“
I Am Vertical
But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Collected Poems)
“
Good health, longevity, happiness, a loving family, self-reliance, fine friends … if you [have] five, you’re a rich man….
”
”
Thomas J. Stanley (The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy)
“
In the end, you will not see the physical beauty in others that caught your eye, but the fire that burned within them. This kind of beauty is the bonfire you had to attend.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
A man that knows your worth doesn't need to be told how to treat you. That's a given! You won't have to question his feelings, his motives, nor his intentions. How will I know? You ask. See, he will freely show you how he feels and prove it consistently. If you're settling for anything less than what you deserve. Then, maybe you don't even know your worth.
”
”
Amaka Imani Nkosazana (Sweet Destiny)
“
Real connection (and if it's LOVE, then real love)--goes beyond those not-so-perfect and superficial and idiosyncratic things that simply make us individuals. The trust and longevity of a relationship between two individuals is established through time and learning each other, and discovering a harmony at the core of their connection. And it becomes powerful because of where it resides--at the center of who we are--the very essence of our being.
”
”
Kelli Jae Baeli
“
Gale didn't say, "Katniss will pick whoever it will break her heart to give up," or even "whoever she can't live without." Those would have implied I was motivated by a kind of passion. But my best friend predicts I will choose the person "I can't survive without." There's not the least indication that love, desire, or even compatibility will sway me. I'll just conduct an unfeeling assessment of what my potential mates can offer me.
As if in the end, it will be the question of whether a baker or a hunter will extend my longevity the most. It's a horrible thing for Gale to say, for Peeta not to refute. Especially when every emotion I have has been taken or exploited by the Capitol or the rebels. At the moment, the choice would be simple. I can survive just fine without either of them.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
“
Just like it is so important to understand the difference in thinking and feeling to increase our Emotional Intelligence, it is important to take the time to understand the difference in emotional feelings and gut feelings to further increase our intelligence and facility of intuition that we call Intuitional Intelligence.
”
”
Martha Char Love (Increasing Intuitional Intelligence: How the Awareness of Instinctual Gut Feelings Fosters Human Learning, Intuition, and Longevity)
“
Time, too, will die, just as we do, when the universe dies, and is born again. Time’s a living thing, just as we are, with birth, longevity, and extinction. Time has a heartbeat, but it isn’t ours, no matter how much of ourselves we sacrifice to it. We don’t need Time. Time needs us. Even Time loves company.
”
”
Gregory David Roberts (The Mountain Shadow)
“
Before he'd met Anna, he'd thought he'd known what love was, thought he'd understood about friendship, romance, all of it, but he hadn't - not at all. Until he'd held Anna in his arms, until he'd let her see into his soul, until he'd heard her cry gently when he made love to her for the first time, he'd known nothing. And now, sometimes, when it was just the two of them, when he smelt her hair, caught her eye, he felt as though he knew all there was to know about everything, as though they knew the secret of life. A secret far more powerful than Longevity, far more long-lasting.
”
”
Gemma Malley (The Resistance (The Declaration, #2))
“
If you're lucky enough you'll come across a certain individual who will completely shake up your life. A spark so deep you feel it before meeting them, a soul preparation for a drastic change. Whether this chance meeting it fleeting or holds longevity, it's a signpost you won't be able to ignore and you'll be a completely different person to whom you were before. This is magic, this is fate, this is purpose. And this is why we are alive, to experience a soul in human form and embrace The depth of life.
”
”
Nikki Rowe
“
If you have to make a daily choice to be in a relationship then you are married to the past, not the person.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
True love is not:
A person’s looks
A person’s career or accomplishments
Longevity of a relationship
Children together
Memories made
Words spoken or declared
Chance meetings you feel are fate
Hobbies and interests shared
Or, Religious beliefs in common
True love is:
Seeing the potential in someone and helping them to rise and meet it. It is selfless. It doesn’t care about being right or winning. It cares about you choosing right. It is your heart breaking when they go against the goodness in their nature and it is your heart rejoicing when he or she does something so generous and kind for others, that it inspires you to be even better. It is confidence that doesn’t seek to possess, rather to set your soul free.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
I have always been a little disconcerted by the passion women have for behaving beautifully at the deathbed of those they love. Sometimes it seems as if they grudge the longevity which postpones their chance of an effective scene.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (The Moon and Sixpence)
“
I am forever astonished at the longevity of childhood. How it never ends. How we are what we were. How turtles and engines and stolen kisses leave their jet trail across our gaping lives.
