Love Cannot Be Measured Quotes

Get Off The Scale! You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable. Day after day, countless people across the globe get on a scale in search of validation of beauty and social acceptance. Get off the scale! I have yet to see a scale that can tell you how enchanting your eyes are. I have yet to see a scale that can show you how wonderful your hair looks when the sun shines its glorious rays on it. I have yet to see a scale that can thank you for your compassion, sense of humor, and contagious smile. Get off the scale because I have yet to see one that can admire you for your perseverance when challenged in life. It’s true, the scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. That’s it. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength, or love. Don’t give the scale more power than it has earned. Take note of the number, then get off the scale and live your life. You are beautiful!

Love has no limitations. It cannot be measured. It has no boundaries. Although many have tried, love is indefinable.

Love cannot be measured by its duration...

I adore the way he looks at me sometimes, as if love is a quantity he cannot measure scientifically, because it multiplies too quickly.

There is a love so fierce it cannot be measured. A heart so strong it will never slow. There is a promise so sure it can never lie. And we promise that love forever. Forever and always

Let us say in passing, to be blind and to be loved, is in fact--on this earth where nothing is complete--one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. To have continually at your side a woman, a girl, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her, and because she cannot do without you, to know you are indispensable to someone necessary to you, to be able at all times to measure her affection by the degree of the presence that she gives you, and to say to yourself: She dedicates all her time to me, because I possess her whole love; to see the thought if not the face; to be sure of the fidelity of one being in a total eclipse of the world; to imagine the rustling of her dress as the rustling of wings; to hear her moving to and fro, going out, coming in, talking, singing, to think that you are the cause of those steps, those words, that song; to show your personal attraction at every moment; to feel even more powerful as your infirmity increases; to become in darkness, and by reason of darkness, the star around which this angel gravitates; few joys can equal that. The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves--say rather, loved in spite of ourselves; the conviction the blind have. In their calamity, to be served is to be caressed. Are they deprived of anything? No. Light is not lost where love enters. And what a love! A love wholly founded in purity. There is no blindness where there is certainty.

Love is beyond reason. Love is not measurable in words. Love cannot be partial; it cannot have owners. Love is essentially beyond definition or concept.

You cannot measure the loss of a human life. It's all the things a person was, all their dreams, all the people who loved them, all they hoped to be and could give back to the world.

You're art that cannot be concealed... danger that cannot be tamed... love that cannot be measured... a new law that denies a probable outcome.

You cannot measure love by a scale of degrees.

You cannot measure a man by his riches but by the quality of the woman holding his hand.

But I wonder if certain relationships are living proof of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: their position and their velocity simply cannot both be measured at the same time, not even in theory.

Community is composed of that which we don't attempt to measure, for which we keep no record and ask no recompense. Most are things we cannot measure no matter how hard we try.

Each of us is aware he's a material being, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and that the strength of all our emotions combined cannot counteract those laws. It can only hate them. The eternal belief of lovers and poets in the power of love which is more enduring that death, the finis vitae sed non amoris that has pursued us through the centuries is a lie. But this lie is not ridiculous, it's simply futile. To be a clock on the other hand, measuring the passage of time, one that is smashed and rebuilt over and again, one in whose mechanism despair and love are set in motion by the watchmaker along with the first movements of the cogs. To know one is a repeater of suffering felt ever more deeply as it becomes increasingly comical through a multiple repetitions. To replay human existence - fine. But to replay it in the way a drunk replays a corny tune pushing coins over and over into the jukebox?

An I Q cannot measure artistic ability. A potential Picasso may be a flop at objective vocabulary or number tests. An I Q does not measure a capacity for love...How do we teach a child - our own, or those in a classroom to have compassion: to allow people to be different; to understand that like is not equal; to experiment; to laugh: to love.

The theology of littleness is a basic category of Christianity. After all, the tenor of our faith is that God's distinctive greatness is revealed precisely in powerlessness. That in the long run, the strength of history is precisely in those who love, which is to say, in a strength that, properly speaking, cannot be measured according to categories of power. So in order to show who he is, God consciously revealed himself in the powerlessness of Nazareth and Golgotha. Thus, it is not the one who can destroy the most who is the most powerful...but, on the contrary, the least power of love is already greater than the greatest power of destruction.

We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don’t accept others the way they are.

It occurred to me that some people couldn't handle too much love. That everyone loves as they're able, but more, they are loved as they're able. Some are indomitable and open, like an ocean, but others aren't made to tread those waves, cannot stay afloat those waters. We embrace the kind of love we can manage. Less can be the right measure. But when it isn't, we must learn we cannot squeeze a mountain into a room with a glass ceiling. Or everything shatters.

Factfulness is … recognizing that a single perspective can limit your imagination, and remembering that it is better to look at problems from many angles to get a more accurate understanding and find practical solutions. To control the single perspective instinct, get a toolbox, not a hammer. • Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses. • Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others. • Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields. • Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives. • Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise.

Experience," which is just a euphemism for heartache and heartbreak, failed love and false promises, for every time you told yourself This is the real thing and Finally I've found my way home only to end up lost in a muck or lying across rickety train tracks, praying for deliverance and not knowing if that would mean getting run over or being spared; "experience," which is a neutral word that most people know only means something good on a resume, a term that in the rest of life is more like a criminal rap sheet full of mishaps that cannot be expunged, this indelible quality made more frightening because there are no authorities keeping track, no one is forcing you to remember these things, it is all your own fault, it is only you who cannot forget; "experience," which is supposed to be the playground and peep show and life-size labyrinth of adolescence, which can, when it occurs at the right time in life...if it is delivered in moderate and judicious measure...make you a more capable lover and friend, spouse and partner.

Suffering is the nature of this world. It is the golden standard by which all things are measured. It is not happiness that sets the bar, but agony. Even happiness cannot be fully recognized without the right measure of misery to contrast its borders. Suffering magnifies hunger-exhaustion-prods you to move when prosperity is just a dream out of reach. It is the mortal twin of eternal hope. How you respond to its touch molds you, shapes your future as it rains down oppression like fire over your shoulders. Deception. It laid over my world like a bruise. Covered it so completely I bought the lie that the shadow offered and found comfort nestled in its thorny arms. I walked the trail it dusted with breadcrumb, walked in the slip noose it had skillfully wove and dove off the cliff without realizing- willingly, with vigor. Heartbreak. There is no bigger void, no darker shade of soot- no ache more unstoppable than that of a broken heart. A heart in pieces can very much kill you-without love’s healing touch, you will surely die. They say time heals all wounds. They lied.

Fleur to Doral: "My love for you and Ari cannot be measured in words. It can only be measured by what I will do for you. Absolutely anything. By what I want for you. Absolutely everything. I would move Verdantia from her orbit to defend you from all that would hurt you." She rose and crossed to him, sliding into his lap and snuggling into his broad chest. She hugged him fiercely. "You are mine, Doral, every bit as much as Ari. Those who hurt you do so at their peril.

Love should never be too much or too less, yet it cannot be measured.

What am I?” I ask. “Unforgettable,” Reed replies. “You’re art that cannot be concealed… danger that cannot be tamed…love that cannot be measured… a new law that denies a probable outcome.

To me, animals have all the traits indicative of soul. For soul is not something we can see or measure...No one can prove that animals have souls. Asking for proof would be like demanding proof that I love my wife and children, or wanting me to prove that Handel's Messiah is a glorious masterpiece of music. Some truths simply cannot be demonstrated. But if we open our hearts to other creatures and allow ourselves to sympathize with their joys and struggles, we will find they have the power to touch and transform us. There is an inwardness in other creatures that awakens what is innermost in ourselves.

Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible—it cannot be seen or measured— yet is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession ever could.

Margery," I blurted out in a passion of frustration. "I don't know what to make of you!" Nor I you, Mary. Frankly, I cannot begin to comprehend the motives of a person who dedicates a large portion of her life to the contemplation of a God in whom she only marginally believes." I felt stunned, as if she had struck me in the diaphragm. She looked down at me, trying to measure the effect of her words. Mary, you believe in the power that the idea of God has on the human mind. You believe in the way human beings talk about the unknowable, reach for the unattainable, pattern their imperfect lives and offer their paltry best up to the beingless being that created the universe and powers its continuation. What you balk as it believing the evidence of your eyes, that God can reach out and touch a single human life in a concrete way." She smiled a sad, sad smile. "You mustn't be so cold, Mary. If you are, all you will see is a cold God, cold friends, cold love. God is not cold-never cold. God sears with heat, not ice, the heat of a thousand suns, heat that inflames but does not consume. You need warmth, Mary-you, Mary, need it. You fear it, you flirt with it, you imagine that you can stand in its rays and retain your cold intellectual attitude towards it. You imagine that you can love with your brain. Mary, oh my dear Mary, you sit in the hall and listen to me like some wild beast staring at a campfire, unable to leave, fearful of losing your freedom if you come any closer. It won't consume you; I won't capture you. Love does not do either. It only brings life. Please, Mary, don't let yourself be tied up by the bonds of cold academia." Her words, the power of her conviction, broke over me like a great wave, inundating me, robbing me of breath, and, as they receded in the room, they pulled hard at me to folllow. I struggled to keep my footing against the wash of Margery's vision, and only when it began to lose its strength, dissipated against the silence in the room, was I seized by a sudden terror at the nearness of my escape.

