Manual For Living Quotes

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Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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You become what you give your attention to.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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No one is more qualified than you are to decide how you live; no one should be able to vote on what you do with your time and your potential unless you invite them to.
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CrimethInc. (Expect Resistance: A Field Manual)
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How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary. From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.
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Epictetus
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An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his own misfortune. To blame oneself is proof of progress. But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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It is unrealistic to expect people to see you as you see yourself.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer. Put your principles into practice โ€“ now. Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is your life! You arenโ€™t a child anymore. The sooner you set yourself to your spiritual program, the happier you will be. The longer you wait, the more youโ€™ll be vulnerable to mediocrity and feel filled with shame and regret, because you know you are capable of better. From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do โ€“ now.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people's weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there's no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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Your happiness depends on three things, all of which are within your power: your will, your ideas concerning the events in which you are involved, and the use you make of your ideas.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to.
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Harriet Lerner (Marriage Rules: A Manual for the Married and the Coupled Up)
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Never depend on the admiration of others. There is no strength in it. Personal merit cannot be derived from an external source. It is not to be found in your personal associations, nor can it be found in the regard of other people. It is a fact of life that other people, even people who love you, will not necessarily agree with your ideas, understand you, or share your enthusiasms. Grow up! Who cares what other people think about you!
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self too.
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B.R. Ambedkar (Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual)
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Do not try to seem wise to others. If you want to live a wise life, live it on your own terms and in your own eyes.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.
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W. Somerset Maugham (The Moon and Sixpence)
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If you want to make progress, put up with being perceived as ignorant or naive in worldly matters, don't aspire to a reputation for sagacity. If you do impress others as somebody, don't altogether believe it. You have to realize, it isn't easy to keep your will in agreement with nature, as well as externals. Caring about the one inevitably means you are going to shortchange the other.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past. Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse. If I let them in, just one self-indulgent crack, whap, the door will fling open gales of pain ripping through my heart blinding my eyes with shame breaking cups and bottles knocking down jars shattering windows stumbling bloody on spilled sugar and broken glass terrified gagging until with a final shudder and sob I shut the heavy door. Pick up the pieces one more time.
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Lucia Berlin (A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories)
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For sheep don't throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness & Effectiveness)
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Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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Fireflies out on a warm summer's night, seeing the urgent, flashing, yellow-white phosphorescence below them, go crazy with desire; moths cast to the winds an enchantment potion that draws the opposite sex, wings beating hurriedly, from kilometers away; peacocks display a devastating corona of blue and green and the peahens are all aflutter; competing pollen grains extrude tiny tubes that race each other down the female flower's orifice to the waiting egg below; luminescent squid present rhapsodic light shows, altering the pattern, brightness and color radiated from their heads, tentacles, and eyeballs; a tapeworm diligently lays a hundred thousand fertilized eggs in a single day; a great whale rumbles through the ocean depths uttering plaintive cries that are understood hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, where another lonely behemoth is attentively listening; bacteria sidle up to one another and merge; cicadas chorus in a collective serenade of love; honeybee couples soar on matrimonial flights from which only one partner returns; male fish spray their spunk over a slimy clutch of eggs laid by God-knows-who; dogs, out cruising, sniff each other's nether parts, seeking erotic stimuli; flowers exude sultry perfumes and decorate their petals with garish ultraviolet advertisements for passing insects, birds, and bats; and men and women sing, dance, dress, adorn, paint, posture, self-mutilate, demand, coerce, dissemble, plead, succumb, and risk their lives. To say that love makes the world go around is to go too far. The Earth spins because it did so as it was formed and there has been nothing to stop it since. But the nearly maniacal devotion to sex and love by most of the plants, animals, and microbes with which we are familiar is a pervasive and striking aspect of life on Earth. It cries out for explanation. What is all this in aid of? What is the torrent of passion and obsession about? Why will organisms go without sleep, without food, gladly put themselves in mortal danger for sex? ... For more than half the history of life on Earth organisms seem to have done perfectly well without it. What good is sex?... Through 4 billion years of natural selection, instructions have been honed and fine-tuned...sequences of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, manuals written out in the alphabet of life in competition with other similar manuals published by other firms. The organisms become the means through which the instructions flow and copy themselves, by which new instructions are tried out, on which selection operates. 'The hen,' said Samuel Butler, 'is the egg's way of making another egg.' It is on this level that we must understand what sex is for. ... The sockeye salmon exhaust themselves swimming up the mighty Columbia River to spawn, heroically hurdling cataracts, in a single-minded effort that works to propagate their DNA sequences into future generation. The moment their work is done, they fall to pieces. Scales flake off, fins drop, and soon--often within hours of spawning--they are dead and becoming distinctly aromatic. They've served their purpose. Nature is unsentimental. Death is built in.
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Carl Sagan (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Earth Before Humans by ANN DRUYAN' 'CARL SAGAN (1992-05-03))
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Circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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There is a time and place for diversion and amusements, but you should never allow them to override your true purposes.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up.
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B.R. Ambedkar (Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual)
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Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit the evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now. You are not some disinterested bystander. Participate. Exert yourself.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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to see beauty is to learn the private language of meaning which is another's life - to recognize and relish what is. beauty must be defined as what we are, or else the concept itself is our enemy. why languish in the shadow of a standard we cannot personify, an ideal we cannot live?
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CrimethInc. (Expect Resistance: A Field Manual)
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Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and canโ€™t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness & Effectiveness)
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Schizophrenia is when the total personalities of your past lives or the memories of invading Spirits enter your body.