”
”
Tim O'Brien (Tomcat in Love)
“
Our Human thinking brain operates by way of prediction, comparing new experiences to and constructing its perception from what is already believed to be true due to past experience. Without a mature intuition – thinking and feeling balanced and united—even groups trying to work together will only be capable of experiencing what has been going on in this sensory brain since about the 8th Century to the present.
”
”
Martha Char Love (Increasing Intuitional Intelligence: How the Awareness of Instinctual Gut Feelings Fosters Human Learning, Intuition, and Longevity)
“
What better way could we teach our children the importance of learning to push forward despite failure than to openly embrace in the education system Trial and Learn as our truly only human learning process. In doing so, we eliminate the stigma of failure and view it as an important part of the process of learning.
”
”
Martha Char Love (Increasing Intuitional Intelligence: How the Awareness of Instinctual Gut Feelings Fosters Human Learning, Intuition, and Longevity)
“
All of the things that were shown in early studies to be good for longevity—happy marriages, healthy bodies—are ours to have. We live long,
good lives. We die on our eightieth birthdays, surrounded by our families, before dementia sets in. Cancer, heart disease, and most debilitating
illnesses are almost entirely eradicated. This is as close to perfect as any society has ever managed to get.
”
”
Ally Condie (Matched (Matched, #1))
“
As Gill says, "every man is called to give love to the work of his hands. Every man is called to be an artist." The small family farm is one of the last places - they are getting rarer every day - where men and women (and girls and boys, too) can answer that call to be an artist, to learn to give love to the work of their hands. It is one of the last places where the maker - and some farmers still do talk about "making the crops" - is responsible, from start to finish, for the thing made. This certainly is a spiritual value, but it is not for that reason an impractical or uneconomic one. In fact, from the exercise of this responsibility, this giving of love to the work of the hands, the farmer, the farm, the consumer, and the nation all stand to gain in the most practical ways: They gain the means of life, the goodness of food, and the longevity and dependability of the sources of food, both natural and cultural. The proper answer to the spiritual calling becomes, in turn, the proper fulfillment of physical need.
”
”
Wendell Berry (Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food)
“
Longevity can't be the only test of love.
”
”
Bette Greene (Morning Is a Long Time Coming (Summer of My German Soldier, #2))
“
The measure of a life is not in its longevity but in its generosity.
”
”
Debasish Mridha
“
No marriage is perfect. There were times when she gave up on us. There were even more times when I gave up on us. The secret to our longevity is that we never gave up at the same time.
”
”
Colleen Hoover
“
Enlightenment humanism, then, is far from being a crowd-pleaser. The idea that the ultimate good is to use knowledge to enhance human welfare leaves people cold. Deep explanations of the universe, the planet, life, the brain? Unless they use magic, we don't want to believe them! Saving the lives of billions, eradicating disease, feeding the hungry? Bo-ring. People extending their compassion to all of humankind? Not good enough—we want the laws of physics to care about us! Longevity, health, understanding, beauty, freedom, love? There's got to be more to life than that!
”
”
Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
“
Learn the language you need.
Learn the language of business (accounting)
Learn the language of scalability (programming)
Learn the language of entrepreneurship (influence)
”
”
Richard Heart (sciVive)
“
What you discover is that if you want to live properly in this world, you need to be a little greedy.
”
”
Richard Heart (sciVive)
“
Knowing when not to take an item, however deflating, is mandatory for a thief expecting career longevity.
”
”
Michael Finkel (The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession)
“
Q: Yet, I cannot see how can anything come to be without a cause.
M: When I say a thing is without a cause, I mean it can be with-out a particular cause. Your own mother was needed to give you birth; But you could not have been born without the sun and the earth. Even these could not have caused your birth without your own desire to be born. It is desire that gives birth, that gives name and form. The desirable is imagined and wanted and manifests itself as something tangible or con-ceivable. Thus is created the world in which we live, our personal world. The real world is beyond the mind's ken; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes.
Q: What do you mean by holes? And how to find them?
M: Look at the net and its many contradictions. You do and undo at every step. You want peace, love, happiness and work hard to create pain, hatred and war. You want longevity and overeat, you want friendship and exploit. See your net as made of such contradictions and remove them -- *your very seeing them will make them go*
”
”
Nisargadatta Maharaj
“
You’re only awake 16 hours a day. Now subtract out all the hours where you have to be doing something. How many hours are left? Three? This is your free time. Choose wisely how you spend these precious few hours.
