life)
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Be the girl you want your daughter to be. Be the girl you want your son to date. Be classy, be smart, be real, but most importantly be nice.
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Germany Kent
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The present moment is the substance with which the future is made. Therefore, the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment. What else can you do?
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Thich Nhat Hanh (The Art of Mindful Living: How to Bring Love, Compassion, and Inner Peace into Your Daily Life)
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Tania, kehidupan harus berlanjut. Ketika kau kehilangan semangat, ingatlah kata-kataku dulu. Kehidupan ini seperti daun yang jatuh..Biarkanlah angin yang menerbangkannya.
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Tere Liye (Daun Yang Jatuh Tak Pernah Membenci Angin)
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This is the Modern Man, who cannot save himself but wants to save the world. He is the Wise who knows not. And his footsteps on the road click tic-tac, tic-tac
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Cristiane Serruya (The Modern Man: A philosophical divagation about the evil banality of daily acts)
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Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
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I want to live so that I am truly submitted to the Spirit's leading on a daily basis. Christ said its better for us that the Spirit came and I want to live like that is true. I don't want to keep crawling when I have the ability to fly.
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Francis Chan (Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit)
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Do not Blame the world. Find a solution.
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Sri Chinmoy (My Life's Soul-Journey: Daily Meditations for Ever-Increasing Spiritual Fulfillment)
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Life has bigger plans for you than you can possibly know.
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Robin S. Sharma (Daily Inspiration From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari)
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The stars have a strong effect on our daily shopping lives. Hollywood is astrology’s only credible conspiracy.
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Bauvard (Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic)
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Don’t ever stop believing in your own personal transformation. It is still happening even on the days you may not realize it or feel like it.
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Lalah Delia
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Truth is one, though the sages know it as many . God is one, though different religions approach Him differently Call Him Shiva, Vishnu, Allah, Jesus or any other form of God that you believe in . Our paths may be different. Our destination is the same.
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Amish Tripathi
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Is the sunrise of Mount Fuji more beautiful from the one you see in the countryside a bit closer to home? Are the beaches of Indonesia really that much more serene than those we have in our own countries? The point I make is not to downplay the marvels of the world, but to highlight the notion of the human tendency in our failure to see the beauty in our daily lives when we take off the travel goggles when we are home. It is the preconceived notion of a place that creates the difference in perception of environments rather than the actual geological location.
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Forrest Curran
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I believe confidence is all about being positive concerning what you can do -- and not worrying over what you can't do. A confident person is open to learning, because she knows that her confidence allows her to walk through life's doorways, eager to discover what waits on the other side. She knows that every new unknown is a chance to learn more about herself and unleash her abilities.
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Joyce Meyer (The Confident Woman Devotional: 365 Daily Inspirations)
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Our world has created a false unrealistic image of what women are supposed to look like and act like. But the truth is that every woman was not created by God to be skinny, with a flawless complexion and long flowing hair. Not every woman was intended to juggle a career as well as all of the other duties of being a wife, mother, citizen, and daughter. Single women should not be made to feel they are missing somenthing because they are not married. Married women should not be made to feel they must have a career to be complete. We must have the freedom to be our individual selves.
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Joyce Meyer (The Confident Woman Devotional: 365 Daily Inspirations)
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Try to pause each day and take a walk to view nature.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Positive thinking is powerful thinking. If you want happiness, fulfillment, success and inner peace, start thinking you have the power to achieve those things. Focus on the bright side of life and expect positive results.
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Germany Kent
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Daily Reminders 1) Never compare myself to other people. It is comparing my behind the scenes to their highlight reel. 2) Stay here, now. I will not think to far forward or back. 3) It's okay to not be fine. 4) Taylor need's me so I'm going to take care of myself.
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Taylor Swift
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Transmutation: β€’ Grapes must be crushed to make wine β€’ Diamonds form under pressure β€’ Olives are pressed to release oil β€’ Seeds grow in darkness Whenever you feel crushed, under pressure, pressed, or in darkness, you’re in a powerful place of transformation/transmutation.
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Lalah Delia
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Giving birth does not make you a mother. Being there daily in good times and bad to provide, care, comfort, teach, sing, feed, clothe, encourage, discipline, clean, hug, pray, listen, cry, experience, protect, kiss, read, advocate, bandage, educate, coach, cheer, laugh, play and love unconditionally...well, that's a mother.
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C. Toni Graham
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It was a very ordinary day, the day I realised that my becoming is my life and my home and that I don't have to do anything but trust the process, trust my story and enjoy the journey. It doesn't really matter who I've become by the finish line, the important things are the changes from this morning to when I fall asleep again, and how they happened, and who they happened with. An hour watching the stars, a coffee in the morning with someone beautiful, intelligent conversations at 5am while sharing the last cigarette. Taking trains to nowhere, walking hand in hand through foreign cities with someone you love. Oceans and poetry. It was all very ordinary until my identity appeared, until my body and mind became one being. The day I saw the flowers and learned how to turn my daily struggles into the most extraordinary moments. Moments worth writing about. For so long I let my life slip through my fingers, like water. I'm holding on to it now, and I'm not letting go.