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Raymond Holder (The "Antichrist" Training Manual)
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Many people who have progressively lowered their personal standards in an attempt to win social acceptance and lifeโ€™s comforts bitterly resent those of philosophical bent who refuse to compromise their spiritual ideals and who seek to better themselves.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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No one gets out of this life alive. So leave a footprint of your choice. You are writing your epitaph. You are writing it now! Life is a process, not a goal. Live it now, or you will miss it! We have time to spend and no time to waste.
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Charles Franklin (Create the Life You Need!: Find passion and success now with this manual of simple practices)
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It is hard to be happy without a life worth living. This is a fundamental tenet of DBT. Of course, all lives are worth living in reality. No life is not worth living. But what is important is that you experience your life as worth livingโ€”one that is satisfying, and one that brings happiness.
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Marsha M. Linehan (DBT Skills Training: Manual)
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I'm not interested in living in a world where my race is not part of who i am. I am interested in living in a world where our races, no matter what they are, don't define our trajectory in life.
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Luvvie Ajayi Jones (I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual)
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They stood up for truth and justice not out of an expectation of achievable victory in their lifetimes, but because it was the right thing to do.
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Rod Dreher (Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents)
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The first and most important field of philosophy is the application of principles such as โ€œDo not lie.โ€ Next come the proofs, such as why we should not lie. The third field supports and articulates the proofs, by asking, for example, โ€œHow does this prove it? What exactly is a proof, what is logical inference, what is contradiction, what is truth, what is falsehood?โ€ Thus, the third field is necessary because of the second, and the second because of the first. The most important, though, the one that should occupy most of our time, is the first. But we do just the opposite. We are preoccupied with the third field and give that all our attention, passing the first by altogether. The result is that we lie โ€“ but have no difficulty proving why we shouldnโ€™t.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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You've got to rely on people. I know you're hurting because of all the bad things that have happened to you, but in order to live, truly live, you've got to feel pain, you've got to trust, and you've got to love.
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Kim Izzo (The Jane Austen Marriage Manual)
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The wise person knows it is fruitless to project hopes and fears on the future. This only leads to forming melodramatic representations in your mind and wasting time.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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Women should come with instruction manuals.โ€ โ€œWhy? That would be totally pointless. Iโ€™ve lived with three men my entire life, and Iโ€™ve never once seen you guys read instructions.
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Sariah Wilson (#Moonstruck (#Lovestruck, #2))
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Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness & Effectiveness)
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When we blather about trivial things, we ourselves become trivial, for our attention gets taken up with trivialities. You become what you give your attention to.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past. Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse.
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Lucia Berlin (A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories)
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It masks its hatred of dissenters from its utopian ideology in the guise of helping and healing.
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Rod Dreher (Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents)
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I learned what education was expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labor. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labor, but learned to love labor, not alone for its financial value, but for laborโ€™s own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.
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Booker T. Washington
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Conduct yourself in all matters, grand and public or small and domestic, in accordance with the laws of nature. Harmonizing your will with nature should be your utmost ideal.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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Not all of us are called to die a martyrโ€™s death,โ€ he wrote, โ€œbut all of us are called to have the same spirit of self-sacrifice and love to the very end as these martyrs had.โ€9
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Rod Dreher (Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents)
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Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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I am still a bit mad at you for kidnapping me and putting our children's lives in danger." "There's no how-to manual for parenting, Oggie. I'm doing the best I can.
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C. Alexander London (We Dine With Cannibals (An Accidental Adventure, #2))
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Fear represents our need to hang on to the riverbank, to control outcomes, results, our lives; it swims upstream. Truth is about releasing that hold, letting go of results, and trusting the direction of Lifeโ€™s current.
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Tom Shadyac (Life's Operating Manual: With the Fear and Truth Dialogues)
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Remember that the divine order is intelligent and fundamentally good. Life is not a series of random, meaningless episodes, but an ordered, elegant whole that follows ultimately comprehensible laws.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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The ambition to secure an education was most praiseworthy and encouraging. The idea, however, was too prevalent that, as soon as one secured a little education, in some unexplainable way he would be free from most of the hardships of the world, and, at any rate, could live without manual labour. There was a further feeling that a knowledge, however little, of the Greek and Latin languages would make one a very superior human being, something bordering almost on the supernatural.
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Booker T. Washington (Up from Slavery)
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And this is the thing about soft totalitarianism: It seduces those โ€“ even Christians โ€“ who have lost the capacity to love enduringly, for better or for worse. They think love, but they merely desire. They think they follow Jesus, but in fact, they merely admire him. Each of us thinks we wouldnโ€™t be like that. But if we have accepted the lie of our therapeutic culture, which tells us that personal happiness is the greatest good of all, then we will surrender at the first sign of trouble.
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Rod Dreher (Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents)
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Just imagine, how much easier our lives would be if we were born with a โ€˜user guide or ownerโ€™s manualโ€™ which could tell us what to eat and how to live healthy.
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Erika M. Szabo (Keep Your Body Healthy)
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Being able to live without having to be defined by your skin color is the hallmark of privilege.
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Luvvie Ajayi Jones (I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual)
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Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death,
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness & Effectiveness)
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A successful life is one lived on my own terms, not one where I end every day more tired than the last. And if everyone else around me is happy but Iโ€™m empty, then I have betrayed myself.