”
”
Richard Heart (sciVive)
“
People have been on earth in our present form for only about 100,000 years, and in so many ways we’re still ironing out our kinks. These turtles we’ve been traveling with, they outrank us in longevity, having earned three more zeros than we. They’ve got one hundred million years of success on their resume, and they’ve learned something about how to survive in the world. And this, I think, is part of it: they have settled upon peaceful career paths, with a stable rhythm. If humans could survive another one hundred million years, I expect we would no longer find ourselves riding bulls. It’s not so much that I think animals have rights; it’s more that I believe humans have hearts and minds- though I’ve yet to see consistent, convincing proof of either. Turtles may seem to lack sense, but they don’t do senseless things. They’re not terribly energetic, yet they do not waste energy… turtles cannot consider what might happen yet nothing turtles do threatens anyone’s future. Turtles don’t think about the next generation, but they risk and provide all they can to ensure that there will be one. Meanwhile, we profess to love our own offspring above all else, yet above all else it is they from whom we daily steal. We cannot learn to be more like turtles, but from turtles we could learn to be more human. That is the wisdom carried within one hundred million years of survival. What turtles could learn from us, I can’t quite imagine.
”
”
Carl Safina (Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth's Last Dinosaur)
“
Life is not a race - but indeed a journey. Be honest. Work hard. Be choosy. Say "thank you", "I love you", and "great job" to someone each day. Go to church, take time for prayer. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh. Let your handshake mean more than pen and paper. Love your life and what you've been given, it is not accidental ~ search for your purpose and do it as best you can. Dreaming does matter. It allows you to become that which you aspire to be. Laugh Often. Appreciate the little things in life and enjoy them. Some of the best things really are free. Do not worry, less wrinkles are more becoming. Forgive, it frees the soul. Take time for yourself ~ plan for longevity. Recognize the special people you've been blessed to know. Live for today, enjoy the moment.
”
”
Bonnie Mohr
“
The guy that pays you decides what you do with your time.
”
”
Richard Heart (sciVive)
“
Gratitude is the bridge that merges your love with longevity. It is the vital ingredient for a lasting relationship.
”
”
Steve Maraboli
“
Smile: Happiness Is Right Under Your Nose!
”
”
Mary Anne Puleio (Smile: Happiness Is Right Under Your Nose!: How the Power of Your Smile Connects You to Happiness, Love, Longevity and Much More)
“
You know what I think prolongs life?" Harry has said. "Art and Music. Beyond that, it is to have a heart full of love, That is the most important thing".
”
”
Neenah Ellis (If I Live to Be 100: Lessons from the Centenarians)
“
If love is blind; Teach it braille !
”
”
Merlana Krishna Raymond
“
There would be comfort and longevity in such a love, and that was precisely what made the prospect so terrifying.
”
”
Victoria Holmes (Poptastic)
“
And as we shall see in forthcoming chapters, purpose and love are essential ingredients in all Blue Zone recipes for longevity.
”
”
Dan Buettner (The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest)
“
My confidence that there is a loving God who cares at all for your health or your longevity, based on what I see in the physical universe, is so low that it's not something that I would spend any time investing in, to try to explore any further about whether or not it's true. I'll let other people do that exploring."
Read in the New Yorker, sometime in March, 2015
”
”
Neil deGrasse Tyson
“
You have a real family , and if you think any of us would've chosen this world over those things—wouldn't have given up our loops and longevity and peculiar powers long ago for even a taste of what you have—then you really are living in a fantasy world. It makes me absolutely ill to think you might throw that all away—and for what?"
"For you, you idiot! I love you!
”
”
Ransom Riggs
“
What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes instead, that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he
knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learnt that Love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by Love. He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. And he
apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death.
He has no intention of converting this human society of ours into an efficient machine for efficient machine-operators, dominated by master mechanics. Men are put into this world, he realizes, to
struggle, to suffer, to contend against the evil that is in their neighbors and in themselves, and to aspire toward the triumph of Love. They are put into this world to live like men, and to die like men. He seeks to preserve a society which allows men to attain manhood, rather than keeping them within bonds of perpetual childhood. With Dante, he looks upward from this place of slime, this world of gorgons and chimeras, toward the light which gives Love to this poor earth and all the stars. And, with Burke, he knows that "they will never love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate.
”
”
Russell Kirk (Prospects for Conservatives)
“
I have always been a little disconcerted by the passion women have for behaving beautifully at the death-bed of those they love. Sometimes it seems as if they grudge the longevity which postpones their chance of an effective scene.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (The Moon and Sixpence)
“
I have always been a little disconcerted by the passion women have for behaving beautifully at the death–bed of those they love. Sometimes it seems as if they grudge the longevity which postpones their chance of an effective scene.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (The Moon and Sixpence)
“
Then his attention was caught by the bird of paradise.