There is a certain tyranny about perfection, a certain exhaustion about it even, something that denies the viewer a role in its creation and that asserts itself with all the dogmatism of an unambiguous statement. True beauty cannot be measured because it is fluctuating, it has only a few angles from which it may be seen, and then not in all lights and at all times. It flirts dangerously with ugliness, it takes risks with itself, it does not side comfortably with mathematical rules of proportion, it draws its appeal from precisely those areas that will also lend themselves to ugliness. Nothing can be beautiful that does not take a calculated risk with ugliness.

How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measures of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. They would not allow this, but follow out what they say, and it comes much to this. Brothers, have you found our king? There he is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep were - no, not a truer, for the other is false, but - a true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.

Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible - it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could.

Dear God, I don't want my fear to be a barrier to the blessings you are trying to bestow. Cast out my fear, and help me to trust your perfect love. But also grant me a full measure of wisdom. Do not let me be led astray by my own desires. If it is not your will that I pursue a relationship with Levi, I pray that you will stop me. Make your message so clear that I cannot argue it away. Protect me, Lord, and show me the way I should go.

I find it wholesome to be alone in the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. i never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men then when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervis in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate, himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues;" but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

As they walked, Tehol spoke. ‘…the assumption is the foundation stone of Letherii society, perhaps all societies the world over. The notion of inequity, my friends. For from inequity derives the concept of value, whether measured by money or the countless other means of gauging human worth. Simply put, there resides in all of us the unchallenged belief that the poor and the starving are in some way deserving of their fate. In other words, there will always be poor people. A truism to grant structure to the continual task of comparison, the establishment through observation of not our mutual similarities, but our essential differences. ‘I know what you’re thinking, to which I have no choice but to challenge you both. Like this. Imagine walking down this street, doling out coins by the thousands. Until everyone here is in possession of vast wealth. A solution? No, you say, because among these suddenly rich folk there will be perhaps a majority who will prove wasteful, profligate and foolish, and before long they will be poor once again. Besides, if wealth were distributed in such a fashion, the coins themselves would lose all value—they would cease being useful. And without such utility, the entire social structure we love so dearly would collapse. ‘Ah, but to that I say, so what? There are other ways of measuring self-worth. To which you both heatedly reply: with no value applicable to labour, all sense of worth vanishes! And in answer to that I simply smile and shake my head. Labour and its product become the negotiable commodities. But wait, you object, then value sneaks in after all! Because a man who makes bricks cannot be equated with, say, a man who paints portraits. Material is inherently value-laden, on the basis of our need to assert comparison—but ah, was I not challenging the very assumption that one must proceed with such intricate structures of value? ‘And so you ask, what’s your point, Tehol? To which I reply with a shrug. Did I say my discourse was a valuable means of using this time? I did not. No, you assumed it was. Thus proving my point!’ ‘I’m sorry, master,’ Bugg said, ‘but what was that point again?’ ‘I forget. But we’ve arrived. Behold, gentlemen, the poor.

In neo-classical economic theory, it is claimed without evidence that people are basically self-seeking, that they want above all the satisfaction of their material desires: what economists call "maximising utility". The ultimate objective of mankind is economic growth, and that is maximized only through raw, and lightly regulated, competition. If the rewards of this system are spread unevenly, that is a necessary price. Others on the planet are to be regarded as either customers, competitors or factors of production. Effects upon the planet itself are mere "externalities" to the model, with no reckoning of the cost - at least for now. Nowhere in this analysis appears factors such as human cooperation, love, trust, compassion or hatred, curiosity or beauty. Nowhere appears the concept of meaning. What cannot be measured is ignored. But the trouble is that once our basic needs for shelter and food have been met, these factors may be the most important of all.

It is a special blessing to belong among those who can and may devote their best energies to the contemplation and exploration of objective and timeless things. How happy and grateful I am for having been granted this blessing, which bestows upon one a large measure of independence from one's personal fate and from the attitude of one's contemporaries. Yet this independence must not inure us to the awareness of the duties that constantly bind us to the past, present and future of humankind at large. Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here, involuntarily and uninvited, for a short stay, without knowing the why and the wherefore. In our daily lives we feel only that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own. I am often troubled by the thought that my life is based to such a large extent on the work of my fellow human beings, and I am aware of my great indebtedness to them. I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper. I have never coveted affluence and luxury and even despise them a good deal. My passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as has my aversion to any obligation and dependence I did not regard as absolutely necessary. [Part 2] I have a high regard for the individual and an insuperable distaste for violence and fanaticism. All these motives have made me a passionate pacifist and antimilitarist. I am against any chauvinism, even in the guise of mere patriotism. Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as does any exaggerated personality cult. I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I know well the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual have always seemed to me the important communal aims of the state. Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice keeps me from feeling isolated. The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is.

As you all know, love is… complicated for me. It is something that adheres to no scientific or mathematic principles—it cannot be measured, weighed, or calculated. As such, it’s hard to credit that it even exists. I was certain we could find life in the stars before we could find scientific evidence that love was real.

Maybe I will always have to love the idea of love or a concept of God more than I can love a person. But then, these things are so difficult to measure - how could you even quantify or compare one love to another? By weight? By volume? And who is to say that loving a person isn't just loving the idea of that person and not the actual person, all these incomprehensible clots of flesh with all their years gone by and vanished, all their history stored in basements even they cannot reach?

You cannot measure love. It originates within us and it is infinite.

MOTHER! The holiest body on earth without which even god's existence seems next to impossible. A woman whose sufferings cannot be conveyed . A women whose love cannot be measured. The one who loves you unconditionally and protects you beyond her limits. Yes, she's the real hero, a true warrior. Who can win millions of hearts just by her tender touch. She's my bestie.

A hint of an answering smile cracked Darcy’s granite façade. “I cannot think why we would let Fitzwilliam talk us into this… but I am not afraid of you.” Her smile widened. “Nor I of you.

The gods do not know love because they cannot imagine an end to anything they enjoy. Their passions do not burn brightly as a mortal's passions do, because they can have whatever they desire for the rest of eternity. How could they cherish or treasure anything? Nothing to them is more than a passing amusement and when they have done with it, there will be another and another and another, until the end of time itself. Their heroes do not know love because they only value what they can measure - the mountains they make of their enemies' bones, the vast piles of treasure they win and the immortal verses are sung in their name. They see only fame and are blind to the rewards that only human life can offer, which they simply toss aside like trash. They are all fools.

if I tell enough jokes or use enough visuals, the fact remains that I cannot convince people to be obsessed with Jesus. Perhaps I can talk people into praying a prayer, but I cannot talk anyone into falling in love with Christ. I cannot make someone understand and accept the gift of grace. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. So by every measure that actually counts, I need the Holy Spirit. Desperately.

As you trust Him, seek and follow His will, you will receive blessings that your finite mind cannot understand here on earth. Your Father in Heaven and His Holy Son know better than you what brings happiness. They have given you the plan of happiness. As you understand and follow it, happiness will be your blessing. As you willingly obey, receive, and honor the ordinances and covenants of that holy plan, you can have the greatest measure of satisfaction in this life. Yes, even times of overpowering happiness. You will prepare yourself for an eternity of glorious life with your loved ones who qualify for that kingdom.

Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete. To have continually at one's side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are indispensable to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure one's affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, "Since she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart"; to behold her thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction; to feel one's self all the more powerful because of one's infirmity; to become in one's obscurity, and through one's obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates,—few felicities equal this. The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self; this conviction the blind man possesses. To be served in distress is to be caressed. Does he lack anything? No. One does not lose the sight when one has love. And what love! A love wholly constituted of virtue! There is no blindness where there is certainty. Soul seeks soul, gropingly, and finds it. And this soul, found and tested, is a woman. A hand sustains you; it is hers: a mouth lightly touches your brow; it is her mouth: you hear a breath very near you; it is hers. To have everything of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to have that sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that immovable reed, to touch Providence with one's hands, and to be able to take it in one's arms,—God made tangible,—what bliss! The heart, that obscure, celestial flower, undergoes a mysterious blossoming. One would not exchange that shadow for all brightness! The angel soul is there, uninterruptedly there; if she departs, it is but to return again; she vanishes like a dream, and reappears like reality. One feels warmth approaching, and behold! she is there. One overflows with serenity, with gayety, with ecstasy; one is a radiance amid the night. And there are a thousand little cares. Nothings, which are enormous in that void. The most ineffable accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you, and supplying the vanished universe to you. One is caressed with the soul. One sees nothing, but one feels that one is adored. It is a paradise of shadows.

Ah, deserve,” sighed Kindwind. “The notion of deserved and undeserved is a fancy. Knowing both life and death, we endeavor to impose worth and meaning upon our deeds, and thereby to comfort our fear of impermanence. We choose to imagine that our lives merit continuance. Mayhap all sentience shares a similar fancy. Mayhap the Earth itself, being sentient in its fashion, shares it. Nonetheless it is a fancy. A wider gaze does not regard us in that wise. The stars do not. Perhaps the Creator does not. The larger truth is merely that all things end. By that measure, our fancies cannot be distinguished from dust. “For this reason, Giants love tales. Our iteration of past deeds and desires and discoveries provides the only form of permanence to which mortal life can aspire. That such permanence is a chimera does not lessen its power to console. Joy is in the ears that hear.