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Luvvie Ajayi Jones (Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual)
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I feel like making the mistakes I always wanted to make, but never had the courage to...I can make new friends and teach them how to be crazy too in order to be wise. I'll tell them not to follow the manuals of good behaviour but to discover their own lives, desires, adventures and to live
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Paulo Coelho (Veronika Decides to Die)
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What more do they want? She asks this seriously, as if there's a real conversion factor between information and lives. Well, strange to say, there is. Written down in the Manual, on file at the War Department. Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as a spectacle, as a diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets. Organic markets, carefully styled "black" by the professionals, spring up everywhere. Scrip, Sterling, Reichsmarks, continue to move, severe as classical ballet, inside their antiseptic marble chambers. But out here, down here among the people, the truer currencies come into being. So, Jews are negotiable. Every bit as negotiable as cigarettes, cunt, or Hersey bars.
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Thomas Pynchon (Gravityโ€™s Rainbow)
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Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself donโ€™t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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Prayer is to assure you of your connection with Home, much as when you were children and you left for the day. There was that moment of panicโ€” Iโ€™m sure you remember itโ€” when you had to call home just to be sure that it was still there. Prayer is like that. It is calling Home.
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Pat Rodegast (Emmanuel's Book: A Manual for Living Comfortably in the Cosmos)
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I AM wealth. I AM abundance. I AM all the gold, all the joy, all the health, all the fulfillment and all the miracles in this Universe, all of the time.
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Caroline Oceana Ryan (The Ascension Manual: A Lightworker's Guide to Fifth Dimensional Living (The Ascension Manual Series Book 1))
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Always seek advise from people who are already living your dreams
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Bo Sรกnchez (Life Manual 101: How to Make Your Dreams Come True)
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The Joy of Victimhood There are some clear rules about happiness. One is that you cannot be happy if your primary identity is that of a victim, even if you really are one. There are a number of reasons: People who regard themselves as victims do not see themselves as in control of their lives. Whatever happens in their lives happens to them, not by them. People who primarily regard themselves as victims see the world as unfair to them in particular. Just as the young student who always sees himself as โ€œbeing picked onโ€ is an unhappy soul, so is the person who carries that attitude into adulthood. People who regard themselves primarily as victims are angry people, and an angry disposition renders happiness impossible. People who have chosen to regard themselves as victims cannot allow themselves to enjoy life, because enjoying life would challenge their perception of themselves as victims.
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Dennis Prager (Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual)
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It is up to us today to take up this challenge, to live not by lies and to speak the truth that defeats evil. How do we do this in a society built on lies? By accepting a life outside the mainstream, courageously defending the truth, and being willing to endure the consequences.
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Rod Dreher (Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents)
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Most people of my grandparents' generation had an intuitive sense of agricultural basics ... This knowledge has vanished from our culture. We also have largely convinced ourselves it wasn't too important. Consider how many Americans might respond to a proposal that agriculture was to become a mandatory subject in all schools ... A fair number of parents would get hot under the collar to see their kids' attention being pulled away from the essentials of grammar, the all-important trigonometry, to make room for down-on-the-farm stuff. The baby boom psyche embraces a powerful presumption that education is a key to moving away from manual labor and dirt--two undeniable ingredients of farming. It's good enough for us that somebody, somewhere, knows food production well enough to serve the rest of us with all we need to eat, each day of our lives.
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Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)
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Schizophrenia is a cruel disease. The lives of those affected are often chronicles of constricted experiences, muted emotions, missed opportunities, unfulfilled expectations. It leads to a twilight existence, a twentieth century underground man. The fate of these patients has been worsened by our propensity to misunderstand, our failure to provide adequate treatment and rehabilitation, our meager research efforts. A disease which should be found, in the phrase of T.S. Eliot, in the "frigid purgatorial fires" has become through our ignorance and neglect a living hell.
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E. Fuller Torrey (Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Patients, And Providers)
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increasingly we live in a world filled with the equivalents of deadly garage-door openers, unnecessary items that offer us mild and insipid comfort at the price of a dangerous and uncomfortable planet, and at the price of any real relationship to the physical world. if you live in a suburban home and commute to a parking garage somewhere, that ten seconds of opening the garage door(manually) might be nearly the only rain you ever feel.
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Bill McKibben (The Age of Missing Information)
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The Prayer Appointed for the Week O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration I may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.โ€ 
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Phyllis Tickle (The Divine Hours (Volume One): Prayers for Summertime: A Manual for Prayer)
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Individuality is different than isolation. Isolation is trying to do everything on your own, living life by yourself. Isolation happens when you choose not to be involved in any communities, making sure you keep a safe distance from people in your life. Iโ€™m not recommending isolation. Science, psychology, and religion all suggest long term isolation is dangerous and unhealthy.
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Stephen Lovegrove (How to Find Yourself, Love Yourself, & Be Yourself: The Secret Instruction Manual for Being Human)
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If you are not rock solid in your commitment to traditional Christianity, then the world will break you. But if you are, then this is the solid rock upon which that world will be broken. And if those solid rocks are joined together, they form a wall of solidarity that is very hard for the enemy to breach.
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Rod Dreher (Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents)
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In reality, females like sex as much as males do, and they absolutely love to be seduced by men, as it gives them what they want without having to take the responsibility for making it happen. It is what women dream of, what some wait for all their lives to experience, and what millions of romance novels that are sold each year are all about. Thus, there is no point in trying to hide it.