"So that's what that looks like?" he asked. "Like one of the paper cranes we had to burn after Pearl Harbor." He took a step closer. "That fiery orange blossom - damned if it doesn't look like a phoenix rising from the ashes."
Ruth understood, at last, what the crane flower had represented to her mother. It wasn't Hawai'i, as much as she had loved Hawai'i. It wasn't good fortune; and it wasn't longevity. No, not even that.
It was rebirth.
”
”
Alan Brennert (Daughter of Moloka'i (Moloka'i, #2))
“
My parents have been married for forty years. Both sets of my grandparents made it past their sixtieth anniversaries. I think they all attributed the longevity of their marriages to passion. Live to love. Fight to keep the love. Make up to do it all over again.
”
”
Jewel E. Ann (When Life Happened)
“
Relationships with expiration dates teach us that love doesn’t have to last forever to be meaningful. That someone doesn’t have to stick around to make an impact. That the best things in life are not always measured by their longevity but by their intensity. Their complexity.
”
”
Thought Catalog (Read This If: A Collection of Essays that Prove Someone Else Gets it, Too)
“
Many of the Chinese medical texts dating back from 2,000 years ago lament the ills of 'modern times' and allude to the traditional 'good old days' another 3,000 years before that. A common theme in these texts is the decline in human health due to careless lifestyles and the deterioration in human relations due to lack of love: degenerative conditions that Taoist alchemy as well as psychoneuroimmunology would link as symptoms of the same syndrome.
In his essay entitled 'Loving People' Chang San-feng, the thirteenth-century master, summed it up by saying: 'Therefore to those who want to know the way to deal with the world, I suggest, Love People.' This is a potent description for health and longevity that generates positive healing energy throughout the human system by stimulating the internal alchemy of psychoneuroimmunology.
”
”
Daniel Reid
“
Fasting in each of the senses, strengthens the grip of life.
After silence, each uttering as music.
After hunger, each tasting, delicious.
After smell, each flower, a heavenly scent.
After darkness, each sunray, as meeting the angels.
After winter, delicious heavenly scent of angelic music, warming of heart, elevation of soul.
After great effort, blissful rest.
Fast from heat, love, company, intimacy, curiosity. Fast in all things.
Occasionally deprive yourself of life, and truly you will live. Let each machine in each factory have its rest and maintenance, for they will strengthen in efficiency.
Recovery.
”
”
Tharistw
“
I will have longevity in a relationship like that, but my
guess is that I will never grow that tree, and it’s OK,
because I’m going to grow a more varied garden. So I’m
realizing that there isn’t necessarily going to be one long
love for me, but maybe a series of shorter love stories. Just
as making peace with what I don’t get is going to be a
series of acceptances.
”
”
Natasha Lunn (Conversations on Love)
“
When the culture of the East, its chief characteristic, is added to the strength of body and the strength of mind of the agricultural center, its special contribution, and these two great characteristics are constantly imbued with the spirit of independence and love of liberty which lives in the hearts of the dwellers of the mountains, their main quality added to the national character, there is every reason to believe that we shall have a people and institutions such as will be permanent; with such wealth of resources, of such high education and intelligence, and of such vitality, of such longevity, of such devotion to freedom and hostility to centralization and tyranny as shall enable this Nation of ours to stand indefinitely; and to maintain in the future years its manifest destiny of leading the peoples and nations of earth in the principles of free government, constitutional security and individual liberty. Under these and under these alone, the faculties, the aspirations and inspirations of mankind may be unfolded into their full flowering to the fruition of an ever greater and more humane civilization.
”
”
Charles Edwin Winter (Four Hundred Million Acres: The Public Lands and Resources)
“
There’s something beautiful about going through pictures from decades ago and saying, ‘Remember?’ You can’t do that with somebody new. There’s nothing to remember. There’s no shared history—only the brand new. I wanted to remember with someone. I wanted to remember all of it—the first kiss, the first time, the first child, the first graduation. But I never found someone to remember with.
”
”
Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev (Vanishing Bodies: An Epic Science Fiction Romance)
“
Special combo, you got it," I say into the phone. "Which one?"
"The winter melon soup."
Winter melon is symbolic of a wife- a special order of the soup means someone's is about to be abducted. A special order of egg fried rice? Someone's kid. Fried pot stickers? A husband. Shanghai chow mein with chopped-up noodles? Someone's doomed to have their life cut short, the promise of longevity broken.