Matchevici answered, “I don’t wish to remain alive and be ashamed to look in a mirror, because I will see the face of a traitor. I cannot accept such a condition. I prefer to die.” The officer of the secret police shook Matchevici’s hand and said, “I congratulate you. I didn’t expect any other answer from you. But I would like to make another proposal. Some of the prisoners have become our informers. They claim to be Commu­nist and they are denouncing you. They play a double role. We have no confidence in them. We would like to know in what measure they are sincere. Toward you they are traitors who are doing you much harm, informing us about your words and deeds. I understand that you don’t want to betray your comrades. But give us information about those who oppose you so you will save your life!” Matchevici answered, as promptly as the first time, “I am a disciple of Christ and He has taught us to love even our enemies. The men who betray us do us much harm but I cannot reward evil with evil. I cannot give information even against them. I pity them. I pray for them. I don’t wish to have any connection with the Communists.” Matche­vici came back from the discussion with the political officer and died in the same cell I was in. I saw him die—he was praising God. Love conquered even the natural thirst for life.

Try this for a couple of weeks and see how it changes your reality: Whatever you think people are withholding from you—praise, appreciation, assistance, loving care, and so on—give it to them. You don’t have it? Just act as if you had it, and it will come. Then, soon after you start giving, you will start receiving. You cannot receive what you don’t give. Outflow determines inflow. Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you already have, but unless you allow it to flow out, you won’t even know that you have it. This includes abundance. The law that outflow determines inflow is expressed by Jesus in this powerful image: “Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.

The result is an attitude on the part of many scientists of not only skepticism but outright rejection of what cannot be measured. It is as if they were to say, “What we cannot measure, we cannot know; there is no point in worrying about what we cannot know; therefore, what cannot be measured is unimportant and unworthy of our observation.” Because of this attitude many scientists exclude from their serious consideration all matters that are—or seem to be—intangible. Including, of course, the matter of God. This

Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that become necessary when something essential is lacking. The more successfully a person was denied access to his or her feelings in childhood, the larger the arsenal of intellectual weapons and the supply of moral prostheses has to be, because morality and a sense of duty are not sources of strength or fruitful soil for genuine affection. Blood does not flow in artificial limbs; they are for sale and can serve many masters. What was considered good yesterday can--depending on the decree of government or party--be considered evil and corrupt today, and vice versa. But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves. They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves. Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot.

Whatever else a modern feels when he looks at the night sky, he certainly feels that he is looking out--like one looking out from the saloon entrance on to the dark Atlantic or from the lighted porch upon dark and lonely moors. But if you accepted the Medieval Model you would feel like one looking in. The Earth is 'outside the city wall'. When the sun is up he dazzles us and we cannot see inside. Darkness, our own darkness, draws the veil and we catch a glimpse of the high pomps within the vast, lighted concavity filled with music and life. And, looking in, we do not see, like Meredith's Lucifer, 'the army of unalterable law', but rather the revelry of insatiable love. We are watching the activity of creatures whose experience we can only lamely compare to that of one in the act of drinking, his thirst delighted yet not quenched. For in them the highest of faculties is always exercised without impediment on the noblest object; without satiety, since they can never completely make His perfection their own, yet never frustrated, since at every moment they approximate to Him in the fullest measure of which their nature is capable.

when he found her, upstairs in the hall outside her bedchamber, her hair had gone white. As, it seemed, had the rest of her. Bloody hell. 'Oliver!' he bellowed. 'Amanda!' 'Oh, they're long gone,' Eloisa bit off. She looked up at him with fuming eyes. Fuming eyes which, he couldn't help but note, were the only part of her not covered with a remarkably thick coating of flour. Well, good for her for closing them in time. He'd always admired quick reflexes in a woman. 'Miss Bridgerton,' he said, his hand moving forward to help her, then retracting as he realized there *was* no helping her. 'I cannot begin to express-' '*Don't* apologize for them,' she snapped ... He took a self-preservational step back. 'I gather the twins paid you a visit,' he said. 'Oh, yes,' she replied, with no small measure of sarcasm. 'And then scampered away. The little cowards themselves are nowhere to be found.' 'Well, they wouldn't be far,' he mused ... 'They'd want to see the results, of course ... I don't suppose you heard any laughter when the flour came down? Cackling, perhaps?' ... 'It was difficult,' she said, so tightly he wondered if her jaw might snap, 'to hear anything but the sound of the bucket hitting my head.

We are the center. In each of our minds - some may call it arrogance, or selfishness - we are the center, and all the world moves about us, and for us, and because of us. This is the paradox of community, the one and the whole, the desires of the one often in direct conflict with the needs of the whole. Who among us has not wondered if all the world is no more than a personal dream? I do not believe that such thoughts are arrogant or selfish. It is simply a matter of perception; we can empathize with someone else, but we cannot truly see the world as another person sees it, or judge events as they affect the mind and the heart of another, even a friend. But we must try. For the sake of all the world, we must try. This is the test of altruism, the most basic and undeniable ingredient for society. Therein lies the paradox, for ultimately, logically, we each must care more about ourselves than about others, and yet, if, as rational beings we follow that logical course, we place our needs and desires above the needs of our society, and then there is no community. I come from Menzoberranzan, city of drow, city of self. I have seen that way of selfishness. I have seen it fail miserably. When self-indulgence rules, then all the community loses, and in the end, those striving for personal gains are left with nothing of any real value. Because everything of value that we will know in this life comes from our relationships with those around us. Because there is nothing material that measures against the intangibles of love and friendship. Thus, we must overcome that selfishness and we must try, we must care. I saw this truth plainly following the attack on Captain Deudermont in Watership. My first inclination was to believe that my past had precipitated the trouble, that my life course had again brought pain to a friend. I could not bear this thought. I felt old and I felt tired. Subsequently learning that the trouble was possibly brought on by Deudermont's old enemies, not my own, gave me more heart for the fight. Why is that? The danger to me was no less, nor was the danger to Deudermont, or to Catti-brie or any of the others about us. Yet my emotions were real, very real, and I recognized and understood them, if not their source. Now, in reflection, I recognize that source, and take pride in it. I have seen the failure of self-indulgence; I have run from such a world. I would rather die because of Deudermont's past than have him die because of my own. I would suffer the physical pains, even the end of my life. Better that than watch one I love suffer and die because of me. I would rather have my physical heart torn from my chest, than have my heart of hearts, the essence of love, the empathy and the need to belong to something bigger than my corporeal form, destroyed. They are a curious thing, these emotions. How they fly in the face of logic, how they overrule the most basic instincts. Because, in the measure of time, in the measure of humanity, we sense those self-indulgent instincts to be a weakness, we sense that the needs of the community must outweigh the desires of the one. Only when we admit to our failures and recognize our weaknesses can we rise above them. Together.

Here lies hidden the great call to conversion: to look not with the eyes of my own low self-esteem, but with the eyes of God’s love. As long as I keep looking at God as a landowner, as a father who wants to get the most out of me for the least cost, I cannot but become jealous, bitter, and resentful toward my fellow workers or my brothers and sisters. But if I am able to look at the world with the eyes of God’s love and discover that God’s vision is not that of a stereotypical landowner or patriarch but rather that of an all-giving and forgiving father who does not measure out his love to his children according to how well they behave, then I quickly see that my only true response can be deep gratitude.

I cannot measure my love, so that I may come to know how much there is yet wanting in me, ere my life run into Thy embracements, and not be turned away until it be hidden in the secret place of Thy Presence. [1193] This only I know, that woe is me except in Thee,--not only without, but even also within myself; and all plenty which is not my God is poverty to me. [1194]

There is a vast difference between being a Christian and being a disciple. The difference is commitment. Motivation and discipline will not ultimately occur through listening to sermons, sitting in a class, participating in a fellowship group, attending a study group in the workplace or being a member of a small group, but rather in the context of highly accountable, relationally transparent, truth-centered, small discipleship units. There are twin prerequisites for following Christ - cost and commitment, neither of which can occur in the anonymity of the masses. Disciples cannot be mass produced. We cannot drop people into a program and see disciples emerge at the end of the production line. It takes time to make disciples. It takes individual personal attention. Discipleship training is not about information transfer, from head to head, but imitation, life to life. You can ultimately learn and develop only by doing. The effectiveness of one's ministry is to be measured by how well it flourishes after one's departure. Discipling is an intentional relationship in which we walk alongside other disciples in order to encourage, equip, and challenge one another in love to grow toward maturity in Christ. This includes equipping the disciple to teach others as well. If there are no explicit, mutually agreed upon commitments, then the group leader is left without any basis to hold people accountable. Without a covenant, all leaders possess is their subjective understanding of what is entailed in the relationship. Every believer or inquirer must be given the opportunity to be invited into a relationship of intimate trust that provides the opportunity to explore and apply God's Word within a setting of relational motivation, and finally, make a sober commitment to a covenant of accountability. Reviewing the covenant is part of the initial invitation to the journey together. It is a sobering moment to examine whether one has the time, the energy and the commitment to do what is necessary to engage in a discipleship relationship. Invest in a relationship with two others for give or take a year. Then multiply. Each person invites two others for the next leg of the journey and does it all again. Same content, different relationships. The invitation to discipleship should be preceded by a period of prayerful discernment. It is vital to have a settled conviction that the Lord is drawing us to those to whom we are issuing this invitation. . If you are going to invest a year or more of your time with two others with the intent of multiplying, whom you invite is of paramount importance. You want to raise the question implicitly: Are you ready to consider serious change in any area of your life? From the outset you are raising the bar and calling a person to step up to it. Do not seek or allow an immediate response to the invitation to join a triad. You want the person to consider the time commitment in light of the larger configuration of life's responsibilities and to make the adjustments in schedule, if necessary, to make this relationship work. Intentionally growing people takes time. Do you want to measure your ministry by the number of sermons preached, worship services designed, homes visited, hospital calls made, counseling sessions held, or the number of self-initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus? When we get to the shore's edge and know that there is a boat there waiting to take us to the other side to be with Jesus, all that will truly matter is the names of family, friends and others who are self initiating, reproducing, fully devoted followers of Jesus because we made it the priority of our lives to walk with them toward maturity in Christ. There is no better eternal investment or legacy to leave behind.