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W. Anton (The Manual: What Women Want and How to Give It to Them)
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There was terror in each and every one of the people on that beautiful beach and on that breathtakingly beautiful evening. Terror of being alone, terror of the darkness filling their imaginations with devils, terror of doing anything not in the manuals of good behaviour, terror of God's judgement, of what other people would say, of the law punishing any mistake, terror of trying and failing, terror of succeeding and having to live with the envy of other people, terror of loving and being rejected, terror of asking for a rise in salary, of accepting an invitation, of going somewhere new, of not being able to speak a foreign language, of not making the right impression, of growing old, of dying, of being pointed on because of one's defects, of not being pointed out because of one's merits, of not being noticed either for one's defects or one's merits. Terror, terror, terror. Life was a reign of terror, in the shadow of the guillotine.
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Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
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In a sense, New World conquest was about men seeking a way around one of life's basic rules - that human beings have to work for a living, just like the rest of the animal world. In Peru, as elsewhere in the Americas, Spaniards were not looking for fertile land that they could farm, they were looking for the cessation of their own need to perform manual labor. To do so, they needed to find large enough groups of people they could force to carry out all the laborious tasks necessary to provide them with the essentials of life: food, shelter, clothing, and, ideally, liquid wealth. Conquest, then, had little to do with adventure, but rather had everything to do with groups of men willing to do just about anything in order to avoid working for a living. Stripped down to its barest bones, the conquest of Peru was all about finding a comfortable retirement.
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Kim MacQuarrie (The Last Days of the Incas)
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In ballet, any dancer who asks himself what step comes next must freeze. Any man who takes a sex manual to bed with him invites frigidity. Dancing, sex, writing a novel--all are a living process, quick thought, emotion making yet more quick thought, and so on, cycling round.
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Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
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The Bible isnโ€™t an answer book. It isnโ€™t a self-help manual. It isnโ€™t a flat, perspicuous list of rules and regulations that we can interpret objectively and apply unilaterally to our lives. The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, poetry and proverbs, philosophy and prophecies, written and assembled over thousands of years in cultures and contexts very different from our own, that tells the complex, ever-unfolding story of Godโ€™s interaction with humanity.
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Rachel Held Evans (A Year of Biblical Womanhood)
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Your religious beliefs typically depend on the community in which you were raised or live. The spiritual experiences of people in ancient Greece, medieval Japan or 21st-century Saudi Arabia do not lead to belief in Christianity. It seems, therefore, that religious belief very likely tracks not truth but social conditioning.โ€ โ€”Gary Gutting, โ€œThe Stone,โ€ New York Times, September 14, 2011
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Peter Boghossian (A Manual for Creating Atheists)
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In the immediate vicinity, there might well be stability and peace. In the garden, a breeze may be swaying the branches of the plum tree and dust may slowly be gathering on the bookshelves in the living room. But we are aware that such serenity does not do justice to the chaotic and violent fundamentals of existence and hence, after a time, it has a a habit of growing worrisome in its own way.
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Alain de Botton (The News: A User's Manual)
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This is the difference between someone whose heart is purified and sound and one whose heart is impure and corrupt. Impure people oppress, and the pure-hearted not only forgive their oppressors, but elevate them in status and character. In order to purify ourselves, we must begin to recognize this truth. This is what this book is all about โ€” a book of self-purification and a manual of liberation. If we work on our hearts, if we actually implement what is suggested here, weโ€™ll begin to see changes in our lives, our condition, our society, and even within our own family dynamics. It is a blessing that we have this science of purification, a blessing that this teaching exists in the world today. What remains is for us to take these teachings seriously. Signs, Symptoms and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart. Translation and Commentary of Imam Mawlud's Matharat al-Qulub. Schaykh Hamza Yusuf. E-Book S. 10
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Hamza Yusuf (Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart)