”
”
Elsie Chapman (Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love)
“
The outlook embedded in these three words does more than connect us in some ineffable fashion. According to Dr. Laura Carstensen, an influential psychology professor who runs the Stanford Life-span Development Laboratory and Stanford Center on Longevity, it also has the power to help us to live in the present, forgive more easily, love more deeply, and experience more gratitude and contentment, and less stress and anger.
”
”
Susan Cain (Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole)
“
The expression of God in human nature is universal love. It is within us, not outside of or separate from us. Universal love is the capacity to embrace all in the universe, from the smallest ant to the unfathomable sky, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad. Universal love can disarm all prejudices, dissolve all differences, and bring the mind back to one core awareness — that everything comes from the same source.
”
”
Maoshing Ni (Secrets of Longevity: Hundreds of Ways to Live to Be 100)
“
How could she love someone she barely knew? A year ago she would have said it was impossible: love was a choice people made daily and longevity was its measure. Love did not crash land in your living room leaving you squinting into daylight, picking through the debris of your former life. Only now could she see that it was sometimes a phantom thing, a stray that wandered the periphery of your life and moved in the minute you opened the door for who knew how long?
”
”
Jennifer Vandever (American Tango)
“
If you believe in learning, you believe in inquiry.
If you believe in education, you believe in literacy.
If you believe in knowledge, you believe in curiosity.
If you believe in understanding, you believe in practicality.
If you believe in reason, you believe in sanity.
If you believe in wisdom, you believe in sagacity.
If you believe in dreams, you believe in fantasy.
If you believe in diligence, you believe in prosperity.
If you believe in exellence, you believe in mastery.
If you believe in brilliance, you believe in longevity.
If you believe in wealth, you believe in luxury.
If you believe in justice, you believe in liberty.
If you believe in tolerance, you believe in equality.
If you believe in respect, you believe in courtesy.
If you believe in manners, you believe in civility.
If you believe in honor, you believe in decency.
If you believe in culture, you believe in history.
If you believe in tradition, you believe in stability.
If you believe in order, you believe in harmony.
If you believe in time, you believe in eternity.
If you believe in fate, you believe in destiny.
If you believe in life, you believe in reality.
If you believe in permanance, you believe in infinity.
If you believe in virtue, you believe in morality.
If you believe in peace, you believe in humanity.
If you believe in love, you believe in divinity.
If you believe in God, you believe in spirituality.
If you believe in faith, you believe in expectancy.
If you believe in religion, you believe in sanctity.
If you believe in Heaven, you believe in perpetuity.
If you believe in the afterlife, you believe in immortality.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Most of all, we love a good study. Newscasters know instinctively that the best way to get people’s ears to perk up is with these five words: “A new study has found.” It matters little what follows next. A new study has found that red wine is good for you / kills you. A new study has found that homework dulls the brain / enlarges it. We especially like studies that lend credibility to our own idiosyncrasies, as in, “A new study has found that people with messy desks are smarter” or “A new study has found that moderate daily flatulence improves longevity.
”
”
Eric Weiner (The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World)
“
So it is that the average life expectancy, the relative longevity, of memories being much greater for those that commemorate poetic sensation than for those left by the pains of love, the heartbreak I suffered at that time because of Gilberte has faded forever, and has been outlived by the pleasure I derive, whenever I want to read off from a sundial of remembrance the minutes between a quarter past twelve and one o’clock on a fine day in May, from a glimpse of myself chatting with Mme Swann, sharing her sunshade as though standing with her in the pale glow of an arbor of wisteria.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
“
A person seeks to quantify their existence. Do we measure a person’s life by its longevity or by assessing the warmth of its blaze? Do we measure a person by their brainpower or by the heartiness of his or her spine? Do earthy deeds count for more than intellectual opinions? What is more important, the work that a person produces or the quality of life that effuses from their being? Does it matter how we live and how we die, if we love or hate, are kind or mean, generous or stingy? Does it matter that we struggle to express personal doubts and toil in an effort to obtain redemption for our personal lapses?
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
The basic tenet for longevity is passion. You have to love what you're doing. If you're doing it for any other reason, you'll ultimately fail. You do something not because you want to, you do something because you have to, because there's an obsession within you. If someone comes to me and says, "I'm thinking about saying in music or..." I say, "Stop. Do the other thing." If you have to ask yourself if you should be doing this, the answer is no. You have to find something you totally believe in. That's what will get you through the tough times. Passion will not only help you succeed, it will get you through the failures.