Simon puts the book down. He does not wait for her to say anything. He cannot wait, he is too afraid that she will vanish again and never reappear. He closes the distance between them as quickly as he can and then he kisses her desperately, hungrily, and after a moment she kisses him back in equal measure. Kissing, Eleanor thinks, is not done any justice in books. They peel off each other’s clothes in layers. He curses at the strange clasps and fasteners on her garments while she laughs at the sheer number of buttons on his. He leaves her bunny ears on. It is easier to be in love in a room with closed doors. To have the whole world in one room. In one person. The universe condensed and intensified and burning, bright and alive and electric. But doors cannot stay closed forever.

This emotion called love. It is wrapped up in time, measured by years. The more I see of humans the more complicated love becomes. It is not an exchange of goods. It has no price. it is not a simple connection to other beings. Love is much deeper, its tendrils reach into the bad and the good in humans. I don't believe we should give up on this project. I cannot return until I learn how to love.

I thought to go to sea wi' a blessed hope to cheer me up, and a knowledge o' some one as loved me as I'd left behind; some one as loved me half as much as I did her; for th' measure o' my love toward her is so great and mighty, I'd be content wi' half as much from her, till I'd taught her to love me more. But if she's a cold heart and cannot care for a honest sailor, why, then, I'd best go back at once.

And the son bursting into his father's house, killing him, and at the same time not killing him, this is not even a novel, not a poem, it is a sphinx posing riddles, which it, of course, will not solve itself. If he killed him, he killed him; how can it be that he killed him and yet did not kill him--who can understand that? Then it is announced to us that our tribune is the tribune of truth and sensible ideas, and so from this tribune of 'sensible ideas' an axiom resounds, accompanied by an oath, that to call the murder of a father parricide is simply a prejudice! But if parricide is a prejudice, and if every child ought to ask his father, 'Father, why should I love you?'--what will become of us, what will become of the foundations of society, where will the family end up? Parricide--don't you see, it's just the 'brimstone' of some Moscow merchant's wife? The most precious, the most sacred precepts concerning the purpose and future of the Russian courts are presented perversely and frivolously, only to achieve a certain end, to achieve the acquittal of that which cannot be acquitted. 'Oh, overwhelm him with mercy,' the defense attorney exclaims, and that is just what the criminal wants, and tomorrow everyone will see how overwhelmed he is! And is the defense attorney not being too modest in asking only for the defendant's acquittal? Why does he not ask that a fund be established in the parricide's name, in order to immortalize his deed for posterity and the younger generation? The Gospel and religion are corrected: it's all mysticism, he says, and ours is the only true Christianity, tested by the analysis of reason and sensible ideas. And so a false image of Christ is held up to us! With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you,' the defense attorney exclaims, and concludes then and there that Christ commanded us to measure with the same measure as it is measured to us--and that from the tribune of truth and sensible ideas! We glance into the Gospel only on the eve of our speeches, in order to make a brilliant display of our familiarity with what is, after all, a rather original work, which may prove useful and serve for a certain effect, in good measure, all in good measure! Yet Christ tells us precisely not to do so, to beware of doing so, because that is what the wicked world does, whereas we must forgive and turn our cheek, and not measure with the same measure as our offenders measure to us. This is what our God taught us, and not that it is a prejudice to forbid children to kill their own fathers. And let us not, from the rostrum of truth and sensible ideas, correct the Gospel of our God, whom the defense attorney deems worthy of being called merely 'the crucified lover of mankind,' in opposition to the whole of Orthodox Russia, which calls out to him: 'For thou art our God...!

Thomas Goodwin Jr. wrote of his godly father: In all the violence of [his fever], he discoursed with that strength of faith and assurance of Christ’s love, with that holy admiration of free grace, with that joy in believing, and such thanksgivings and praises, as he extremely moved and affected all that heard him…. He rejoiced in the thoughts that he was dying, and going to have a full and uninterrupted communion with God. ‘I am going,’ said he, ‘to the three Persons, with whom I have had communion: they have taken me; I did not take them…. I could not have imagined I should ever have had such a measure of faith in this hour…. Christ cannot love me better than he doth; I think I cannot love Christ better than I do; I am swallowed up in God….’ With this assurance of faith, and fullness of joy, his soul left this world.89 

I cannot talk of the power of want, of how much desire can do. I don't think it can be measured. I think want is forgotten too quickly or dismissed as being worth far less than the other feelings -love, hate, envy. But to want something ... To wish for it so much that you think you cannot last, your heart and body cannot continue to hunger for something as much as this. It comes from loss. We want what we do not have. We want what we had, but don't now.

So, dear fat people, what I want to say to you is this: You are loved. You are worthy, and you are capable of so much more than you think. And a number, whether it be on a scale or a measuring tape, cannot quantify the value that you have; it cannot count all the ways that this world needs you; it cannot define your health or project your success. Your weight does not measure your worth. And if I can give only one piece of advice, it is this: be visible.

Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for your sake, Kate, why you undid me: for the one, I have neither words nor measure, and for the other, I have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken. I should quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher and sit like a jack-an-apes, never off. But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly nor gasp out my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sun-burning, that never looks in his glass for love of any thing he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook. I speak to thee plain soldier: If thou canst love me for this, take me: if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too. And while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places: for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow: but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what sayest thou then to my love? speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.

While a husband or wife might be able to cope with the missing part, children do not fare as well. Babies are not able to rely on reason or intellect to measure the stability of the world around them, so by design, they depend heavily on their senses. There are certain aspects of the marriage relationship that children need to witness routinely. Children need to see an on-going love relationship that includes Mom and Dad enjoying each other as friends and not just parents. They also need to see their parents talking, laughing, working together and resolving conflicts with a mutual respect for each other. We cannot over emphasize this point: the more parents demonstrate love for each other, the more they saturate their child’s senses with confidence of a loving, safe and secure world. That marriage relationship provides children with a layer of love and security that cannot be achieved through the direct parent-child relationship—even during the baby years. When you put all of these factors together, they add up to a healthy home environment.

The great weakness of Christianity lies in the fact that it ignores rhythm. It balances God with Devil instead of Vishnu with Siva. Its dualisms are antagonistic instead of equilibrating, and therefore can never issue in the functional third in which power is in equilibrium. Its God is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, and does not evolve with an evolving creation, but indulges in one special creative act and rests on His laurels. The whole of human experience, the whole of human knowledge, is against the likelihood of such a concept being true. The Christian concept being static, not dynamic, it does not see that because a thing is good, its opposite is not necessarily evil. It has no sense of proportion because it has no realisation of the principle of equilibrium in space and rhythm in time. Consequently, for the Christian ideal the part is all too often greater than the whole. Meekness, mercy, purity and love are made the ideal of Christian character, and as Nietzsche truly points out, these are slave virtues. There should be room in our ideal for the virtues of the ruler and leader-courage, energy, justice and integrity. Christianity has nothing to tell us about the dynamic virtues; consequently those who get the world's work done cannot follow the Christian ideal because of its limitations and inapplicability to their problems. They can measure right and wrong against no standard save their own self-respect. The result is the ridiculous spectacle of a civilisation, committed to a one-sided ideal, being forced to keep its ideals and its honour in separate compartments.

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Let all our employment be to know GOD: the more one knows Him, the more one desires to know Him. And as knowledge is commonly the measure of love, the deeper and more extensive our knowledge shall be, the greater will be our love: and if our love of GOD were great, we should love Him equally in pains and pleasures. Let us not content ourselves with loving GOD for the mere sensible favors, how elevated soever, which he has done, or may do us. Such favors, though never so great, cannot bring us so near to Him as faith does in one simple act. Let us seek Him often by faith. He is within us: seek Him not elsewhere. If we do love Him alone, are we not rude, and do we not deserve blame, if we busy ourselves about trifles which do not please and perhaps offend Him. It is to be feared these trifles will one day cost us dear. Let us begin to be devoted to Him in good earnest. Let us cast everything besides out of our hearts. He would possess them alone. Beg this favor of Him. If we do what we can on our parts, we shall soon see that change wrought in us which we aspire after.

The distance between my lips and yours cannot be deciphered from the square root of the sum of the days we have spent wondering what to do with three minutes and ten seconds. The distance between my lips and yours cannot be deduced by the difference in the circumferences of our necks or in how many minutes we can sit in the noon sun. The distance between my lips and yours can only be measured in poems. Tell me, how many are there? Were there? Will there be? (But who knows what to call a poem and what to call a conversation? And who knows whether to call at all?)