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ุฅู„ุงู… ุชู†ุชุธุฑ ุญุชู‰ ุชู†ุชุฏุจ ู†ูุณูƒ ู„ุฃุฌู„ ุงู„ู…ุฑุงุชุจ ูˆู„ุง ุชุญูŠุฏ ุนู† ุญุฏูˆุฏ ุงู„ุนู‚ู„ุŸ ู„ู‚ุฏ ุชู„ู‚ูŠุช ุงู„ู†ุธุฑูŠุงุช ุงู„ุชูŠ ูŠู†ุจุบูŠ ุงู„ุฅู…ุงู… ุจู‡ุง ูˆุฃู„ู…ู…ุช ุจู‡ุง. ุฃูŠ ู…ุนู„ู‘ู… ุขุฎุฑ ุฅุฐู† ู…ุง ุฒู„ุช ุชุฑุชู‚ุจู‡ ุญุชู‰ ุชูุญูŠู„ูŽ ุฅู„ูŠู‡ ู…ู‡ู…ุฉ ุชู‚ูˆูŠู… ุฐุงุชูƒุŸ ุฃู†ุช ู„ู… ุชุนูุฏ ุตุจูŠุง ู„ู‚ุฏ ูƒุจุฑุช. ูุฅุฐุง ุจู‚ูŠุช ู…ู‡ู…ู„ู‹ุง ูƒุณูˆู„ุงุŒ ูˆู…ุง ุชู†ููƒ ุชุณูˆู‘ู ูˆุชู…ุงุทู„ ูˆุชุฑุฌุฆ ุงู„ูŠูˆู… ุงู„ุฐูŠ ุณุชู†ุชุจู‡ ููŠู‡ ุฅู„ู‰ ู†ูุณูƒุŒ ูู„ู† ุชุฑุงูˆุญ ูˆุณุชุธู„ ุฌู‡ูˆู„ู‹ุง ููŠ ุญูŠุงุชูƒ ูˆููŠ ู…ู…ุงุชูƒ. ุงู„ุขู† ุฅุฐู† ุงุนุชุจุฑ ู†ูุณู‘ูƒ ุฌุฏูŠุฑู‹ุง ุจุงู„ุนูŠุด ูƒุฑุงุดุฏู ูˆุณุงู„ูƒ ุนู„ู‰ ุฏุฑุช ุงู„ูู„ุณูุฉุŒ ูˆุฎุฐ ูƒู„ ู…ุง ุชุฑุงู‡ ุญู‚ุง ูˆุงุฌุนู„ู‡ ู‚ุงู†ูˆู†ุง ุตู„ุจุง ู„ุง ูŠู‚ุจู„ ุงู„ุงู†ุชู‡ุงูƒ. ูุฅุฐุง ุนุฑุถ ู„ูƒ ุนุงุฑุถ ู…ู† ุฃู„ู… ุฃูˆ ู„ุฐุฉ ุฃูˆ ู…ุฌู’ุฏู ุฃูˆ ุดูŠู† ูุชุฐูƒู‘ุฑ ุฃู† ุงู„ู†ุฒุงู„ ุงู„ุขู†ุŒ ุงู„ุฃูˆู„ูŠู…ุจูŠุงุฏ ุงู„ุขู† ูˆู„ุง ูŠู…ูƒู† ุฃู† ุชุคุฌู„ุŒ ูˆุจุงู†ูƒุณุงุฑุฉ ูˆุงุญุฏุฉ ูˆุชุฎุงุฐู„ู ูˆุงุญุฏ ูŠุฐู‡ุจ ุงู„ููˆุฒ ุฃูˆ ูŠุฃุชูŠ. ู‡ูƒุฐุง ุจู„ุบ ุณู‚ุฑุงุท ุงู„ูƒู…ุงู„ุ› ู…ู‚ูˆูŽู‘ู…ู‹ุง ู†ูุณู‡ ุจูƒู„ ูˆุณูŠู„ุฉุ› ุบูŠุฑูŽ ู…ูุตุบ ุฅู„ู‰ ุดูŠุก ุณูˆู‰ ุงู„ุนู‚ู„ุŒ ูˆุฑุบู… ุฃู†ูƒ ู„ุณุช ุณู‚ุฑุงุทู‹ุง ุจุนุฏ ูุฅู†ู‡ ูŠู†ุจุบูŠ ุนู„ูŠูƒ ุฃู† ุชุนูŠุด ูƒู…ู† ูŠุทู…ุญ ุฃู† ูŠูƒูˆู† ุณู‚ุฑุงุทู‹ุง.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness)
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It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remainsโ€”that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant. โ€”RICHARD BENTALL, Journal of Medical Ethics, 1992
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Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
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We live in a society where people are uncomfortable with not knowing. Children arenโ€™t taught to say โ€˜I donโ€™t know,โ€™ and honesty in this form is rarely modeled for them. They too often see adults avoiding questions and fabricating answers, out of either embarrassment or fear, and this comes at a price. To solve the worldโ€™s most challenging problems, we need innovative minds that are inspired in the presence of uncertainty. Letโ€™s support parents and educators who are raising the next generation of creative thinkers.โ€ โ€”Annaka Harris (Secular News Daily, 2012)
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Peter Boghossian (A Manual for Creating Atheists)
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First, however, the student must realize that any system he or she may practice is artificial. That is to say, mastery of it is not the desired end in itself but only a vehicle towards that end. Second, the individual must be able to subdue the external gratifications of rank, prestige, competitive victory, and ego in general for the truer rewards of personal development. Finally, the prospective adherent must realize that The Martial Way does not start and end at the door of the training hall. It is a way of life in which every action, in and out of the training hall, is done in the context of warriorship.
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Forrest E. Morgan (Living the Martial Way: A Manual for the Way a Modern Warrior Should Think)
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Let me say that whoever invented wanting, whoever came up with desire, whoever had the first one and let us all catch it like a hot-pink plague, I would like to tell that person that it wasn't fair of him or her to unleash such a thing upon the world without leaving us a warranty or at the very least an instruction manual about how to manage, how to live with, how to understand this thing that can happen in a person against her will, by which I mean desire and the need it gnaws in us and the shadow it leaves when it's gone.
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Catherine Lacey (Nobody Is Ever Missing)
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Live that way long enough, and you will literally find yourself addicted to the acceptance of people. You will constantly need verbal affirmation. You will depend on always receiving a steady stream of invitations to events you donโ€™t even want to attend. You will feel as though you need a significant other in your life at all times. Iโ€™m not exaggerating - this need for external acceptance will literally become an addiction. And that turns every one of your relationships - personal, professional, and romantic - into a codependent one. You are not in the relationship with a full heart able to give love away. You are in the relationship because you NEED it. You donโ€™t know how youโ€™d survive, much less thrive, without it. You are using every person to fill a void in your heart that you simply refuse to fill yourself. This is a mess.
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Stephen Lovegrove (How to Find Yourself, Love Yourself, & Be Yourself: The Secret Instruction Manual for Being Human)
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Once you get a girl without having relied on any external value for your attractiveness, you also know for sure that she really likes you and that she will be yours for as long as you want her to be, as long as you do not change. You do not have to hide the fact that you lost your job, your car broke down, or that you are still living with your parents. Your relationship will be less stressful and more honest, which is healthy.