”
”
Paul Stanley of KISS in the December
“
Remember, every relationship is an opportunity to either discover more of your individuality and expand as a human being or do the pretzel dance and twist yourself into a smaller version of you based on who you think your partner wants you to be. Despite what your mind tells you, your partner is attracted to the real you—the authentic you that he first met—not the twisted version you think he wants.
When you commit to being yourself from the start and to communicating your truth no matter what, you’ll avoid virtually all the drama, angst, and anxiety of not knowing where things stand that many other women experience on a daily basis. Most women are afraid to be real because they mistakenly believe that they’re not enough as they are. This “I’m not enough” mind-set not only is inaccurate but also destroys your well-being and ability to have a loving and satisfying relationship.
Being yourself and speaking your truth from the moment you meet is the secret to having relationships unfold naturally and authentically. It is also the key to maintaining your irresistibility.
Be yourself. Communicate what works you and what doesn’t. Do it from day one and never stop. This is the most powerful step you can take at the beginning of any relationship to set it up for long-term success.
Speaking of relationship success, don’t confuse relationship longevity with relationship success. Just because a relationship lasts for many years does not mean it’s a success. Many couples cling to a lifeless and miserable existence they call a relationship because they are too afraid to be alone or to face the uncertainty of the unknown. Living a life of quiet desperation devoid of true love, passion, and spiritual partnership is not my idea of success.
Relationships, again, are life’s grandest opportunity for spiritual growth and evolution. They exist so that we may discover ourselves, awaken our hearts, and heal our barriers to love. Every relationship you’ve ever had, or you ever will have, is designed to bring you closer to your divinity and ability to experience and express the very best of who you are.
”
”
Marie Forleo (Make Every Man Want You: How to Be So Irresistible You'll Barely Keep from Dating Yourself!)
“
The news of [James Baldwin's] death reached me in Trinidad around midnight. I was lecturing in the country about African-American literature and liberation, longevity and love, commitment and courage. I could not sleep. I got up and walked out of my hotel room into a night filled with stars. And I sat down in the park and talked to him. About the world. About his work. How grateful we all are that he walked on the earth, that he breathed, that he preached, that he came toward us baptizing us with his holy words. And some of us were saved because of him. Harlem man. Genius. Piercing us with his eyes and his pen.
How to write of this beautiful big-eyed man who took on the country with his words? How to make anyone understand his beauty in a country that hates Blacks?
”
”
Sonia Sanchez (Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems)
“
God is love. God is compassion. When you love a person, a people, an entity, a nation and a continent, there should be mercy in your heart that loves. If these two attributes are missing in your heart, then there is cruelty and all evil and death finds its way. God is life, love and compassionate...When somebody encourages you not to love and receive God in your life and heart, then they do not love you, they want you to be broken. They will be happy in your demise. Love God and be protected in his everlasting healing, cleansing and divine protection. Yeah, says the Lord God Almighty. So make it a habit to read all the Stellah Mupanduki books breathed by the Holy Spirit of a Sovereign God and Written by the Finger of God Almighty for your divine protection, salvation and peace. There is mercy and love in these God-given books for the world and people. Hallelujah.
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Stellah Mupanduki
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I am Vertical
by Sylvia Plath
But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.
Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them --
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.
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Sylvia Plath
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Grief and loss are probably the most fearful creatures that exist. They can teach us to worry about the future, to question the longevity of contentment, and prove us unable to enjoy happiness when we have it. But loss shouldn't be a fearful creature. It should be a creature of wisdom. It should teach us not to fear that tomorrow may never come, but live fully, as though the hours are melting away like seconds. Loss should teach us to cherish those we love, to never do anything that will result in regret, and to cheer on tomorrow with all of it's promises of greatness.
Sometimes strength and courage aren't in the big things. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is enjoy what we have and be positive about what makes us lucky. It's easy and un-extraordinary to be frightened of life. It's far more difficult to arm yourself with the good stuff despite all the bad and step foot into tomorrow as an everyday warrior.
(afterward)
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Samantha Young (On Dublin Street (On Dublin Street, #1))
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The Four Manifestations of Beauty. “Would you like to know what’s inside?” he asked. I nodded. Anyone who overheard us would have thought we were speaking of school lessons. But really, he was speaking of love. He turned the page. “With any form of beauty, there are four levels of ability. This is true of painting, calligraphy, literature, music, dance. The first level is Competent.” We were looking at a page that showed two identical renderings of a bamboo grove, a typical painting, well done, realistic, interesting in the detail of double lines, conveying a sense of strength and longevity. “Competence,” he went on, “is the ability to draw the same thing over and over in the same strokes, with the same force, the same rhythm, the same trueness. This kind of beauty, however, is ordinary. “The second level,” Kai Jing continued, “is Magnificent.” We looked together at another painting, of several stalks of bamboo. “This one goes beyond skill,” he said. “Its beauty is unique. And yet it is simpler, with less emphasis on the stalk and more on the leaves. It conveys both strength and solitude. The lesser painter would be able to capture one quality but not the other.
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Amy Tan (The Bonesetter's Daughter)
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Q: Yet, I cannot see how can anything come to be without a cause. M: When I say a thing is without a cause, I mean it can be with-out a particular cause. Your own mother was needed to give you birth; But you could not have been born without the sun and the earth. Even these could not have caused your birth without your own desire to be born. It is desire that gives birth, that gives name and form. The desirable is imagined and wanted and manifests itself as something tangible or con-ceivable. Thus is created the world in which we live, our personal world. The real world is beyond the mind's ken; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes. Q: What do you mean by holes? And how to find them? M: Look at the net and its many contradictions. You do and undo at every step. You want peace, love, happiness and work hard to create pain, hatred and war. You want longevity and overeat, you want friendship and exploit. See your net as made of such contradictions and remove them -- your very seeing them will make them go.
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Anonymous
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There are kinds of food we’re hard wired to love. Salt, sugars, and fats. Food that, over the course of the history of our species, has helped us get through some long winters, and plow through some extreme migrations. There are also certain kinds of information we’re hard wired to love: affirmation is something we all enjoy receiving, and the confirmation of our beliefs helps us form stronger communities. The spread of fear and its companion, hate, are clearly survival instincts, but more benign acts like gossip also help us spread the word about things that could be a danger to us. In the world of food, we’ve seen massive efficiencies leveraged by massive corporations that have driven the cost of a calorie down so low that now obesity is more of a threat than famine. Those same kinds of efficiencies are now transforming our information supply: we’ve learned how to produce and distribute information in a nearly free manner. The parallels between what’s happened to our food and what’s happened to our information are striking. Driven by a desire for more profits, and a desire to feed more people, manufacturers figured out how to make food really cheap; and the stuff that’s the worst for us tends to be the cheapest to make. As a result, a healthy diet — knowing what to consume and what to avoid — has gone from being a luxury to mandatory for our longevity. Just as food companies learned that if they want to sell a lot of cheap calories, they should pack them with salt, fat, and sugar — the stuff that people crave — media companies learned that affirmation sells a lot better than information. Who wants to hear the truth when they can hear that they’re right? Because of the inherent social nature of information, the consequences of these new efficiencies are far more dramatic than even the consequence of physical obesity. Our information habits go beyond affecting the individual. They have serious social consequences. Much as a poor diet gives us a variety of diseases, poor information diets give us new forms of ignorance — ignorance that comes not from a lack of information, but from overconsumption of it, and sicknesses and delusions that don’t affect the underinformed but the hyperinformed and the well educated.
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Clay A. Johnson (The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption)
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Perhaps no topic touches on the importance of choice in longevity as directly as does that of suicide. The act of taking one's own life is truly a tragedy because it creates so many victims. Family and countless friends are left to bear feelings of undeserved misery and guilt. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is written in nine verses of scripture. Not one of them grants self-exclusion. The rational mind knows it is wrong.
Unfortunately, forces of stress and depression incite behavior that is not always rational. . . .
We know that the good done and the desires of the heart will also be weighed when final judgment is rendered. Alma taught: [Alma 41:2-3.] . . .
Repentance operates in the spirit world as well as on earth. . . .
Suicide is a choice--a grievous choice--that abbreviates longevity. Its victims include those who suffer because of that choice. They need and deserve the reassurance of the gospel and the knowledge that life for their loved one continues. Immortality of the soul applies to all, as does the privilege of repentance and forgiveness.
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Russell M. Nelson
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To someone who didn’t know yachts, they were simply huge golden metal hooks in the shape of an anchor, but I knew better. Every man who owned a yacht had a set of loose sea hooks, and whenever he was seeing someone he loved, someone he couldn’t live without, he was supposed to personalize them and weld them onto the ship’s real anchor. They were a symbol of longevity, a way of saying “I want to be with you.
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Whitney G. (Mid-Life Love (Mid-Life Love, #1))
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Creative thinking, working with your mind, that’s my number-one prescription for longevity. If you stop thinking, if you stop wondering, you die.
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Gary Shteyngart (Super Sad True Love Story)
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In the words of George Valliant, the study’s pioneer, there are two pillars to happiness: one is love; the other is finding a way of coping with life that doesn’t push love away. Earning more does make you happier, but love makes you happy.
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Lynda Gratton (The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity)
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Life is not about longevity but about effectiveness
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Sunday Adelaja
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The truth of Self is our strongest energy on earth and has the ability to erase the past, the past that we thought was true, the past that we have suffered thinking was all that there was in our life history. That false and unholy past is erased for the truth turns on all the lights within us at last, our fear is gone, and we feel only eternal peace at the core of our caring nature. We step into the awareness of being a part of the Human Family, home at last in this connection. It is there that we find each other, there that we join in doing what we as Humans are meant to do, and there that history pivots in an eternal reality.
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Martha Char Love (Increasing Intuitional Intelligence: How the Awareness of Instinctual Gut Feelings Fosters Human Learning, Intuition, and Longevity)
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The quality of our closest relationships, more than any other factor, determines our physical health, resistance to disease, and longevity. Satisfying close relationships also improve various dimensions of each partner’s mental health. Happy marriages or long-term relationships can significantly reduce depression, anxiety disorders, addictions, and antisocial behavior, and reduce incidents of suicide.
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John M. Gottman (Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love)
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When you own a business, you help many people. When you work a job, you help one person, your boss, assuming the company has a single owner.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Products are better than services. A lot better. When you sell the hours of your life for money, you never find more hours to sell. You can also never increase your product range. You only have the hours you have.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Chew and swallow before you take your next bite.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Non-compete agreements are basically like door locks. They’re just there to keep honest people honest. Like door locks, they don’t stop anyone actually motivated to break the law.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Even if someone gave you an amazing profitable idea with a high likelihood of working, you still wouldn’t do it.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Make babies, or make sure you’re ok with being the last of a hundred-thousand-year chain of successful parents. Life’s main purpose is to survive and produce more life, and we owe this debt to the universe in return for allowing us this experience.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Imagine becoming healthier, stronger, and smarter every day. It’s possible, if you know the right secrets.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Money is what you use to get other people to do things for you, and in return someone other than you will do something for them.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Three is a magical number. Think of how many things come in threes.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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You never know when your turn of bad luck has actually saved you from an episode of worse luck.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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If consciousness is the most important and valuable thing in the entire world, then you should be mindful of what you spend that consciousness on.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Focus on what you don’t want only for a short time. Which do you think is a shorter path to fitness, understanding losing, or understanding winning? Positive phrasing is super important. If you want to be fit, focus on fitness.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Don’t become Google, and stop training your kids to be Google. You just need to be Google long enough to get something in working memory to create something beautiful. You just need to remember something, a marker, an index. You need to know how to use Google. If you know how to use Google, you can have a bad memory for the rest of your life, because the Internet is not going away.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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The consciousness economy... how the world is suffering due to bad marketing, and marketing only for things that are evil and not good.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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The hard part of working out a gym is getting to the gym. Once you’re there, everything is easy, you just hit the weights autonomously.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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A single cheat day leads to more cheat days.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Don’t confuse personal excellence with “self-help.” Calling books on how to kick ass “self-help” is kind of stupid, because it’s quite often that the people that read these books are far beyond the needing of help than those that are smart enough to read this excellent and life changing material over all of the other options on the book shelves. Who came up with that dumb ass title? How is personal excellence in any way similar to “self-help”?
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Timing to do the most difficult thing first, so you can enjoy the rest of your day without it looming over your head, is called “eating the frog.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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If you feed a positive habit long enough you don’t need discipline to do it any longer.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Don’t spend your time leeching human consciousness via games that produce nothing when you could be solving things that matter.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Sports are a means to an end. The end is love and significance. It’s important to not see them as ends. How important is our ability to put a rubber ball through a piece of metal / a basketball, soccer ball, football. How much time should we spend on this?
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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One mistake people make is not noticing that they’re chasing a small percentage difference that doesn’t matter. Another common mistake is mistaking linear changes in a number for importance, when that change is a small percentage. What really is the difference between being able to type 115 and 119 words per minutes?
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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How much time have you wasted in the past 10 to 12 years of your life, doing things that you can’t even remember doing now?
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Who made it is more important than where it was made.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Never give out personal information on an inbound call, you don’t really know to whom you’re speaking.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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Have one drawer for casual wear, one drawer for workout clothes, one drawer or section of the closet for going out clothes, and one for work clothes.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)
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We didn’t invent territory. Lots and lots of other creatures figured out that idea on their own as well. Property works.
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Richard Heart (sciVive)