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Charlotte Eriksson (Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps)
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For studying courage in textbooks doesn’t make you any more courageous than eating cow meat makes you bovine. By some mysterious mental mechanism, people fail to realize that the principal thing you can learn from a professor is how to be a professorβ€”and the chief thing you can learn from, say, a life coach or inspirational speaker is how to become a life coach or inspirational speaker. So remember that the heroes of history were not classicists and library rats, those people who live vicariously in their texts. They were people of deeds and had to be endowed with the spirit of risk taking
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life)
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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.
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Charlotte Eriksson
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...one had to expect very littleβ€”almost nothingβ€”from life, Aaron knew, one had to be grateful, not always trying to seize the days like some maniac of living, but to give oneself up, be seized by the days, the months and years, be taken up in the froth of sun and moon, some pale and smoothie-ed river-cloud of life, a long, drawn-out, gray sort of enlightenment, so that when it was time to die, one did not scream swear words and knock things down, did not make a scene, but went easily with understanding and tact, and quietly, in a lightly pummeled way, having been consoled–having allowed to be consoled–by the soft, generous, worthlessness of it all, having allowed to be massaged by the daily beating of life, instead of just beaten.
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Tao Lin (Bed)
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Today I wondered why my eyelashes aren't thick enough and why my feet aren't small enough. Then it hit me. Why do we take these insignificant things like millimeters on lashes and shoeboxes and then try to fit ourselves into those stupid molds? Why do I take the beauty that is me, and measure it up to a shoe size? A length of hair on my eyes? Am I not the more wonderful creation, far more great than those stupid things? Why do we take ourselves and desecrate ourselves daily? Pushing ourselves into cubicles because we think we are supposed to fit into them? Are we ice cubes? And suddenly I just don't understand the inadequacies anymore! Because they're not even inadequacies, at all! I will laugh and be beautiful.
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C. JoyBell C.
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The spirit in the body is like wine in a glass; when it spills, it seeps into air and earth and light….It’s a mistake to think it’s the small things we control and not the large, it’s the other way around! We can’t stop the small accident, the tiny detail that conspires into fate: the extra moment you run back for something forgotten, a moment that saves you from an accident – or causes one. But we can assert the largest order, the large human values daily, the only order large enough to see.
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Anne Michaels (Fugitive Pieces)
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Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies. Loss hurts and bleeds and aches. Loss is always ready to call out your name in the night. Loss follows you home and taunts you at the breakfast table, follows you to work in the morning. You have to make accommodations and broker deals to soften the rabbit punches that loss brings to your daily life. You have to take the word "loser" and add it to your resume and walk around with it on your name tag as it hand-feeds you your own shit in dosages too large for even great beasts to swallow. The word "loser" follows you, bird-dogs you, sniffs you out of whatever fields you hide in because you have to face things clearly and you cannot turn away from what is true.
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Pat Conroy (My Losing Season: A Memoir)
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Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, β€” solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better--but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care. I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.' I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research. Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be. Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit. So, I believed.
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Lance Armstrong (It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life)
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In 1924, Nikola Tesla was asked why he never married? His answer was this: "I had always thought of woman as possessing those delicate qualities of mind and soul that made her in her respects far superior to man. I had put her on a lofty pedestal, figuratively speaking, and ranked her in certain important attributes considerably higher than man. I worshipped at the feet of the creature I had raised to this height, and, like every true worshiper, I felt myself unworthy of the object of my worship. But all this was in the past. Now the soft voiced gentle woman of my reverent worship has all but vanished. In her place has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies on making herself as much as possible like man - in dress, voice, and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind. The world has experience many tragedies, but to my mind the greatest tragedy of all is the present economic condition wherein women strive against men, and in many cases actually succeed in usurping their places in the professions and in industry. This growing tendency of women to overshadow the masculine is a sign of a deteriorating civilization. Practically all the great achievements of man until now have been inspired by his love and devotion to woman. Man has aspired to great things because some woman believed in him, because he wished to command her admiration and respect. For these reasons he has fought for her and risked his life and his all for her time and time again. Perhaps the male in society is useless. I am frank to admit that I don't know. If women are beginning to feel this way about it - and there is striking evidence at hand that they do - then we are entering upon the cruelest period of the world's history. Our civilization will sink to a state like that which is found among the bees, ants, and other insects - a state wherein the male is ruthlessly killed off. In this matriarchal empire which will be established, the female rules. As the female predominates, the males are at her mercy. The male is considered important only as a factor in the general scheme of the continuity of life. The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me." Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, page 23. August 10, 1924.
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Nikola Tesla