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W. Anton (The Manual: What Women Want and How to Give It to Them)
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Leadership requires great courage. It is tough to leave the gravitational pull of the crowd around us. It is tough to take the road less traveled when everyone urges you to be like everyone else. It is tough to create your life on your own terms when others are telling you how your life should be created. But nothing will fill your heart with a greater sense of regret than lying on your deathbed knowing that you did not live your life and do your dreams.
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Robin S. Sharma (The Mastery Manual)
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Almost every girl goes through this weird living nightmare, where you show up at school and realize people have grown to hate you overnight. Itโ€™s a Twilight Zone moment when you canโ€™t figure out what is real. It is a group mind-fuck of the highest kind, and it makes or breaks you. I got through it by keeping my head down, and a few weeks passed and all the girls liked me again. We all pretended it never happened. There should be manuals passed out to teach girls how to handle that inevitable one-week stretch when up is down and the best friend who just slept over at your house suddenly pulls your hair in front of everyone and laughs.
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Amy Poehler (Yes Please)
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Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsiblyโ€”the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape. When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion. It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman. Think of the strength which personal indifference to poverty would give us if we were devoted to unpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues or fear to vote the revolutionary or reformatory ticket. Our stocks might fall, our hopes of promotion vanish, our salaries stop, our club doors close in our faces; yet, while we lived, we would imperturbably bear witness to the spirit, and our example would help to set free our generation. The cause would need its funds, but we its servants would be potent in proportion as we personally were contented with our poverty. I recommend this matter to your serious pondering, for it is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
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William James (Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature)
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Did you ever ask yourself if each one of us pursued a high educational degree, who would do the skilled manual work? Craftsmanship may not earn us the money we want but that does not mean we should scorn on anyone doing it. We are obliged to be respectful and grateful to anyone using their hands to clean our households, trim our hedges,carpentry our furniture, farm our food, crafts the objects we collect and gift, style our hairs, etc. Next time you encounter a crafts person acknowledge their manual competence.
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Gloria D. Gonsalves
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Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit the evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now. You are not some disinterested bystander. Participate. Exert yourself. Respect your partnership with providence. Ask yourself often, How may I perform this particular deed such that it would be consistent with and acceptable to the divine will? Heed the answer and get to work. When your doors are shut and your room is dark, you are not alone. The will of nature is within you as your natural genius is within. Listen to its importunings. Follow its directives. As concerns the art of living, the material is your own life. No great thing is created suddenly. There must be time. Give your best and always be kind.
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Epictetus (The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness)
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In the coming soft totalitarianism, Christians will have to regard family life in a much more focused, serious way. The traditional Christian family is not merely a good ideaโ€”it is also a survival strategy for the faith in a time of persecution. Christians should stop taking family life for granted, instead approaching it in a more thoughtful, disciplined way. We cannot simply live as all other families live, except that we go to church on Sunday. Holding the correct theological beliefs and having the right intentions will not be enough. Christian parents must be intentionally countercultural in their approach to family dynamics. The days of living like everybody else and hoping our children turn out for the best are over.
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Rod Dreher (Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents)
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For all the talk of education, modern societies neglect to examine by far the most influential means by which their populations are educated. Whatever happens in our classrooms, the more potent and ongoing kind of education takes place on the airwaves and on our screens. Cocooned in classrooms for only our first eighteen years or so, we effectively spend the rest of our lives under the tutelage of news entities which wield infinitely greater influence over us than any academic institution can. Once our formal education has finished, the news is the teacher. It is the single most significant force setting the tone of public life and shaping our impressions of the community beyond our own walls. It is the prime creator of political and social reality. As revolutionaries well know, if you want to change the mentality of a country, you don't head to the art gallery, the department of education or the homes of famous novelists; you drive the tanks straight to the nerve center of the body politic, the news HQ.
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Alain de Botton (The News: A User's Manual)
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Then the voice - which identified itself as the prince of this world, the only being who really knows what happens on Earth - began to show him the people around him on the beach. The wonderful father who was busy packing things up and helping his children put on some warm clothes and who would love to have an affair with his secretary, but was terrified on his wife's response. His wife who would like to work and have her independence, but who was terrified of her husband's response. The children who behave themselves because they were terrified of being punished. The girl who was reading a book all on her own beneath the sunshade, pretending she didn't care, but inside was terrified of spending the rest of her life alone. The boy running around with a tennis racuqet , terrified of having to live up to his parents' expectations. The waiter serving tropical drinks to the rich customers and terrified that he could be sacket at any moment. The young girl who wanted to be a dance, but who was studying law instead because she was terrified of what the neighbours might say. The old man who didn't smoke or drink and said he felt much better for it, when in truth it was the terror of death what whispered in his ears like the wind. The married couple who ran by, splashing through the surf, with a smile on their face but with a terror in their hearts telling them that they would soon be old, boring and useless. The man with the suntan who swept up in his launch in front of everybody and waved and smiled, but was terrified because he could lose all his money from one moment to the next. The hotel owner, watching the whole idyllic scene from his office, trying to keep everyone happy and cheerful, urging his accountants to ever greater vigilance, and terrified because he knew that however honest he was government officials would still find mistakes in his accounts if they wanted to. There was terror in each and every one of the people on that beautiful beach and on that breathtakingly beautiful evening. Terror of being alone, terror of the darkness filling their imaginations with devils, terror of doing anything not in the manuals of good behaviour, terror of God's punishing any mistake, terror of trying and failing, terror of succeeding and having to live with the envy of other people, terror of loving and being rejected, terror of asking for a rise in salary, of accepting an invitation, of going somewhere new, of not being able to speak a foreign language, of not making the right impression, of growing old, of dying, of being pointed out because of one's defects, of not being pointed out because of one's merits, of not being noticed either for one's defects of one's merits.