And is one to be sorry that the doctors brought her back to life and operated, or not? She, who did not want to lose a single day, “won” thirty: they brought her joys; but they also brought her anxiety and suffering. Since she did escape from the martyrdom that I sometimes thought was hanging over her, I cannot decide for her. For my sister, losing Maman the very day she saw her again would have been a shock from which she would scarcely have recovered. And as for me? Those four weeks have left me pictures, nightmares, sadnesses that I should never have known if Maman had died that Wednesday morning. But I cannot measure the disturbance that I should have felt since my sorrow broke out in a way that I had not foreseen. We did derive an undoubted good from this respite; it saved us, or almost saved us, from remorse. When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets. Her death brings to light her unique quality; she grows as vast as the world that her absence annihilates for her and whose whole existence was caused by her being there; you feel that she should have had more room in your life—all the room, if need be. You snatch yourself away from this wildness: she was only one among many. But since you never do all you might for anyone—not even within the arguable limits that you have set yourself—you have plenty of room left for self reproach. With regard to Maman we were all guilty, these last years, of carelessness, omission, and abstention. We felt that we atoned for this by the days that we gave up to her, by the peace that our being there gave her, and by the victories gained over fear and pain. Without our obstinate watchfulness she would have suffered far more.

Matchevici answered, “I don’t wish to remain alive and be ashamed to look in a mirror, because I will see the face of a traitor. I cannot accept such a condition. I prefer to die.” The officer of the secret police shook Matchevici’s hand and said, “I congratulate you. I didn’t expect any other answer from you. But I would like to make another proposal. Some of the prisoners have become our informers. They claim to be Commu­nist and they are denouncing you. They play a double role. We have no confidence in them. We would like to know in what measure they are sincere. Toward you they are traitors who are doing you much harm, informing us about your words and deeds. I understand that you don’t want to betray your comrades. But give us information about those who oppose you so you will save your life!” Matchevici answered, as promptly as the first time, “I am a disciple of Christ and He has taught us to love even our enemies. The men who betray us do us much harm but I cannot reward evil with evil. I cannot give information even against them. I pity them. I pray for them. I don’t wish to have any connection with the Communists.” Matche­vici came back from the discussion with the political officer and died in the same cell I was in. I saw him die—he was praising God. Love

Witness modern marriage. All rationality has clearly vanished from modern marriage; yet that is no objection to marriage, but to modernity. The rationality of marriage — that lay in the husband's sole juridical responsibility, which gave marriage a center of gravity, while today it limps on both legs. The rationality of marriage — that lay in its indissolubility in principle, which lent it an accent that could be heard above the accident of feeling, passion, and what is merely momentary. It also lay in the family's responsibility for the choice of a spouse. With the growing indulgence of love matches, the very foundation of marriage has been eliminated, that which alone makes an institution of it. Never, absolutely never, can an institution be founded on an idiosyncrasy; one cannot, as I have said, found marriage on "love" — it can be founded on the sex drive, on the property drive (wife and child as property), on the drive to dominate, which continually organizes for itself the smallest structure of domination, the family, and which needs children and heirs to hold fast — physiologically too — to an attained measure of power, influence, and wealth, in order to prepare for long-range tasks, for a solidarity of instinct between the centuries. Marriage as an institution involves the affirmation of the largest and most enduring form of organization: when society cannot affirm itself as a whole, down to the most distant generations, then marriage has altogether no meaning. Modern marriage has lost its meaning — consequently one abolishes it.

Aging offers certain rewards that youth cannot. It represents the culmination of our efforts in building self-knowledge, families, friendships, careers, and the sense of self that comes from facing whatever adversity we may have encountered. Aging is to be honored. Youth certainly has its own set of rewards, but to dwell on them to the exclusion of those that come later in life causes a stagnation of the self. It keeps us from experiencing an appreciation of living an entire (ital) life, not just the beginning. When we're really old we will likely measure our lives by how well we loved, how well we were loved, and by what we created, whether that be family, work, art, or friendships. Even if we have chosen to have them, we will probably not measure our lives collagen injection by collagen injection.

Real power doesn’t come from having a million followers, good hair, a Louis Vuitton purse, a new car, a new home, a title, a partner, or anything that can be weighed, measured, or acquired. Real power is the thing you’ve always had inside you. Real power doesn’t need to be demonstrated or boasted. Real power is the ability to be in your skin, to know who you are, to know you will always be okay. Real power comes from your gut and your heart and your courage and your bravery and your love. Real power can never be taken away from you and never lost once it’s found. It’s the kind of power that people like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks and the Dalai Lama all had or have—a quality within unaffected by outer circumstances, an eternal flame that cannot be touched.

But his friend and colleague the Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abdu (1849–1905) was a deeper and more measured thinker. He believed that education and not revolution was the answer. Abdu had been devastated by the British occupation of Egypt, but he loved Europe, felt quite at ease with Europeans and was widely read in Western science and philosophy. He greatly respected the political, legal and educational institutions of the modern West, but did not believe that they could be transplanted wholesale in a deeply religious country, such as Egypt, where modernization had been too rapid and had perforce excluded the vast mass of the people. It was essential to graft modern legal and constitutional innovations on to traditional Islamic ideas that the people could understand; a society in which people cannot understand the law becomes in effect a country without law.

Wrapped up in all of this talk of acceptance and tolerance is the matter of judgment. The worst thing in the world, we are told, is to judge. We must never judge, never be judgmental. We are constantly reminded that Jesus said, “Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1). And those three words have become the most popular words ever uttered by Our Lord. We like to pretend that everything else He said is summarized by this one phrase. We treat “Do not judge” as the distillation of His life and ministry. There are over seven hundred thousand words in the Bible (yes, I counted), and we have come to believe that they all can be condensed down into those three. We’re wrong. Yes, He does tell us not to judge. But to understand what “Do not judge” actually means, and how it ought to apply to our lives, we have to look at those words in the context of Christ’s teachings. We don’t even have to look very hard, because He makes the point clear in the very same chapter of the Bible. Here is the full verse from the seventh chapter of Matthew: Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. The point here is that we must judge rightly and fairly, as Jesus says specifically in John 7:24: “Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.” The whole Bible is chock-full of judgments we are told to make about ourselves, about others, about actions and things and situations. Of course Jesus is not warning against judgment per se. He is warning, instead, against hypocritical and self-serving judgments. He says we must attend to the plank in our own eyes rather than focusing on the dust in our brother’s eye. But He does not recommend that we just leave our brother there to deal with the dust on his own. He tells us to take the plank out of our own eyes first and then help with the dust. This is both a practical and moral prescription. Moral because ignoring your plank would be self-righteous and dishonest. Practical because you cannot see well enough to handle the dust problem if you’ve got a big plank sticking in your eye. Judgment is good. We are commanded to judge. But our judgments themselves must be good, and made out of love and concern for our brother.

Great cities invite you to love them in extreme close-up, to love every inch of them. And the more eccentric, convoluted, broken, and uneven they are, the more there is to love. The tenements on the Lower East Side in New York City, the decaying wooden houses above the waterfront in Istanbul, the fading rose-colored buildings in the magical little grid south of the Spanish Steps in Rome, the bombed-out villas near the Vucciria in Palermo—it is precisely the irregularity of these places that allows your heart to get a grip on them, like a climber finding a tiny hold that will not give way. Shimmering Venice has the most beautiful inches of any city in the world. San Francisco cannot compete, because it does not have streets made of water. But it has the next best thing: It has dirt trails. They make this city a place where mystery is measured in soft footsteps, and magic in clouds of dust.

Here, where an immense country lies about me, over which the winds pass coming from the seas, here I feel that no human being anywhere can answer for you those questions and feelings that deep within them have a life of their own; for even the best err in words when they are meant to mean most delicate and almost inexpressible things. But I believe nevertheless that you will not have to remain without a solution if you will hold to objects that are similar to those from which my eyes now draw refreshment. If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance. You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it—but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.

You are charming. Your charm, just like your ability to live happily and be successful is beyond a limit. Day after day, innumerable people all over the world are always in search of social acceptance and validation for their beauty. Stop looking for people’s validation of your beauty! Stop trying to make people accept you; stop trying to look for someone to tell you how charming your eyes are. Stop searching for someone to be grateful for your love and beautiful smile. Stop looking for someone to admire you for your strong mind when you are faced with troubles in life. Don’t give people’s validation more power than it has earned. The can only give you a reflection of your connection with gravity. That’s it. Your purpose in life cannot be measured by a scale, the reason for your existence, your beauty; talent cannot be measured by this scale. Why don’t you just take the note of the number and then live your life freely? Because life is beautiful. You are Beautiful!

The discords of our experience--delight in change, fear of change; the death of the individual and the survival of the species, the pains and pleasures of love, the knowledge of light and dark, the extinction and the perpetuity of empires--these were Spenser's subject; and they could not be treated without this third thing, a kind of time between time and eternity. He does not make it easy to extract philosophical notions from his text; but that he is concerned with the time-defeating aevum and uses it as a concord-fiction, I have no doubt. 'The seeds of knowledge,' as Descartes observed, 'are within us like fire in flint; philosophers educe them by reason, but the poets strike them forth by imagination, and they shine the more clearly.' We leave behind the philosophical statements, with their pursuit of logical consequences and distinctions, for a free, self-delighting inventiveness, a new imagining of the problems. Spenser used something like the Augustinian seminal reasons; he was probably not concerned about later arguments against them, finer discriminations. He does not tackle the questions, in the Garden cantos, of concreation, but carelessly--from a philosophical point of view--gives matter chronological priority. The point that creation necessitates mutability he may have found in Augustine, or merely noticed for himself, without wondering how it could be both that and a consequence of the Fall; it was an essential feature of one's experience of the world, and so were all the arguments, precise or not, about it. Now one of the differences between doing philosophy and writing poetry is that in the former activity you defeat your object if you imitate the confusion inherent in an unsystematic view of your subject, whereas in the second you must in some measure imitate what is extreme and scattering bright, or else lose touch with that feeling of bright confusion. Thus the schoolmen struggled, when they discussed God, for a pure idea of simplicity, which became for them a very complex but still rational issue: for example, an angel is less simple than God but simpler than man, because a species is less simple than pure being but simpler than an individual. But when a poet discusses such matters, as in say 'Air and Angels,' he is making some human point, in fact he is making something which is, rather than discusses, an angel--something simple that grows subtle in the hands of commentators. This is why we cannot say the Garden of Adonis is wrong as the Faculty of Paris could say the Averroists were wrong. And Donne's conclusion is more a joke about women than a truth about angels. Spenser, though his understanding of the expression was doubtless inferior to that of St. Thomas, made in the Garden stanzas something 'more simple' than any section of the Summa. It was also more sensuous and more passionate. Milton used the word in his formula as Aquinas used it of angels; poetry is more simple, and accordingly more difficult to talk about, even though there are in poetry ideas which may be labelled 'philosophical.

Grateful For You A gratitude poem from a Mother to her miracle child You are a wonderful treasure My love for you I cannot measure In you, God gave me an Angel Through you, I was blessed by the Heavens An answered prayer of way back Just when I thought it was over My precious gift from Above, you showed up! Filled with your bright smile and loads of fun You make me so fine Oh, what a privilege in life! To be given such a sense of pride As I call you my child While you chose to be mine You are so kind You bring me hope every time I could go through heavy tides With you by my side I always rise You help me to make many strides I cannot drown, not even once You give me a better chance To become a daring Mom I have peace, even in the storm Because you teach me to stay strong So glad you came along And never left me all alone What an honour to be your Mother! My perfect match Such a great catch! My very best friend Will you lend me a hand? To walk beside you on this land You are all I ever need And I am so grateful for you

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it ... The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly – and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being – he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into him with all his own self, he must ‘appropriate’ and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself. How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he ‘gained so great a Redeemer’ (Hymn ‘Exsultet’ of the Easter Vigil), and if God ‘gave his only Son’ in order that man ‘should not perish but have eternal life’ (cf John 3:16).[646]

To have continually at one's side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are indispensable to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure one's affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, "Since she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart"; to behold her thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction, to feel one's self all the more powerful because of one's infirmity; to become in one's obscurity, and through one's obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates, --few felicities equal this. The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake -- let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self.

I've written about persistence and perseverance and yet for those of us with patchwork lives (projects, earnings, caretaking, home-tending, playing, friending, loving, celebrating, hurting, grieving, healing, assessing, re-grouping) persistence and perseverance has to be allowed in patches, not what from the outside might be viewed as 'normal' (for whatever worth normal has, the top of that overused bell curve). So let me clarify. When I talk about persistence, it isn't about persistence of equal measure every day. It's about not giving up on whatever is important to you, and, especially, not giving up on yourself. Some chapters of your life may allow many facets of your being, others just cannot and the feeling of failure that can arouse is of no value. Sometimes all you can do is ask yourself: What must I do this week? today? next hour? to continue the process as healthily as possible? to accomplish the most? It may be deep immersion in one, or it may be an odd mix. And tomorrow may be different. And an unexpected gift may come and change everything. And a Mack truck may hit and change everything. Our answers to those questions may not look similar but what I hope is similar is the acceptance of what must be. Persist in your own patches. Make your own quilt.

He is eternal, which means that He antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change. He is immutable, which means that He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go from better to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for being perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less perfect He would be less than God. He is omniscient, which means that He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all relationships, all events. He has no past and He has no future. He is, and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures can apply to Him. Love and mercy and righteousness are His, and holiness so ineffable that no comparisons or figures will avail to express it. Only fire can give even a remote conception of it. In fire He appeared at the burning bush; in the pillar of fire He dwelt through all the long wilderness journey. The fire that glowed between the wings of the cherubim in the holy place was called the "shekinah," the Presence, through the years of Israel's glory, and when the Old had given place to the New, He came at Pentecost as a fiery flame and rested upon each disciple.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day’s solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and “the blues”; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cog- nizance. You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it--but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.

Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete. To have continually at one's side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are indispensable to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure one's affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, "Since she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart"; to behold her thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction; to feel one's self all the more powerful because of one's infirmity; to become in one's obscurity, and through one's obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates,—few felicities equal this. The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self; this conviction the blind man possesses. To be served in distress is to be caressed.

Lord Gareth?" He froze. It was she, staring out at him with an expression of astounded disbelief on her lovely face. Gareth was caught totally unprepared. He knew he must look like an arse because he certainly felt like one. But the comic ridiculousness of the situation suddenly hit him, and his lips began twitching uncontrollably. He gazed up at her with perfect innocence. "Hello, Juliet." A chorus of out-of-tune voices came up from below. "Romeo, O Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?" Gareth flung his crop down at their heads. Cokeham let out a yelp, then fell to laughing. The girl's smooth, high brow pleated in a frown as she took in the scene. Perry down there with the horses. The other Den of Debauchery members all gathered below, beaming stupidly up at her. And Gareth, grinning, sprawled full-length along a tree branch just outside her window. "Just what on earth are you doing, Lord Gareth?" The way she said it made his cheeks warm with embarrassment. So he was a pillock. Who cared? Instead, he gave her his most devastating grin and said with cheerful earnestness, "Why, I have come to rescue you, of course." "Rescue me?" "Surely you didn't think I'd allow Lucien to banish you into obscurity, now, did you?" "Well, I —  The duke didn't ban—"  She gave a disbelieving little laugh and leaned out the window, grasping the blanket tightly at her breasts. Her hair, caught in a long, dark braid, swung tantalizingly out over her bosom. "Really, Lord Gareth. This is ... highly irregular!" "Yes, but the hour is late, and as it took me all day to find you, I was feeling rather impatient. I do hope you'll forgive me for resorting to such desperate measures. May I come in and talk?" "Of course not! I — I cannot have a man in my bedroom!" "Why not, my sweet?" He pushed aside a small, leafy twig in order to see her better and grinned cajolingly up at her. "I had you in mine." She shook her head, torn between what she wanted to do — and what she ought to do. "Really, Lord Gareth ... your brother will never approve of this. You should go home. After all, you're the son of a duke and I'm just a — " " — beautiful young woman with nowhere else to go. A beautiful young woman who should be a part of my family. Now, do collect Charlotte and your things, Miss Paige — I fear we must make haste, if we are to marry before Lucien catches up to us." "Marry?!" she cried, forgetting to whisper. He gazed at her in blank, perfect innocence. "Well, yes, of course," he said, clinging to the branch as it dropped another few inches. "Surely you don't think I'd be hanging out of a tree for anything less, do you?" "But —" "Come now."  He smiled disarmingly. "Surely, you must see there is really no other option for you. And I won't have my niece growing up without a father. What kind of a man do you think I am? Now, gather up Charlotte and get your things, my dear Miss Paige, and come outside. I am growing most uncomfortable." Juliet

Hear that? Living skulls! What are we doing here? What war at Troy? Does anyone care? Gods of love and hate! Aren't they the same god? All of us, all our lives, searching for the one perfect enemy- you, me, Helen, Paris, Menelaos, all those crazy Greeks! all those hapless Trojans! my dear beloved Jack! Jack and I fought all the time. I remember almost nothing but the fights - every fight a war to end all wars, you know how it goes, a righteous war, a final war, the worst fight you've ever had, you can't do this again, this time you'll get things straight one way or the other or it's over, he'll see what you mean, see you're right, fights aren't about anything except being right, are they? once and for all. You feel old. Wrong. Clumsy. You sit in two chairs on the porch. Or the kitchen. Or the front hall. Hell arrives. It's as if the war was already there, waiting, the two of you poured into it like wet concrete. The chairs you sit in are the wrong chairs, they're the chairs you never sit in because they're so uncomfortable, you keep thinking you should move but you don't, your neck hurts, you hate your neck, evening closes in. Birds move about the yard. Hell yawns. War pours out of both of you, steaming and stinking. You rush backward from it and become children, every still sentence slamming you back into the child you still are, every sentence not what you meant to say at all but the meaning keeps flaring and contracting, as sparks drop on gasoline, Fuckshit this! Fuckshit that! no reason to live. You're getting vertigo. He's being despicable. Your mother was like this. Stop whimpering. No use asking, What is this about? Don't leave the room. I have to leave the room. Breathless, blaming, I'm not blaming! How is this not blaming! Hours pass or do they. You say the same things or are they different things? Hell smells stale. Fights aren't about anything, fights are about themselves. You're stiff. You hate these chairs. Nothing is resolved. It is too dark to see. You both go to bed and doze slightly, touching slightly. In the night a nightmare. Some giant bird, or insect, some flapping thing, trying to settle on the back of your neck, you can't see what it is or get it off. Pure fear. Scream unearthly. He jerks you awake. Oh sweetie, he says. He is using his inside voice, his most inside voice. The distance between that voice and the fight voice measures your whole world. How can a voice change so. You are saved. He has saved you. He sees you saved. An easement occurs, as night dew on leaves. And yet (you think suddenly) you yourself do not possess sort of inside voice - no wonder he's lonely. You this cannot offer this refuge, cannot save him, not ever, and, although physiological in origin, or genetic, or who knows, you understand the lack is felt by him as a turning away. No one can heal this. You both decide without words to just - skip it. You grip one another. In the night, in the silence, the grip slowly loosens and silence washes you out somewhere onto a shore of sleep. Morning arrives. Troy is still there. You hear from below the clatter of everyone putting on their armour. You go to the window.

Hear me out. Stannis is no friend of yours, nor of mine. Even his brothers can scarcely stomach him. The man is iron, hard and unyielding. He’ll give us a new Hand and a new council, for a certainty. No doubt he’ll thank you for handing him the crown, but he won’t love you for it. And his ascent will mean war. Stannis cannot rest easy on the throne until Cersei and her bastards are dead. Do you think Lord Tywin will sit idly while his daughter’s head is measured for a spike? Casterly Rock will rise, and not alone. Robert found it in him to pardon men who served King Aerys, so long as they did him fealty. Stannis is less forgiving. He will not have forgotten the siege of Storm’s End, and the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne dare not. Every man who fought beneath the dragon banner or rose with Balon Greyjoy will have good cause to fear. Seat Stannis on the Iron Throne and I promise you, the realm will bleed. “Now look at the other side of the coin. Joffrey is but twelve, and Robert gave you the regency, my lord. You are the Hand of the King and Protector of the Realm. The power is yours, Lord Stark. All you need do is reach out and take it. Make your peace with the Lannisters. Release the Imp. Wed Joffrey to your Sansa. Wed your younger girl to Prince Tommen, and your heir to Myrcella. It will be four years before Joffrey comes of age. By then he will look to you as a second father, and if not, well … four years is a good long while, my lord. Long enough to dispose of Lord Stannis. Then, should Joffrey prove troublesome, we can reveal his little secret and put Lord Renly on the throne.

The law of Kia is its ever original purpose, undetermined, without change the emanations, through our conception they materialize and are of that duality, man takes this law from this refraction, his ideas-reality. With what does he balance his ecstasy? Measure for measure by intense pain, sorrow, and miseries. With what his rebellion? Of necessity slavery! Duality is the law, realization by suffering, relates and opposes by units of time. Ecstasy for any length of time is difficult to obtain, and laboured heavily for. Various degrees of misery alternating with gusts of pleasure and emotions less anxious, would seem the condition of consciousness and existence. Duality in some form or another is consciousness as existence. It is the illusion of time, size, entity, etc.-the world's limit. The dual principle is the quintessence of all experience, no ramification has enlarged its early simplicity, but is only its repetition, modification or complexity, never is its evolution complete. It cannot go further than the experience of self-so returns and unites again and again, ever an anti-climax. Forever retrogressing to its original simplicity by infinite complication is its evolution. No man shall understand "Why" by its workings. Know it as the illusion that embraces the learning of all existence. The most aged one who grows no wiser, it may be regarded as the mother of all things. Therefore believe all experience to be illusion, and the law of duality. As space pervades an object both in and out, similarly within and beyond this ever-changing cosmos, there is this secondless principle.

Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love – from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter – to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time. It is a pernicious habit, but I can do nothing about it. It can be compared to the uncontrollable flick of an insomniac’s tongue checking a jagged tooth in the night of his mouth and bruising itself in doing so but still persevering. I have known people who, upon accidentally touching something – a doorpost, a wall – had to go through a certain very rapid and systematic sequence of manual contacts with various surfaces in the room before returning to a balanced existence. It cannot be helped; I must know where I stand, where you and my son stand. When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence.

If you pass on through the meadows with their thousand flowers of every color imaginable, from bright red to yellow and purple, and their bright green grass washed clean by last night’s rain, rich and verdant—again without a single movement of the machinery of thought—then you will know what love is. To look at the blue sky, the high full-blown clouds, the green hills with their clear lines against the sky, the rich grass and the fading flower—to look without a word of yesterday; then, when the mind is completely quiet, silent, undisturbed by any thought, when the observer is completely absent—then there is unity. Not that you are united with the flower, or with the cloud, or with those sweeping hills; rather there is a feeling of complete non-being in which the division between you and another ceases. The woman carrying those provisions which she bought in the market, the big black Alsatian dog, the two children playing with the ball—if you can look at all these without a word, without a measure, without any association, then the quarrel between you and another ceases. This state, without the word, without thought, is the expanse of mind that has no boundaries, no frontiers within which the I and the not-I can exist. Don’t think this is imagination, or some flight of fancy, or some desired mystical experience; it is not. It is as actual as the bee on that flower or the little girl on her bicycle or the man going up a ladder to paint the house—the whole conflict of the mind in its separation has come to an end. You look without the look of the observer, you look without the value of the word and the measurement of yesterday. The look of love is different from the look of thought. The one leads in a direction where thought cannot follow, and the other leads to separation, conflict, and sorrow. From this sorrow, you cannot go to the other. The distance between the two is made by thought, and thought cannot by any stride reach the other. As you walk back by the little farmhouses, the meadows, and the railway line, you will see that yesterday has come to an end: life begins where thought ends.

If we follow Jesus, our status before God is righteous. The gavel has come down and our righteousness is secure in the work of Jesus Christ. God’s verdict is not subject to change based on our performance. We didn’t become righteous because of our performance, and we can’t lose our righteousness because of our performance. We don’t have to worry about getting escorted off God’s premises. We have access, we have resources, and we have blessings because of Jesus. It is easy to hear this sort of message and get excited about it. We hear a preacher talking about God’s forgiveness and grace on Sunday, and we’re like, “Woohoo! I’m in! This is great!” But then Monday comes around, and it’s really hard to apply this reality when we’re having one of those moments when we lose our minds, or make dumb decisions, or go off on somebody, or do that stupid, ridiculous thing we swore we’d never do again. Suddenly, here comes the negative emotion. Here come the bad feelings. Here comes that sense that our status cannot possibly be the same as it was in church yesterday. That’s what the Bible calls condemnation. It’s a very real phenomenon. If you are a follower of Jesus, a Christian, and have never experienced condemnation, you might be God. For the rest of us mortals, we’ve all experienced it. Guilt. Shame. A sense that our status has changed. I’m going to take this a step further. This might sound weird at first, but I think we actually, in a very sadistic way, enjoy condemnation. Why? Because condemnation is logical; and in a weird, twisted, dark sense, it gratifies our flesh. It actually feels right to feel horrible, to feel depressed, to feel dejected, to feel despair. “I messed up. I did something so stupid. This serves me right.” But in fact, condemnation doesn’t serve us at all. In the verses above, the Bible says that condemnation should have no part in our existence on this planet if we belong to Jesus. As humans, we are experts at confusing our feelings with reality. We take our negative emotions and thoughts at face value, and we think, I feel bad, so I must be bad. I feel guilty, so I must be guilty. And if I’m disappointed and mad at myself, God must be way more disappointed and mad at me. Since we feel condemned, we think we are condemned. And since we think we are condemned, we work harder to regain our lost status. Instead of going confidently to God and asking for his grace to get back up and move forward in life, we try to patch ourselves up and put ourselves back together so we can attain the status of righteous before God again. Ironically, since we will never measure up to perfection, the more we try to earn our righteousness, the worse we feel. It’s the cycle of condemnation. I find it’s far easier to believe we are sinners than to believe we are righteous. But we are already righteous through Jesus. It’s a gift, and it’s called grace. How much time do we waste as Jesus followers trying to recover what we have had all along?

Besides, I know you loved my Lucy . . ." Here he turned away and covered his face with his hands. I could hear the tears in his voice. Mr. Morris, with instinctive delicacy, just laid a hand for a moment on his shoulder, and then walked quietly out of the room. I suppose there is something in a woman's nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood. For when Lord Godalming found himself alone with me he sat down on the sofa and gave way utterly and openly. I sat down beside him and took his hand. I hope he didn't think it forward of me, and that if her ever thinks of it afterwards he never will have such a thought. There I wrong him. I know he never will. He is too true a gentleman.I said to him, for I could see that his heart was breaking, "I loved dear Lucy, and I know what she was to you, and what you were to her. She and I were like sisters, and now she is gone, will you not let me be like a sister to you in your trouble? I know what sorrows you have had, though I cannot measure the depth of them. If sympathy and pity can help in your affliction, won't you let me be of some little service, for Lucy's sake?" In an instant the poor dear fellow was overwhelmed with grief. It seemed to me that all that he had of late been suffering in silence found a vent at once. He grew quite hysterical,and raising his open hands, beat his palms together in a perfect agony of grief. He stood up and then sat down again, and the tears rained down his cheeks. I felt an infinite pity for him, and opened my arms unthinkingly. With a sob he laid his head on my shoulder and cried like a wearied child, whilst he shook with emotion. We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother spirit is invoked. I felt this big sorrowing man's head resting on me, as though it were that of a baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child. I never thought at the time how strange it all was. After a little bit his sobs ceased, and he raised himself with an apology, though he made no disguise of his emotion. He told me that for days and nights past, weary days and sleepless nights, he had been unable to speak with any one, as a man must speak in his time of sorrow. There was no woman whose sympathy could be given to him, or with whom, owing to the terrible circumstance with which his sorrow was surrounded, he could speak freely. "I know now how I suffered," he said, as he dried his eyes, "but I do not know even yet, and none other can ever know, how much your sweet sympathy has been to me today. I shall know better in time, and believe me that, though I am not ungrateful now, my gratitude will grow with my understanding. You will let me be like a brother, will you not, for all our lives, for dear Lucy's sake?" "For dear Lucy's sake," I said as we clasped hands."Ay, and for your own sake," he added, "for if a man's esteem and gratitude are ever worth the winning, you have won mine today. If ever the future should bring to you a time when you need a man's help,believe me, you will not call in vain. God grant that no such time may ever come to you to break the sunshine of your life, but if it should ever come, promise me that you will let me know." He was so earnest, and his sorrow was so fresh, that I felt it would comfort him, so I said, "I promise.

Dear KDP Author, Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year. With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion. Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive. Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers. The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books. Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive. Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.

Wittgenstein uses this beetle analogy to suggest that the felt states and sensations that occur in a person’s mind; things like smell, pain, love, happiness, sadness, and so on are things that no one can communicate sufficiently enough to share and reveal their experiences to others. I can never see your beetle, and you can never see mine. When we attempt to think and communicate about the beetle, though, the word has to be a word that everyone understands and can be taught for the word to have any meaning. According to Wittgenstein and many others, language is entirely social. This theory is known as the Private Language Argument, which proposes that no language can be understandable if it is solely to one individual. Rather, language is only formed through shared use amongst a community of others. Thus, the sensation of something might exist exclusively to one’s self, but it can never be understood in terms of language exclusively to one’s self. Meaning, we can never know if anyone experiences anything the same way we experience it, even if everyone talks about it in the same words. We can only assume. Arguably, trying to rationalize, communicate, and comprehend the mental experience of a sensation as it actually is, becomes inconceivable after a certain point. For example, one could say that fresh cut grass smells good, but when asked what it smells like, they would have to go on to say things like it smells natural or like the season of spring. If then asked, what that smells like, perhaps if one tried hard enough, they could come with a few other smells to compare it to, but they would eventually and inevitably reach the limits of language. There would be a final question of what it smells like that would have no answer. A sensation beyond words that no one besides the smeller could know for sure what is like. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Wittgenstein writes when referring to the notion of subjective experience and that which exceeds language and logical understanding. Beyond the suggestions of language and shared meaning, arguably what is most thought-provoking about all of this is the notion that we can never know what it feels like to be anyone else other than our self. We can never know what the world might look, taste, smell, sound, and feel like from outside our own heads. We can never verify what anyone else’s color blue looks like, or what anyone else’s punch in the arm feels like, or what anyone else’s sense of love or happiness is like. We are all locked inside our minds, yelling out to each other in an attempt to find out, but never capable of entering anyone else’s to find out for sure. Even if the framework, structure, and wiring of each of our brains are mostly identical, the unknowable conscious psychological layer on top of it all transmutes the experience of neurological occurrences into something abstract, distanced enough from the measurable and communicable to ever know exactly what any of it is, where it comes from, and how it might change in different heads. Ultimately, no matter the philosophical stance or scientific theory, it is fair to argue that at a minimum no one can or will ever know what it means to have navigated and experienced this universe in the way that you have and will. Each moment that you experience, a particular sense or image of the world with your particular conditions of consciousness, is forever yours exclusively, withholding the mystery of what it means to actually be you for all of eternity. Perhaps we all feel and experience in nearly identical ways, or perhaps we all feel and experience in very dissimilar ways. Your version of blue, your sensation of pain, your experience of love, could perhaps be its only version of blue, its only version of pain, and its only version of love to ever exist in the entire universe. The point is, we don’t know because each of us holds the answer that no one can ever access.

Otherwise we run the risk of failing God in the one thing that so greatly determined His choice of us; and in failing God, we shall fail ourselves. Find your personal worth in your special calling from God Our Christian vocation carries responsibility, but it has its compensations, too. One such compensation is the wholesome feeling of personal worth that should be mine. If I am important to God, I am indeed an important person. Other people may not rate me very highly. My talents may be quite limited, and to those who know me, I may be just an average sort of person. My job may be a relatively humble one, and I may be tempted to feel inferior as I see others around me making their mark in the world. Then I remember that money, position, and popularity - all the yardsticks by which the world measures success - are to God nothing more than a child's playthings. Eventually they must be cast aside and left behind. In the meantime, if I am in a state of grace and am following God's will as my road map through life, then every least action of mine has an everlasting value. However lowly the world may esteem me, every breath I draw is precious to God. Speaking again in human terms, God made me because He needs me. There is something that has to be done that only I can do. What greater personal worth could there be than to be needed by God? It matters little that I do not know the nature of my essential role in God's plan. It is enough to know that I am as valuable to God as the most distinguished person the world has ever acclaimed. This sense of personal worth is not pride. It is not even vanity. Pride consists in declaring my independence of God, as though I alone were responsible for whatever merit I possess. Vanity is simply a silly preoccupation with God's lesser natural gifts, such as looks or talents. It would not be humility - it would be a belittling of God's wisdom and goodness - to pretend that I do not amount to much, that my life is meaningless, that I would never have been missed if I had not been born. It is quite true that apart from God I am nothing. It is just as true that God's love has made me great. To admit this is to do simple justice to God. I must never surrender to the temptation to think, "I am no good. I am a failure." Neither must I surrender - ever - to self-pity; to the feeling that nobody loves me, nobody cares about me. How awful it would be, after all the love God has expended and is expending on me, to brood and sorrow because I do not receive as much human love as I might wish. That would be about as silly as the complaint of a millionaire at not winning on the penny slot machine. A self-pitying person can only be one who is weak in faith or ignorant in religion. God's love for me is such a tremendous thing! From my sense of Christian vocation there follows another effect: freedom from serious worry. If I really believe that God loves me with an infinite love (as He does) and that He wants what is best for me (as He does), I cannot worry very long or very intensely. God is infinitely wise; He always knows what is best. God is infinitely powerful; He can accomplish anything

There is a taboo in the psychology world, to ask a therapist what their cure rate is. Though the therapist knows what the person means in asking, and could give an answer, they typically dislike the question, because it is a way of measuring the psychologist on something that depends ultimately on their patients. To add to that the therapist doesn’t typically see a struggle in their patient’s life not being a struggle, but that a person gets better at not letting it get to them. I would say that our experience in life will always be in reference to our weaknesses, but that isn’t a bad thing. Our weaknesses plague us until we decide to really face them, and then they become strengths as we change them. I think it is a matter of maturing, and not curing in psychopathology, we’re naïve not broken. Alcoholism for instance, once it is overcome, the person doesn’t forget all the intricacies of the cost-benefit of alcohol once they become sober. They still know exactly what problems alcohol seemed to solve, and when faced with those problems, they cannot completely exclude it as a possible remedy. Why? For example, I personally don’t drink alcohol, but I know many people who see it as a normal part of their life, and have set what they feel are appropriate bounds for its use. It is a lot easier for me, who has not experienced any benefits, but knows several disadvantages, to not see alcohol as worth it. However, similarly in my life, fully knowing both the advantages of things like soda, fast food, sleeping in, not exercising and whatever else, in the cost benefit analysis, they sometimes still win. Every asset has associated risks, and when making a decision, while trying to optimize value, we are not picking between correct or incorrect, or right or wrong, but cost vs benefit in safe bet vs the risky bet. Whether I can study or write better while drinking a caffeinated soda has yielded inconsistent results, but sometimes the gamble seems worth it, however drinking a soda before going to the gym has yielded consistently negative results. This is the process of maturity, and the only way to help someone mature faster, is to help them remember and process the data they have already gathered or are currently gathering. One thing that slows down this process is false information. Many cases of grave disability due to psychopathology are caused because of the burden of an overwhelming amount of counterproductive information, and limited resources of productive information.

We live, whether we know it or not, simultaneously upon two levels of consciousness—the outward and the inward, the physical and the spiritual. Only a few people in the history of the world, I imagine, have achieved a whole self, integrated, with absolute freedom from discouragement, and with a serenity which is complete both inside and out. Only a few have been able to divorce themselves from anxiety, sorrow and responsibility—as well as joy—and to remove from their consciousness all the frustrations, limitations, disappointments and worries implicit in life upon earth. Every person I have ever known, however rooted in marvelous trust in God—with which some are born and others win with difficulty and frequent backsliding—is often cast down, has dark moods and desperate hours. I am many times discouraged, mainly about myself and my failures in endeavors or relationships, or about people I love who are going through something hard to endure. Therefore, on the surface, which is where we at least appear to live during our waking hours, I am often as unquiet as the February day. Few escape; and in the black hours it seems useless to tell ourselves—however true—that this, too, will pass; that this is also a lesson to be learned. It will, and it is; but there are moments when words are just words without more than the dictionary meaning. One thing is certain: if we can alter the circumstance which threatens to defeat us, that is our responsibility; if we cannot, and know it is God's will, we can, however unhappily, accept it. Sometimes I feel that I'm mistreated; that I have waited too long for the telephone which didn't ring, the letter which didn't come; that I have suffered too many vigils during the nights and days when someone I loved lay critically ill or upon an operating table. Yet, in recent years, I know—as truly as I know I am breathing at this very moment—I have achieved an inner quietude which is undisturbed by the procession of outer events. I have learned painfully, if not wholly, to retreat within this fortress when matters go wrong beyond any remedial measure of my own, past any effort I can make, and beyond my comprehension as well. This is the lull in the February storm, the gentling of the wind, the essential safety, warmth and the breaking through the light.