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Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
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In those moments when fear eclipses what we want most for our lives, it is crucial to be able to connect to the still, calm voice that has a tight grasp on our greatest potential. It takes discipline, spiritual sweat, and Divine pluck to connect to the unassuming voice of the truth inside us. It takes audacity and courage. This is such a crucial veil to lift. Are you loving you? Are you hearing the voice of love within you, your soul-voice, and believing it enough to act on its directives? This is what the practice of loving ourselves looks like: we do whatever we have to do to hear our soulโ€™s voice and believe it. We believe it so much that we make our life about that encounter.
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Meggan Watterson (Reveal: A Sacred Manual for Getting Spiritually Naked)
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And there is one thing that I really, really like to have company for. Watching TV. I'm not particularly needy in relationships, I actually demand a fair amount of space. But I really like to be in bed with another human being and watch TV. That's as intimate and reassuring and tender as it gets for me. I find dating exhausting and uninteresting, and I really would like to skip over the hours of conversation that you need just to get up to speed on each other's lives, and the stories I've told a million times. I just want to get to the watching TV in bed. If you're on a date with me, you can be certain that this is what I'm evaluating you forโ€”how good is it going to be, cuddling with you in bed and watching Damages I'm also looking to see if you have clean teeth. For me, anything less than very clean teeth is fucking disgusting. Here's what I would like to do: I would like to get into bed with a DVD of Damages and have a line of men cue up at my door. I would station a dental hygienist at the front of the line who would examine the men's teeth. Upon passing inspection, she(I've never met a male hygienist, and neither have you) would send them back to my bedroom, one at time, in intervals of ten minutes, during which I would cuddle with the man and watch Damages. Leaving nothing to chance, using some sort of medical telemetry, I would have a clinician take basic readings of my heart rate and brain waves, and create a comparison chart to illustrate which candidate was the most soothing presence for me. After reviewing all the data from what will now be known in diagnostic manuals throughout the world as the Silverman-Damages-Nuzzle-Test, I will make my selection.
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Sarah Silverman
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Not only the portraits on the walls, but also the shelves in the library were thinned out. The disappearance of certain books and brochures happened discretely, usually the day after the arrival of a new message from above. Rubashov made his sarcastic commentaries on it while dictating to Arlova, who received them in silence. Most of the works on foreign trade and currency disappeared from the shelves โ€“ their author, the Peopleโ€™s Commissar for Finance, had just been arrested; also nearly all old Party Congress reports treating the same subject; most books and reference-books on the history and antecedents of the Revolution; most works by living authors on problems of birth control; the manuals on the structure of the Peopleโ€™s Army; treatises on trade unionism and the right to strike in the Peopleโ€™s State; practically every study of the problems of political constitution more than two years old, and, finally, even the volumes of the Encyclopedia published by the Academy โ€“ a new revised edition being promised shortly. New books arrived, too: the classics of social science appeared with new footnotes and commentaries, the old histories were replaced by new histories, the old memoirs of dead revolutionary leaders were replaced by new memoirs of the same defunct. Rubashov remarked jokingly to Arlova that the only thing left to be done was to publish a new and revised edition of the back numbers of all newspapers.
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Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon)
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Elegy on Toy Piano" For Kenneth Koch You don't need a pony to connect you to the unseeable or an airplane to connect you to the sky. Necessary it is to love to live and there are many manuals but in all important ways one is on one's own. You need not cut off your hand. No need to eat a bouquet. Your head becomes a peach pit. Your tongue a honeycomb. Necessary it is to live to love, to charge into the burning tower then charge back out and necessary it is to die. Even for the trees, even for the pony connecting you to what can't be grasped. The injured gazelle falls behind the herd. One last wild enjambment. Because of the sores in his mouth, the great poet struggles with a dumpling. His work has enlarged the world but the world is about to stop including him. He is the tower the world runs out of. When something becomes ash, there's nothing you can do to turn it back. About this, even diamonds do not lie.
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Dean Young
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There was terror in each and every one of the people on that beautiful beach and on that breathtakingly beautiful evening. Terror of being alone, terror of the darkness filling their imaginations with devils, terror of doing anything not in the manuals of good behavior, terror of Godโ€™s judgment, of what other people would say, of the law punishing any mistake, terror of trying and failing, terror of succeeding and having to live with the envy of o ther people, terror of loving and being rejected, terror of asking for a rise in salary, of accepting an invitation, of going somewhere new, of not being able to speak a foreign language, of not making the right impression, of growing old, of dying, of being pointed on because of oneโ€™s defects, of not being pointed out because of oneโ€™s merits, of not being noticed either for oneโ€™s defects or oneโ€™s merits. Terror, terror, terror. Life was a reign of terror, in the shadow of the guillotine. (the devilโ€™s words)
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Paulo Coelho
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EXERCISE Creating Authentic Relationships The questions below deal with issues most people take for granted and let society define for them. You can start with a blank canvas and create your own definitions. โ€ข How do you define intimacy and closeness? โ€ข What constitutes a relationship for you? โ€ข Are there different types of relationships you wish you could have? โ€ข How long should a significant relationship last? โ€ข What is sex? Is it intercourse? Is it more specific: penis-in-vagina or penis-in-ass intercourse? What about manual stimulation and penetration, oral sex, sex toys, BDSM play? โ€ข What kinds of things do you consider intimate? Sex, sexual touch, genital contact, a BDSM scene with no sexual aspect? โ€ข Must you live near a partner for a relationship to be important? โ€ข How do you define fidelity? โ€ข What constitutes loving, affectionate, sexual, and romantic behavior? Where do things like flirting, kissing, love letters, gift giving, dating, courting, phone calls, emails, and instant messages fit into your definitions? โ€ข What does commitment mean to you? How do you define a committed relationship? โ€ข What are the most important things you need in a relationship? โ€ข How important is it for you to live with a partner? โ€ข Realistically , how much time and energy do you have to give to a relationship?  
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Tristan Taormino (Opening Up: A Guide To Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships)
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Ancient tradition has a saying: 'The infinitely distant is the return.' Among the maxims of Zen that point in the same direction is the statement that the 'great revelation,' acquired through a series of mental and spiritual crises, consists in the recognition that 'no one and nothing 'extraordinary' exists in the beyond'; only the real exists. Reality is, however, lived in a state in which 'there is no subject of the experience nor any object that is experienced,' and under the sign of a type of absolute presence, 'the immanent making itself transcendent and the transcendent immanent.' The teaching is that at the point at which one seeks the Way, one finds oneself further from it, the same being valid for the perfection and 'realization' of the self. The cedar in the courtyard, a cloud casting its shadow on the hills, falling rain, a flower in bloom, the monotonous sound of waves: all these 'natural' and banal facts can suggest absolute illumination, the satori. As mere facts they are without meaning, finality, or intention, but as such they have an absolute meaning. Reality appears this way, in the pure state of 'things being as they are.' The moral counterpart is indicated in sayings such as: 'The pure and immaculate ascetic does not enter nirvana, and the monk who breaks the rules does not go to hell,' or: 'You have no liberation to seek from bonds, because you have never been bound.
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Julius Evola (Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul)
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Because no one of us lives for himself and no one dies for himself. For if we live, then we live for the Lord; and if we die, then we die for the Lord. Therefore whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.' Pastor Jรณn Prรญmus to himself: That's rather good. With that he thrust the manual into his cassock pocket, turned towards the coffin, and said: That was the formula, Mundi. I was trying to get you to understand it, but it didn't work out; actually it did not matter. We cannot get round this formula anyway. It's easy to prove that the formula is wrong, but it is at least so right that the world came into existence. But it is a waste of words to try to impute to the Creator democratic ideas or social virtues; or to think that one can move Him with weeping and wailing, and persuade Him with logic and legal quibbles. Nothing is so pointless as words. The late pastor Jens of Setberg knew all this and more besides. But he also knew that the formula is kept in a locker. The rest comes by itself. The Creation, which includes you and me, we are in the formula, this very formula I have just been reading; and there is no way out of it. Because no one lives for himself and so on; and whether we live or die, we and so on. You are annoyed that demons should govern the world and that consequently there is only one virtue that is taken seriously by the newspapers: killings. You said they had discovered a machine to destroy everything that draws breath on earth; they were now trying to agree on a method of accomplishing this task quickly and cleanly; preferably while having a cocktail. They are trying to break out of the formula, poor wretches. Who can blame them for that? Who has never wanted to do that? Many consider the human being to be the most useless animal on earth or even the lowest stage of evolution in all the universe put together, and that it is more than high time to wipe this creature out, like the mammoth in the tundras. We once knew a war maiden, you and I. There was only one word ever found for her: รša. So wonderful was this creation that it's no exaggeration to say that she was completely unbearable; indeed I think that we two helped one another to destroy her, and yet perhaps she is still alive. There was never anything like her. ... In conclusion I, as the local pastor, thank you for having participated in carrying the Creation on your shoulders alongside me.
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Halldรณr Laxness (Under the Glacier)
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For a while, every smart and shy eccentric from Bobby Fischer to Bill Gate was hastily fitted with this label, and many were more or less believably retrofitted, including Isaac Newton, Edgar Allen Pie, Michelangelo, and Virginia Woolf. Newton had great trouble forming friendships and probably remained celibate. In Poe's poem Alone, he wrote that "All I lov'd - I lov'd alone." Michelangelo is said to have written "I have no friends of any sort and I don't want any." Woolf killed herself. Asperger's disorder, once considered a sub-type of autism, was named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger, a pioneer, in the 1940s, in identifying and describing autism. Unlike other early researchers, according to the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, Asperger felt that autistic people could have beneficial talents, especially what he called a "particular originality of thought" that was often beautiful and pure, unfiltered by culture of discretion, unafraid to grasp at extremely unconventional ideas. Nearly every autistic person that Sacks observed appeard happiest when alone. The word "autism" is derived from autos, the Greek word for "self." "The cure for Asperger's syndrome is very simple," wrote Tony Attwood, a psychologist and Asperger's expert who lives in Australia. The solution is to leave the person alone. "You cannot have a social deficit when you are alone. You cannot have a communication problem when you are alone. All the diagnostic criteria dissolve in solitude." Officially, Asperger's disorder no longer exists as a diagnostic category. The diagnosis, having been inconsistently applied, was replaced, with clarified criteria, in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; Asperger's is now grouped under the umbrella term Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD.
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Michael Finkel (The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit)