“
Rowena Clark and I had met on the first day of our mixed media class. I’d sat down at her table and said, “Mind if I join you? Figure the best way to learn about art is to sit with a masterpiece.” Maybe I was in love, but I was still Adrian Ivashkov.
Rowena had fixed me with a flat look. “Let’s get one thing straight. I can see through crap a mile away, and I like girls, not guys, so if you can’t handle me telling you what’s what, then you’d better take your one-liners and hair gel somewhere else. I don’t go to this school to put up with pretty boys like you. I’m here to face dubious employment options with a painting degree and then go get a Guinness after class.”
I’d scooted my chair closer to the table. “You and I are going to get along just fine.
”
”
Richelle Mead (The Fiery Heart (Bloodlines, #4))
“
Speak Life:
You are loved.
You have purpose.
You are a masterpiece.
You are wonderfully made.
God has a great plan for you.
”
”
Germany Kent
“
The Bible does not say you are God’s appliance; it says you are his masterpiece. Appliances get mass-produced.
”
”
John Ortberg (The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You)
“
By honoring each other’s ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, we become stronger and happier, brightening the cosmic masterpiece of artwork that is our world. Rather than emphasize differences, we should be looking for similarities. Our differences are ultimately superficial, and the best thing to do is celebrate them.
”
”
Tina Turner (Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good)
“
Life is not a puzzle to be solved. Life is a masterpiece that you create.
”
”
Brittany Burgunder
“
The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good. Touched by a masterpiece, a person begins to hear in himself that same call of truth which prompted the artist to his creative act. When a link is established between the work and its beholder, the latter experiences a sublime, purging trauma. Within that aura which unites masterpieces and audience, the best sides of our souls are made known, and we long for them to be freed. In those moments we recognize and discover ourselves, the unfathomable depths of our own potential, and the furthest reaches of our emotions.
”
”
Andrei Tarkovsky (Sculpting in Time)
“
You are equipped with strong bodies and educated minds. Add to these an unshakable faith in a divine providence and you have the tools by which you may build a successful life. Make each day your masterpiece and live so nobly that you may witness honestly each day: Whatever came to your hands this day, you did it to the best of your ability
”
”
Harold B. Lee (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee)
“
Don't give-up on your greatest masterpiece — you.
”
”
Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
“
To a man with only a hammer, a screw is a defective nail.
”
”
Orson Scott Card (Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century)
“
This was different: the feeling of being chosen. Out of everybody in the world...this boy had picked him as the one he liked best of all.
”
”
Elise Broach (Masterpiece)
“
For Schwartz this formed the paradox at the heart of baseball, or football, or any other sport. You loved it because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about The Human Condition. The Human Condition being, basically, that we're alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.
Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed SOMETIMES, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer--you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted.
”
”
Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding)
“
What is a Masterpiece? - In spite of finding an answer, at first calm down and try to look at the mirror, You will definitely find the best one which you have made in your lifetime!
”
”
Saptarshi Bhowmick
“
If I could read people’s minds,
I would not invade your privacy.
Instead I would eavesdrop on every passerby.
tattoo my arms with all the compliments,
every wow she’s good looking,
every I wish I was that confident.
Meeting all of your ex-lovers
would turn my chest and back into a masterpiece.
Record every thing they should have told you
every how could I have ever let her get away,
every she was the best thing that ever happened to me.
My legs would turn into patchwork with hatch marks
for every time I wished you were still with me.
It would not take a full day
to cover this body with all of the nice things people
didn’t think you needed to hear.
If I could travel through time,
I would go back to the moment
before it was too late.
”
”
Jared Singer
“
Is there just one single love in a lifetime? Are all our lovers ― from the first to the last, including the most fleeting ― part of that unique love, and is each of them merely an expression of it, a variation, a particular version? In the same way that in literature there is just one true masterpiece to which different writers give a particular form (taking the twentieth century alone: Joyce, who explores everything happening inside his character;s head with microscopic precision; Proust, for whom the present is merely a memory of the past; Kafka, who drifts on the margins between dream and reality; the blind Borges, probably the one I relate to best, etc).
”
”
Dai Sijie (Once on a Moonless Night)
“
When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can’t do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day.
”
”
John Wooden
“
Becoming a better grownup is not about achieving more. Part of being a better grownup is letting people know they are enough—including yourself. It's realizing that every single day is another layer of fresh color on the masterpiece of a life you're painting. It's handing out trophies to let people know they've wowed you by simply being the best at who they are. Maybe it's even creating a trophy for yourself, holding it, and owning it.
”
”
Brad Montague (Becoming Better Grownups: Rediscovering What Matters and Remembering How to Fly)
“
best way to adore God is to love one’s wife.
”
”
Joseph Conrad (50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 1)
“
his first masterpiece, Boule de Suif,
”
”
Jack London (The Best Short Stories of All Time - Volume 1)
“
But you can’t expect a cat to know manners like a Christian, you know, Miss Grey.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë: Masterpieces: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey,The Professor... (Bauer Classics) (All Time Best Writers Book 11))
“
An’ so it is, Miss Grey, ‘a soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.’ It isn’t only in them you speak to, but in yourself.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë: Masterpieces: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey,The Professor... (Bauer Classics) (All Time Best Writers Book 11))
“
Think of the celebrated artwork on your fridge. Your best effort plus the love of the Savior is a masterpiece. It's not about outcome; it's about effort.
”
”
Kim Nelson
“
Give them all of my dear love and a kiss. Tell them I think of them by day, pray for them by night, and find my best comfort in their affection at all times.
”
”
Joseph Conrad (50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 1)
“
Sometimes the best way to get past something is to go through it.
”
”
Skye Warren (The King (Masterpiece Duet, #1))
“
Today is the best day for you to create any sort of masterpiece. Do it.
Because flowers have no hope for the tomorrow, either the river has no return".
Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka
”
”
Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka
“
Not everything your child creates is a masterpiece. Not everything they create needs to be displayed and/or stored. Keep the best. And then, challenge them to create even more of their very best.
”
”
Joshua Becker (Clutterfree with Kids: Change your thinking. Discover new habits. Free your home.)
“
In a word, in adversity she was the best of comforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of friends, having a perfectly good opinion of herself always and an indomitable resolution to have her own way.
”
”
James Joyce (100 Eternal Masterpieces of Literature [volume 2])
“
Like Michelangelo spending eight months in the mountains of Carrara, selecting the most perfect blocks of marble for the tomb of Pope Julius II, Françoise, who attached extreme importance to the inherent quality of the materials out of which her masterpieces were to be wrought, had been down to Les Halles in person more than once to choose the finest slabs of rump steak, the best shin of beef and calf’s foot. She threw herself so strenuously into this pursuit that my mother, seeing our old servant turn red in the face, feared that, as the sculptor of the Medici tombs had sickened in the quarries at Pietrasanta, she might make herself ill from overwork. (p. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, 17)
”
”
Marcel Proust (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
“
Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed _sometimes_, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer--you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted. What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability. Moments of inspiration were nothing compared to elimination of error. The scouts cared little for Henry's superhuman grace; insofar as they cared they were suckered-in aesthetes and shitty scouts. Can you perform on demand, like a car, a furnace, a gun? Can you make that throw one hundred times out of a hundred? If it can't be a hundred, it had better be ninety-nine.
”
”
Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding)
“
The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence. Obvious though this should be, how few writers will admit it, or having drawn the conclusion, will be prepared to lay aside the piece of iridescent mediocrity on which they have embarked! Writers always hope that their next book is going to be their best, and will not acknowledge that they are prevented by their present way of life from ever creating anything different.
”
”
Cyril Connolly (The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus)
“
The farmers, who rent out their house so they can stay afloat, and sleep all together in a studio, but spend their days off outside on a picnic blanket, living the lives they want to live. Drew and Melanie, with their two homes and their horses and their love story. And Rene, traveling across the world, painting temporary masterpieces. Even my uncle Pete has something good worked out with Melinda and his day trips and his best friend, my dad, who has a small nice house in San Francisco and a dozen neighborhood vendors who know him by name.
All of these different ways of living. Even Sophie, with her baby in that apartment, with her record store job and her record collection. I imagine her twirling with her baby across her red carpet with Diana Ross crooning, the baby laughing, the two of them getting older in that apartment, eating meals on red vinyl chairs. Walt, too, as pathetic as his situation is, seems happy in his basement, providing entertainment to Fort Bragg's inner circle. All of them, in their own ways, manage to make their lives work.
”
”
Nina LaCour (The Disenchantments)
“
Haven't I told you scores of times, that you're always beginners, and the greatest satisfaction was not in being at the top, but in getting there, in the enjoyment you get out of scaling the heights? That's something you don't understand, and can't understand until you've gone through it yourself. You're still at the state of unlimited illusions, when a good, strong pair of legs makes the hardest road look short, and you've such a mighty appetite for glory that the tiniest crumb of success tastes delightfully sweet. You're prepared for a feast, you're going to satisfy your ambition at last, you feel it's within reach and you don't care if you give the skin off your back to get it! And then, the heights are scaled, the summits reached, and you've got to stay there. That's when the torture begins; you've drunk your excitement to the dregs and found it all too short and even rather bitter, and you wonder whether it was really worth the struggle. From that point there is no more unknown to explore, no new sensations to experience. Pride has had its brief portion of celebrity; you know that your best has been given and you're surprised it hasn't brought a keener sense of satisfaction. From that moment the horizon starts to empty of all hopes that once attracted you towards it. There's nothing to look forward to but death. But in spite of that you cling on, you don't want to feel you're played out, you persist in trying to produce something, like old men persist in trying to make love, with painful, humiliating results. ... If only we could have the courage to hang ourselves in front of our last masterpiece!
”
”
Émile Zola (The Masterpiece)
“
Just for today let me live in the light of peace and shun the darkness that accompanies negativity. Let me seek the smiles and laughter of others and join their happiness freely. Let me live in the moment without worry or shame of the past nor anticipation of the future. Just for today, let me do these things so that I may change from what I am into the masterpiece I can become.” — Richard D. Rowland
”
”
Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
“
Pardon me,' said Swann with polite irony, 'but I can assure you that my want of admiration is almost equally divided between those masterpieces.'
'Really now; that's very interesting. And what don't you like about them? ...Well, well, what I always say is, one should never argue about plays or novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things, and what may be horrible to you is, perhaps, just what I like best.
”
”
Marcel Proust (Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1))
“
Stay away. Do not paint me in shades of love and claim me your masterpiece. I am not one to be hung on a wall, chained and imprisoned by affection and adoration. You believe me a rose but you are mistaken. I am the wind and I will steal away your beauty as the wind often does of dandelions. And when I am done you will feel as a weed. With a final kiss I will travel on. My love, I do not want to strip you bare.
”
”
Andrea Michelle (Kalopsia: The Best Contemporary, Modern Poetry for Young People for Free!)
“
The elect sneer at popularity; they are inclined even to assert that it is a proof of mediocrity; but they forget that posterity makes its choice not from among the unknown writers of a period, but from among the known. It may be that some great masterpiece which deserves immortality has fallen still-born from the press, but posterity will never hear of it; it may be that posterity will scrap all the best sellers of our day, but it is among them that it must choose.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (Cakes and Ale)
“
Even with the best doctors, engineers, lawyers and police, you can only lead a dull, meaningless life without the many masterpieces of art to bring you joy, tickle your brain and keep your soul fresh. Art is the magic potion that pacifies broken hearts and motivates us to love life. Without Art we will only have hate, intolerance, dictators and wars. The most powerful army will never be able to build a healthy society without good art. Art is the freshest breath of life, it is the soul of life.
”
”
Kae Bahar (Letters from a Kurd)
“
If tough breaks have not soured me, neither have my glory-moments caused me to build any altars to myself where I can burn incense before God’s best job of work. My sense of humor will always stand in the way of my seeing myself, my family, my race or my nation as the whole intent of the universe. When I see what we really are like, I know that God is too great an artist for we folks on my side of the creek to be all of His best works. Some of His finest touches are among us, without doubt, but some more of His masterpieces are among those folks who live over the creek.
”
”
Zora Neale Hurston (Dust Tracks on a Road)
“
More than thirty years ago I memorized a quote that has shaped the way I live: “My potential is God’s gift to me. What I do with my potential is my gift to Him.” I believe I am accountable to God, others, and myself for every gift, talent, resource, and opportunity I have in life. If I give less than my best, then I am shirking my responsibility. I believe UCLA coach John Wooden was speaking to this idea when he said, “Make every day your masterpiece.” If we give our very best all the time, we can make our lives into something special. And that will overflow into the lives of others.
”
”
John C. Maxwell (The Maxwell Daily Reader: 365 Days of Insight to Develop the Leader Within You and Influence Those Around You)
“
Halcyon seasons, solstice of my days... Far from exaggerating my former happiness, I must struggle against too weak a portrayal; even now the recollection overpowers me. More sincere than most men, I can freely admit the secret causes of this felicity: that calm so propitious for work and for discipline of the mind seems to me one of the richest results of love. And it puzzles me that these joys, so precarious at best, and so rarely perfect in the course of human life, however we may have sought or received them, should be regarded with such mistrust by the so-called wise, who denounce the danger of habit and excess in sensuous delight, instead of fearing its absence or its loss; in tyrannizing over their senses they pass time which would be better occupied in putting their souls to rights, or embellishing them. At that period I paid as constant attention to the greater securing of my happiness, to enjoying and judging it, too, as I had always done for the smallest details of my acts; and what is the act of love, itself, if not a moment of passionate attention on the part of the body? Every bliss achieved is a masterpiece; the slightest error turns it awry, and it alters with one touch of doubt; any heaviness detracts from its charm, the least stupidity renders it dull.
”
”
Marguerite Yourcenar (Memoirs of Hadrian)
“
few weeks after that, when my mother had supplied herself with an assistant, I became the wife of Edward Weston, and never have found cause to repent it, and am certain that I never shall. We have had trials, and we know that we must have them again; but we bear them well together, and endeavour to fortify ourselves and each other against the final separation—that greatest of all afflictions to the survivor; but, if we keep in mind the glorious heaven beyond, where both may meet again, and sin and sorrow are unknown, surely that too may be borne; and meantime, we endeavour to live to the glory of Him who has scattered so many blessings in our path.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë: Masterpieces: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey,The Professor... (Bauer Classics) (All Time Best Writers Book 11))
“
When it comes to people we admire, it is in our nature to be selective with information, to load with personal associations, to elevate and make heroic. That is especially true after their deaths, especially if those deaths have been in any way untimely and/or shocking. It is hard to hold onto the real people, the true story. When we think of the Clash, we tend to forget or overlook the embarrassing moments, the mistakes, the musical filler, the petty squabbles, the squalid escapades, the unfulfilled promises. Instead, we take only selected highlights from the archive-the best songs, the most flatteringly-posed photographs, the most passionate live footage, the most stirring video clips, the sexiest slogans, the snappiest soundbites, the warmest personal memories-and from them we construct a near-perfect rock 'n' roll band, a Hollywood version of the real thing. The Clash have provided us with not just a soundtrack, but also a stock of images from which to create a movie we can run in our own heads. The exact content of the movie might differ from person to person and country to country, but certain key elements will remain much the same; and it is those elements that will make up the Essential Clash of folk memory. This book might have set out to take the movie apart scene by scene to analyse how it was put together; but this book also believes the movie is a masterpiece, and has no intention of spoiling the ending. It's time to freeze the frame. At the very moment they step out of history and into legend: the Last Gang In Town.
”
”
Marcus Gray (The Clash: Return of the Last Gang in Town)
“
Do you like Phil Collins? I've been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins' presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. Sabrina, remove your dress. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Sabrina, why don't you, uh, dance a little. Take the lyrics to Land of Confusion. In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. In Too Deep is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I've heard in rock. Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your asshole. Phil Collins' solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like In the Air Tonight and Against All Odds. Sabrina, don't just stare at it, eat it. But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is Sussudio, a great, great song, a personal favorite.
”
”
Bret Easton Ellis
“
We were in Julie’s room one night, my eldest daughter and I, maybe a decade ago now. I wanted to show her how the canvas painting she had carefully labored over for her little sister's Christmas gift was framed and hung on the wall.
I said, gazing at her masterpiece with no small amount of motherly pride, “Now it looks like a real work of art”.
Bella looked at me quizzically, wondering yet again how her mother could possibly understand so little about the world.
“Mama, every time you make something, or draw something, or paint something, it is already real art. There is no such thing as art that is not real”
And so I said that she was right, and didn’t it look nice, and once again, daughter became guru and mother became willing student.
Which is, I sometimes think, the way it was meant to be.
~~~~~
art is always real.
all of it.
even the stuff you don’t understand.
even the stuff you don’t like.
even the stuff that you made that you would be embarrassed to show your best friend
that photo that you took when you first got your DSLR, when you captured her spirit perfectly but the focus landed on her shoulder?
still art.
the painting you did last year the first time you picked up a brush, the one your mentor critiqued to death?
it’s art.
the story you are holding in your heart and so desperately want to tell the world?
definitely art.
the scarf you knit for your son with the funky messed up rows?
art. art. art.
the poem scrawled on your dry cleaning receipt at the red light.
the dress you want to sew.
the song you want to sing.
the clay you’ve not yet molded.
everything you have made
or will one day make
or imagine making in your wildest dreams.
it’s all real, every last bit.
because there is no such thing
as art that is not real.
”
”
Jeanette LeBlanc
“
Your charming charm is a super sexy mega power that is simply impossible to overcome. Sweetest gourmet, I adore your gorgeous body, when I see you, only one word sounds in my head: yum, I will give myself completely to you. I will always love only you unconsciously, unconsciously, your gently erotic image sat in the depths of my mind completely. From your amazingly contagious beauty, your mouth opens and speechless is lost. Dizzyingly, stunningly beautiful, you are like a giant tornado, from which everything attracts you. And the heart and soul yearn all the time only for you. It doesn't matter if you love me or not, the main thing is that I still love you, and in my subconscious mind, I will only love you forever. Your luxurious appearance of the highest quality, this is a workshop, the filigree work of Mother Nature, this is just a masterpiece that constitutes a unique example of true beauty, you have no equal, you are a girl of high caliber. You are absolutely beautiful to such an extent, so beautiful, so exotic, erotic, and your image sounds poetic like very beautiful music of love, that I’m just afraid and shy to come to you, I’m afraid to talk to you, as if standing next to a goddess, or with a super mega star, a world scale model that even aliens probably know. My heart beats more often, I can’t talk normally, from excitement, goosebumps all over my body, and it just shakes. All these are symptoms of true love for you, well, simply: oh), wow). To be your boyfriend and husband is the greatest honor in the world, he knelt before you with flowers in his hands. Your appearance is perfect just like Barbie. You are so beautiful that only you want to have sex forever, countless, infinite number of times. You are unattainable, you are like a star whose light of the soul, like a searchlight, illuminates me in the deep darkness of solitude. In love with you thorough. You are simply amazingly beautiful. You are the best of the best. Goddess of all goddesses, empress of all empresses, queen of all queens. More beautiful you just can not imagine a girl. Sexier than you just can not be anything. Beautiful soul just is not found. There was nothing more perfect than you and never will be, simply because I think so. Laponka, I'm your faithful fan, you are my only idol, idol, icon of beauty. It doesn't matter who you are, I will accept you any. Because in any case I am eager to be only with you. You have a sexy smile, and your sensual look is just awesome. And from your voice and look a pleasant shiver all over your body. You are special, the best that is in all worlds, universes and dimensions. You're just a sight for sore eyes. To you I feel the most powerful, love and sexual inclination. You're cooler than any Viagra and afrodosiak. From your beauty just cling to the constraints and embarrassment.
”
”
NOT A BOOK
“
And what books should we so read?
The principle which has never failed to confer superiority on a man's thinking activity is the well-worn precept: DO NOT READ GOOD BOOKS—life is too short for that—ONLY READ THE BEST. This simple recipe is as infallible as good air and good food are in physical hygiene. Yet, it is a fact that nineteen out of twenty modern people quake away from it. "Masterpieces again," they groan, "The Aeneid, the Divina Commedia, Paradise Lost, we have heard that before: much rather be ordinary than bored."
The notion that masterpieces are boresome school books interpreted by dull teachers, or examination stuff, is a marvellous product of education. Ignorance is assuredly less deadly, for it can create no such inferiority complex as the schoolboy's notion of his lack of kinship with the best literature. But this phantasm can easily be exorcised if we modify the above principle to: ONLY READ WHAT GIVES YOU THE GREATEST PLEASURE.
”
”
The Art of Thinking by Ernest Dimnet
“
There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood. I have nothing but contempt for the people who despise money. They are hypocrites or fools. Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off. The only thing to be careful about is that you do not pay more than a shilling for the shilling you earn. You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer. It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank, and independent. I pity with all my heart the artist, whether he writes or paints, who is entirely dependent for subsistence upon his art.
”
”
Lewis Carroll (50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 2)
“
It was a sign of the times that a Russian could joke, however wryly, about his country’s treatment of its greatest scientist. Floyd was again reminded of Sakharov’s eloquent speech to the Academy, when he was belatedly made Hero of the Soviet Union. Prison and banishment, he had told his listeners, were splendid aids to creativity; not a few masterpieces had been born within the walls of cells, beyond the reach of the world’s distractions. For that matter, the greatest single achievement of the human intellect, the Principia itself, was a product of Newton’s self-imposed exile from plague-ridden London. The comparison was not immodest; from those years in Gorky had come not only new insights into the structure of matter and the origin of the Universe, but the plasma-controlling concepts that had led to practical thermonuclear power. The drive itself, though the best-known and most publicized outcome of that work, was merely one by-product of that astonishing intellectual outburst. The tragedy was that such advances had been triggered by injustice; one day, perhaps, humanity would find more civilized ways of managing its affairs.
”
”
Arthur C. Clarke (2010: Odyssey Two (Space Odyssey, #2))
“
Mir Dimad (d. 1631) and his pupil Mulla Sadra (d. 1640) founded a school of mystical philosophy at Isfahan, which Majlisi did his best to suppress. They continued the tradition of Suhrawardi, linking philosophy and spirituality, and training their disciples in mystical disciplines which enabled them to acquire a sense of the alam al-mithal and the spiritual world. Both insisted that a philosopher must be as rational and scientific as Aristotle, but that he must also cultivate the imaginative, intuitive approach to truth. Both were utterly opposed to the new intolerance of some of the ulama, which they regarded as a perversion of religion. Truth could not be imposed by force and intellectual conformism was incompatible with true faith. Mulla Sadra also saw political reform as inseparable from spirituality. In his masterpiece Al-Afsan al-Arbaah (The Fourfold Journey), he described the mystical training that a leader must undergo before he could start to transform the mundane world. He must first divest himself of ego, and receive divine illumination and mystical apprehension of God. It was a path that could bring him to the same kind of spiritual insight as the Shii imams, though not, of course, on the same level as they.
”
”
Karen Armstrong (Islam: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles))
“
Many people perceive the merit of a manuscript which is read to them, but will not declare themselves in its favour until they see what success it has in the world when printed, or what intelligent men will say about it. They do not like to risk their opinion, and they want to be carried away by the crowd, and dragged along by the multitude. Then they say that they were amongst the first who approved of that work, and the general public shares their opinion. 32
Such men lose the best opportunities of convincing us that they are intelligent, clever, and first-rate critics, and can really discover what is good and what is better. A fine work falls into their hands; it is an author’s first book, before he has got any great name; there is nothing to prepossess any one in his favour, and by applauding his writings one does not court or flatter the great. Zelotes, you are not required to cry out: “This is a masterpiece; human intelligence never went farther; the human speech cannot soar higher; henceforward we will judge of no one’s taste but by what he thinks of this book.” Such exaggerated and offensive expressions are only employed by postulants for pensions or benefices, and are even injurious to what is really commendable and what one wishes to praise. Why not merely say—“That’s a good book?” It is true you say it when the whole of France has approved of it, and foreigners as well as your own countrymen, when it is printed all over Europe, and has been translated into several languages, but then it is too late.
”
”
Jean de La Bruyère
“
Well sir,’ I said, ‘if I can always think on these things, I think I might well love God; but how can I love my neighbours—when they vex me, and be so contrairy and sinful as some on ’em is?’ “‘It may seem a hard matter,’ says he, ‘to love our neighbours, who have so much of what is evil about them, and whose faults so often awaken the evil that lingers within ourselves, but remember, that He made them, and He loves them; and whosoever loved him that begat, loveth him that is begotten also. And if God so loveth us, that He gave His only begotten son to die for us, we ought also to love one another. But if you cannot feel positive affection for those who do not care for you, you can at least try to do to them as you would they should do unto you; you can endeavour to pity their failings and excuse their offences, and to do all the good you can to those about you. And if you accustom yourself to this, Nancy, the very effort itself will make you love them in some degree—to say nothing of the goodwill your kindness would beget in them, though they might have little else that is good about them. If we love God and wish to serve Him, let us try to be like Him, to do His work, to labour for His glory, which is the good of man, to hasten the coming of His kingdom, which is the peace and happiness of all the world—however powerless we may seem to be, in doing all the good we can through life, the humblest of us may do much towards it; and let us dwell in love, that He may dwell in us, and we in Him. The more happiness we bestow, the more we shall receive, even here, and the greater will be our reward in Heaven when we rest from our labours.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë: Masterpieces: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey,The Professor... (Bauer Classics) (All Time Best Writers Book 11))
“
Life is pretty short yet magnanimous if we know just how to live right. It isn't that easy, it takes a lot of our soul, sometimes too many broken pieces to finally come together in binding a masterpiece that smiles like a solitary star forever gazing around at the music of an eternal cosmos.
The most brutal yet beautiful truth about Life is that It is marked, marked with Time where every moment takes us closer to death, it doesn't have to sound or feel bad or scary because death is the most inevitable truth in this mortal world. While the knowledge of death jolts our mind with the uncertainty of Life, clutches us in the emotion of fear to think of pain or the loss of bonds, when we acknowledge that as a part of our souls' journey and take every moment as our precious gift, a blessing to experience this Life with its beautiful garden of emotions blossoming with wonderful smiles that we can paint on others, then we make our Life magnanimous, then we make even the very face of death as that of an angel coming to take us to a different voyage, soaked in a lot of memories and experiences beautifully binding our soul.
I have realised that when we live each day as if it's the last day of our life, we become more loving and gentle to everyone around and especially to our own selves. We forgive and love more openly, we grace and embrace every opportunity we get to be kind, to stay in touch with everything that truly matters. I have realised that when we rise every morning with gratitude knowing that the breath of air still passes through our body, just in the mere understanding that we have one more day to experience Life once again, we stay more compassionate towards everything and everyone around and invest more of our selves into everything and everyone that truly connect and resonate with our soul. I have realised that when we consciously try to be good and kind, no matter however bad or suffocating a situation is we always end up taking everything at its best holding on to the firm grip of goodness, accepting everything as a part of our souls' lesson or just a turn of Time or Fate and that shapes into our strength and roots our core with the truest understanding of Life, the simple act of going on and letting go. Letting go of anything and everything that chains our Soul while going on with a Heart open to Love and a Soul ready to absorb all that falls along the pathway of this adventure called Life. I have realised that when we are kind and do anything good for another person, that gives us the most special happiness, something so pure that even our hearts don't know how deep that joy permeates inside our soul. I have realised that at the end of the day we do good not because of others but because of our own selves, for if tomorrow death comes to grace me I hope to smile and say I have Lived, loved unconditionally and embraced forgiveness, kindness and goodness and all the other colours of Love with every breath I caught, I have lived a Life magnanimous.
So each time someone's unkind towards you, hold back and smile, and try to give your warmth to that person. Because Kindness is not a declaration of who deserves it, it's a statement of who you are. So each time some pieces of your heart lay scattered, hold them up and embrace everyone of them with Love. Because Love is not a magic potion that is spilled from a hollow space, it's a breath of eternity that flows through the tunnel of your soul. So each time Life puts up a question of your Happiness, answer back with a Smile of Peace. Because Happiness is not what you look for in others, it's what you create in every passing moment, with the power of Life, that is pretty short when we see how counted it stands in days but actually turns out absolutely incredibly magnanimous when loved and lived in moments.
”
”
Debatrayee Banerjee
“
When the least obvious beauties of Vinteuil’s sonata were revealed to me, already, borne by the force of habit beyond the reach of my sensibility, those that I had from the first distinguished and preferred in it were beginning to escape, to avoid me. Since I was able only in successive moments to enjoy all the pleasures that this sonata gave me, I never possessed it in its entirety: it was like life itself. But, less disappointing than life is, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best. In Vinteuil’s sonata the beauties that one discovers at once are those also of which one most soon grows tired, and for the same reason, no doubt, namely that they are less different from what one already knows. But when those first apparitions have withdrawn, there is left for our enjoyment some passage which its composition, too new and strange to offer anything but confusion to our mind, had made indistinguishable and so preserved intact; and this, which we have been meeting every day and have not guessed it, which has thus been held in reserve for us, which by the sheer force of its beauty has become invisible and has remained unknown, this comes to us last of all. But this also must be the last that we shall relinquish. And we shall love it longer than the rest because we have taken longer to get to love it. The time, moreover, that a person requires—as I required in the matter of this sonata—to penetrate a work of any depth is merely an epitome, a symbol, one might say, of the years, the centuries even that must elapse before the public can begin to cherish a masterpiece that is really new. So that the man of genius, to shelter himself from the ignorant contempt of the world, may say to himself that, since one’s contemporaries are incapable of the necessary detachment, works written for posterity should be read by posterity alone, like certain pictures which one cannot appreciate when one stands too close to them.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
“
CHALLENGES TO YOUNG POETS
Invent a new language anyone can understand.
Climb the Statue of Liberty.
Reach for the unattainable.
Kiss the mirror and write what you see and hear.
Dance with wolves and count the stars, including the unseen.
Be naïve, innocent, non-cynical, as if you had just landed on earth (as indeed you have, as indeed we all have), astonished by what you have fallen upon.
Write living newspaper. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance level for hot air.
Write and endless poem about your life on earth or elsewhere.
Read between the lines of human discourse.
Avoid the provincial, go for the universal.
Think subjectively, write objectively.
Think long thoughts in short sentences.
Don't attend poetry workshops, but if you do, don't go the learn "how to" but to learn "what" (What's important to write about).
Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.
Resist much, obey less.
Secretly liberate any being you see in a cage.
Write short poems in the voice of birds. Make your lyrics truly lyrical. Birdsong is not made by machines. Give your poem wings to fly to the treetops.
The much-quoted dictum from William Carlos Williams, "No ideas but in things," is OK for prose, but it lays a dead hand on lyricism, since "things" are dead.
Don't contemplate your navel in poetry and think the rest of the world is going to think it's important.
Remember everything, forget nothing.
Work on a frontier, if you can find one.
Go to sea, or work near water, and paddle your own boat.
Associate with thinking poets. They're hard to find.
Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking. "First thought, best thought" may not make for the greatest poetry. First thought may be worst thought.
What's on your mind? What do you have in mind? Open your mouth and stop mumbling.
Don't be so open minded that your brains fall out.
Questions everything and everyone. Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and status quo.
Be a poet, not a huckster. Don't cater, don't pander, especially not to possible audiences, readers, editors, or publishers.
Come out of your closet. It's dark there.
Raise the blinds, throw open your shuttered windows, raise the roof, unscrew the locks from the doors, but don't throw away the screws.
Be committed to something outside yourself. Be militant about it. Or ecstatic.
To be a poet at sixteen is to be sixteen, to be a poet at 40 is to be a poet. Be both.
Wake up and pee, the world's on fire.
Have a nice day.
”
”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (San Francisco Poems (San Francisco Poet Laureate Series))
“
And by the end of March one of them had already begun his journey. Twenty-two years old, an A.B. and LL.B. of Harvard, Francis Parkman was back from a winter trip to scenes in Pennsylvania and Ohio that would figure in his book and now he started with his cousin, Quincy Adams Shaw, for St. Louis. He was prepared to find it quite as alien to Beacon Hill as the Dakota lands beyond it, whither he was going. He was already an author (a poet and romancer), had already designed the great edifice his books were to build, and already suffered from the mysterious, composite illness that was to make his life a long torture. He hoped, in fact, that a summer on the prairies might relieve or even cure the malady that had impaired his eyes and, he feared, his heart and brain as well. He had done his best to cure it by systematic exercise, hard living in the White Mountains, and a regimen self-imposed in the code of his Puritan ancestors which would excuse no weakness. But more specifically Parkman was going west to study the Indians. He intended to write the history of the conflict between imperial Britain and imperial France, which was in great part a story of Indians. The Conspiracy of Pontiac had already taken shape in his mind; beyond it stretched out the aisles and transepts of what remains the most considerable achievement by an American historian. So he needed to see some uncorrupted Indians in their native state. It was Parkman’s fortune to witness and take part in one of the greatest national experiences, at the moment and site of its occurrence. It is our misfortune that he did not understand the smallest part of it. No other historian, not even Xenophon, has ever had so magnificent an opportunity: Parkman did not even know that it was there, and if his trip to the prairies produced one of the exuberant masterpieces of American literature, it ought instead to have produced a key work of American history. But the other half of his inheritance forbade. It was the Puritan virtues that held him to the ideal of labor and achievement and kept him faithful to his goal in spite of suffering all but unparalleled in literary history. And likewise it was the narrowness, prejudice, and mere snobbery of the Brahmins that insulated him from the coarse, crude folk who were the movement he traveled with, turned him shuddering away from them to rejoice in the ineffabilities of Beacon Hill, and denied our culture a study of the American empire at the moment of its birth. Much may rightly be regretted, therefore. But set it down also that, though the Brahmin was indifferent to Manifest Destiny, the Puritan took with him a quiet valor which has not been outmatched among literary folk or in the history of the West.
”
”
Bernard DeVoto (The Year of Decision 1846)
“
The textbooks of history prepared for the public schools are marked by a rather naive parochialism and chauvinism. There is no need to dwell on such futilities. But it must be admitted that even for the most conscientious historian abstention from judgments of value may offer certain difficulties.
As a man and as a citizen the historian takes sides in many feuds and controversies of his age. It is not easy to combine scientific aloofness in historical studies with partisanship in mundane interests. But that can and has been achieved by outstanding historians. The historian's world view may color his work. His representation of events may be interlarded with remarks that betray his feelings and wishes and divulge his party affiliation. However, the postulate of scientific history's abstention from value judgments is not infringed by occasional remarks expressing the preferences of the historian if the general purport of the study is not affected. If the writer, speaking of an inept commander of the forces of his own nation or party, says "unfortunately" the general was not equal to his task, he has not failed in his duty as a historian. The historian is free to lament the destruction of the masterpieces of Greek art provided his regret does not influence his report of the events that brought about this destruction.
The problem of Wertfreíheit must also be clearly distinguished from that of the choice of theories resorted to for the interpretation of facts. In dealing with the data available, the historian needs ali the knowledge provided by the other disciplines, by logic, mathematics, praxeology, and the natural sciences. If what these disciplines teach is insufficient or if the historian chooses an erroneous theory out of several conflicting theories held by the specialists, his effort is misled and his performance is abortive. It may be that he chose an untenable theory because he was biased and this theory best suited his party spirit. But the acceptance of a faulty doctrine may often be merely the outcome of ignorance or of the fact that it enjoys greater popularity than more correct doctrines.
The main source of dissent among historians is divergence in regard to the teachings of ali the other branches of knowledge upon which they base their presentation. To a historian of earlier days who believed in witchcraft, magic, and the devil's interference with human affairs, things hàd a different aspect than they have for an agnostic historian. The neomercantilist doctrines of the balance of payments and of the dollar shortage give an image of presentday world conditions very different from that provided by an examination of the situation from the point of view of modern subjectivist economics.
”
”
Ludwig von Mises (Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution)
“
Pulp Fiction was a major success, commercially and critically,” according to Scott Cooper Florida, “It was Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece. Winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1994, the movie was also nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and even won Best Original Screenplay.
”
”
Scott Cooper Florida
“
To maximize pleasure and to minimize pain - in that order - were characteristic Enlightenment concerns. This generally more receptive attitude toward good feeling and pleasure would have significant long-term consequences. It is a critical difference separating Enlightenment views on happiness from those of the ancients. There is another, however, of equal importance: that of ambition and scale. Although the philosophers of the principal classical schools sought valiantly to minimize the role of chance as a determinant of human happiness, they were never in a position to abolish it entirely. Neither, for that matter, were the philosophers of the eighteenth century, who, like men and women at all times, were forced to grapple with apparently random upheavals and terrible reversals of forture. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 is an awful case in point. Striking on All Saints' Day while the majority of Lisbon's inhabitants were attending mass, the earthquake was followed by a tidal wave and terrible fires that destroyed much of the city and took the lives of tens of thousands of men and women. 'Quel triste jeu de hasard que le jeu de la vie humaine,' Voltaire was moved to reflect shortly thereafter: 'What a sad game of chance is this game of human life.' He was not alone in reexamining his more sanguine assumptions of earlier in the century, doubting the natural harmony of the universe and the possibilities of 'paradise on earth'; the catastrophe provoked widespread reflection on the apparent 'fatality of evil' and the random occurrence of senseless suffering. It was shortly thereafter that Voltaire produced his dark masterpiece, Candide, which mocks the pretension that this is the best of all possible worlds.
And yet, in many ways, the incredulity expressed by educated Europeans in the earthquake's aftermath is a more interesting index of received assumptions, for it demonstrates the degree to which such random disasters were becoming, if not less common, at least less expected. Their power to shock was magnified accordingly, but only because the predictability and security of daily existence were increasing, along with the ability to control the consequences of unforeseen disaster. When the Enlightened Marquis of Pombal, the First Minister of Portugal, set about rebuilding Lisbon after the earthquake, he paid great attention to modern principles of architecture and central planning to help ensure that if such a calamity were to strike again, the effects would be less severe. To this day, the rebuilt Lisbon of Pombal stands as an embodiment of Enlightened ideas.
Thus, although eighteenth-century minds did not - and could not - succeed in mastering the random occurrences of the universe, they could - and did - conceive of exerting much greater control over nature and human affairs. Encouraged by the examples of Newtonian physics, they dreamed of understanding not only the laws of the physical universe but the moral and human laws as well, hoping one day to lay out with precision what the Italian scholar Giambattista Vico described as a 'new science' of society and man. It was in the eighteenth century, accordingly, that the human and social sciences were born, and so it is hardly surprising that observers turned their attention to studying happiness in similar terms. Whereas classical sages had aimed to cultivate a rarified ethical elite - attempting to bring happiness to a select circle of disciples, or at most to the active citizens of the polis - Enlightenment visionaries dreamed of bringing happiness to entire societies and even to humanity as a whole.
”
”
Darrin M. McMahon (Happiness: A History)
“
March 5 Morning MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE PROBLEMS IN YOUR LIFE Though many things feel random and wrong, remember that I am sovereign over everything. I can fit everything into a pattern for good, but only to the extent that you trust Me. Every problem can teach you something, transforming you little by little into the masterpiece I created you to be. The very same problem can become a stumbling block over which you fall if you react with distrust and defiance. The choice is up to you, and you will have to choose many times each day whether to trust Me or defy Me. The best way to befriend your problems is to thank Me for them. This simple act opens your mind to the possibility of benefits flowing from your difficulties. You can even give persistent problems nicknames, helping you to approach them with familiarity rather than with dread. The next step is to introduce them to Me, enabling Me to embrace them in My loving Presence. I will not necessarily remove your problems, but My wisdom is sufficient to bring good out of every one of them.
”
”
Sarah Young (Jesus Calling Morning and Evening, with Scripture References: Yearlong Guide to Inner Peace and Spiritual Growth (A 365-Day Devotional) (Jesus Calling®))
“
I choose to love every part of me,
because I am perfectly imperfect.
I am a beautiful masterpiece, imperfectly complete,
a work in progress,
because there is always room for growth.
I choose to love myself,
because I always do the best I can.
What matters most is progress,
not completion or perfection.
Loving myself,
is giving myself the gift
to be human in peace.
”
”
Hollie Grace (Words for: Self-Confidence: Inspiring Poetry That Builds Your Confidence and Boosts Your Self-Esteem)
“
We are great fools. 'He has spent his life in idleness,' we say, and 'I have done nothing today.' What! have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental, but the most noble of your occupations. 'If I had been put in charge of some great affair, I might have shown what I could do.' Have you been able to reflect on your life and control it? Then you have performed the greatest work of all. To reveal herself and do her work, nature has no need of fortune. She manifests herself equally at all levels, and behind curtains as well as in the open. Our duty is to compose our character, not to compose books, to win not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live properly. All other things -- to reign, to lay up treasure, to build -- are at best but little aids and additions.
”
”
Montaigne
“
It was not the first time that his duty had been to comfort, as best he could, one of the broken things his brother’s imperious speed had cast aside and forgotten. He made no attempt to analyze the situation or to state it in exact terms; but he felt Katharine Gaylord’s need for him, and he accepted it as a commission from his brother to help this woman to die. Day by day he felt her demands on him grow more imperious, her need for him grow more acute and positive; and day by day he felt that in his peculiar relation to her his own individuality played a smaller and smaller part. His power to minister to her comfort, he saw, lay solely in his link with his brother’s life. He understood all that his physical resemblance meant to her. He knew that she sat by him always watching for some common trick of gesture, some familiar play of expression, some illusion of light and shadow, in which he should seem wholly Adriance. He knew that she lived upon this and that her disease fed upon it; that it sent shudders of remembrance through her and that in the exhaustion which followed this turmoil of her dying senses, she slept deep and sweet and dreamed of youth and art and days in a certain old Florentine garden, and not of bitterness and death.
”
”
Elsinore Books (Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces)
“
I believe that we shocked each other by how swiftly we went from being the people who knew each other best in the world to being a pair of the most mutually incomprehensible strangers who ever lived.
But it was vital to my survival to have a one bedroom of my own i saw the aprtment almost as a sanatorium a hospice clinci for my own recovery I painted the walls in the warmest colors i could find and bought myself flowers every week as if i were visiting myself in the hospital
is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty
why are you studying Italian so that just in case Italy ever invades Ethiopia again and is actually successful this time?
ciao comes from if you must know it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval venetians as an intimate salutation Sono il Suo Schiavo meaning i am your slave.
om Naamah Shivaya meaning I honor the divinity that resides whin me.
I wanted to experience both , I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence the dual glories of a human life I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos the singular balance of the good and he beautiful I'd been missing both during these last hard years because both pleasure and devotion require a stress free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety , As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion.
four feet on the ground a head full of foliage looking at the world through the heart.
it was more than I wanted to toughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well.
same guatemalan musicians are always playing id rather be a sparrow than a snail on their bamboo windpipes
oh how i want italian to open itself up to me
i havent felt so starved for comprehension since then
dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontanana
dolce sitl nuovo
Dante wrote his divine comedy in terza rima triple rhyme a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating here times every five lines.
lamor che move il sole e laltre stelle
we are the masters of bel far niente
larte darrangiarsi
The reply in italy to you deserve a break today would probably be yeah no duh that's why I'm planning on taking a break at noon to go over to your house and sleep with your wife,
I walked home to my apartment and soft-boiled a pair of fresh brown eggs for my lunch i peeled the eggs and arranged them on a plate beside the seven stalks of the asparagus (which were so slim and snappy they didn't need to be cooked at all,)I put some olives on the plate too and the four knobs of goat cheese I'd picked up yesterday from the fromagerie down the street tend two slices of pink oily salmon for dessert a lovely peach which the woman at the market had given to me for free and which was still warm form the roman sunlight for the longest time I couldn't even touch this food because it was such a masterpiece of lunch a true expression of the art of making something out of nothing finally when i had fully absorbed the prettiness of my meal i went and sat in apatch of sunbeam on my clean wooden floor and ate every bit of it with my fingers while reading my daily newspaper article in Italian happiness inhabited my every molecule.
I am inspired by the regal self assurance of this town so grounded and rounded so amused and monumental knowing that she is held securely in the palm of history i would like to be like rome when i am an old lady.
I linger over my food and wine for many hours because nobody in
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same. Go through a magazine and pick out the advertisements you like best. You will probably pick those with beautiful illustrations, or clever copy. You forget to ask yourself whether your favorite advertisements would make you want to buy the product. Says Rosser Reeves, of the Ted Bates agency: ‘I’m not saying that charming, witty and warm copy won’t sell. I’m just saying that I’ve seen thousands of charming, witty campaigns that didn’t. Let’s say you are a manufacturer. Your advertising isn’t working and your sales are going down. And everything depends on it. Your future depends on it, your family’s future depends on it, other people’s families depend on it. And you walk in this office and talk to me, and you sit in that chair. Now, what do you want out of me? Fine writing? Do you want masterpieces? Do you want glowing things that can be framed by copywriters? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?
”
”
David Ogilvy (Ogilvy on Advertising)
“
You are the image of God predistine to rule, he gave u dominion as far as the earth is concerned. God also predestined you to be the best in this life, but only in your field(where your purpose is concerned). Before you were conceived God said: let us create a pilot, a doctor, an artist, a minister etc. Jeremiah is not the only one whom God knew and appointed before birth Jer1:4-5. You are also appointed by God in a certain field which you will never know until you understand your purpose and ask God about it. Read chapter one of #You-are-God's-masterpiece available online at Amazon,bookrix and many other stores.
”
”
Nonhlanhla Annah Thusi (You are God's masterpiece: God's showpiece)
“
Give me the things that I need more often than the things I want.
You see, I hope the universe brings us to our knees every time that we start begging for the sun more often than we are thankful for the rain.
You see, I never want to know love without heartbreak. I want the universe to take me for my best parts and my worse ones. Just as I try to take people for theirs. You're not perfect, but I hope that we never try to be.
You see, scientists say that for giant redwood trees to grow, they must first run at over 1000 degrees until their seeds gain the courage they need to release their seeds back down to the earth.
This, this is for the people still burning. The rooftop dreamers, the naive believers, the late-night shower singers.
You see, this is for the people with rough parts, with sandpaper in their history. The out-of-tune orchestra performers, the two-left-feet dance club goers, the poets, still trying to figure out how to rhyme. You don't need to hide.
You need to let your rain shine. And yes, I said rain shine. As in let your best and worst parts be on display. Because you are not just your name. You're not just your biggest mistake or your shiniest trophy.
You are a perfect story.
Built up of highs and lows, lessons learned and lessons earned.
and this, this is for you. When all else fails, let it remind you that you are a masterpiece of everything that we call art. You are a hot thunderstorm, a bright shadow, a cold volcano.
You are every part of you.
”
”
the mind of sol (tt)
“
he had acted with no thought at all for what might follow and had been made to suffer for it.
”
”
Franz Kafka (The Trial: ‘The Trial’ One of the Best Fiction Novel by Franz Kafka - Kafkaesque Intrigue: Exploring Franz Kafka's Masterpiece The Trial: ‘The Trial’ One of the Best Fiction Novel (Revised))
“
he admits he doesn't know the law and at the same time insists he's innocent.
”
”
Franz Kafka (The Trial: ‘The Trial’ One of the Best Fiction Novel by Franz Kafka - Kafkaesque Intrigue: Exploring Franz Kafka's Masterpiece The Trial: ‘The Trial’ One of the Best Fiction Novel (Revised))
“
Lord Shrift you asked for the best... The best takes time.
”
”
Che Gilson (Avigon)
“
How will I forget the memory that happened on the 29th of September 2017? Bunso woke
up early that day and asked me if we could paint. Of course, I said yes! I guided his hand in doing soft strokes in creating his requested "fireworks". Then I had to turn off the stove because I was cooking breakfast. When I came back, he was giggling and showed me what he did. He wrote the words 'I LOVE YOU' all by himself and he told me that he wanted to decorate his masterpiece with hearts and stars. I could not control my tears. Tears of joy perhaps because for the very first
time, he tried his best to show his love and affection for me through art which he could not express through words. A moment like that has shown me how much God loves me. I may be experiencing struggles, doing more sacrifice, and adjusting to the needs of Bunso like other moms who have kids with special needs. At the end of the day, I know that there is a reason why God has given me
Bunso. Perhaps He knows that I can love him unconditionally. Yes, I can and I do truly. I am so glad that he loves me too beyond words can express.
”
”
Sharon Joyce S. Valdez (I Love You Because I Love You)
“
Today I wish you to know that 2024 isn’t going to be just a new year; it’s going to be an opportunity to step into your full power. It’s going to be a chance to paint your own masterpiece, to sing your own song, to dance to the beat of your own heart. For me, 2024 is going to be a year to unleash the Power of “YET”….
Darling listen – We’ve sown seeds of wisdom, weathered storms with resilience & discovered hidden depths within ourselves. Now, the time has come to reap the harvest, to blossom into our most radiant selves.
Sweetheart, forget all the limitations whispered by age, convention or past experiences & embrace the power of “YET.” In 2024, say “I haven’t mastered this language yet,” “I haven’t traveled to that dream destination yet,” “I haven’t written my story yet.” Let “yet” be your compass, pointing towards endless possibilities..
Let you unmask your artist, break the mold, embrace the imperfect brushstroke, find (expand) your tribe & savor the process..
I wish & hope that each day you motivate yourself to be a little braver, a little bolder & a little closer to your best self.” Let 2024 be the year you become the most healthy, happy, vibrant, successful & authentic versions of yourself. Blessings!
With warmth & anticipation,
Your friend on this journey..
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Rajesh Goyal
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Kapuściński’s masterpiece, The Soccer War, when he writes: “There is so much crap in this world and then, suddenly, there is honesty and humanity.
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Andrew McCarthy (The Best American Travel Writing 2015 (The Best American Series))
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Do not sweat and cry. Just work smart and produce the best results. Working smart is akin to sculpting. One has to chisel a block of wood until it becomes a masterpiece.
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Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
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More prosaically – and forgetting all about that alleged serpent and that hypothetical Kundalini energy – it appears possible to describe the processes in such experiences in modern scientific terminology. One of the best approaches can be seen in psychologist David Cole Gordon’s neglected little masterpiece on the subject of masturbation, Self-Love. It is Professor Gordon’s thesis that “unification” experiences appear on a variety of levels and are much more miscellaneous than has been realized hitherto. In fact, he insists that many experiences regarded as coarse or low are precisely similar, neurologically, to the cosmic trances of Buddha, Jesus, Blake or Whitman.
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Robert Anton Wilson (Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits)
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Structural truth at all costs war their motto and all buildings which attempted to conceal the true nature of their construction, or to disguise the materials in which they were carried out, stood convicted of acting a lie. That a high proportion of the buildings which many generations of man-kind had agreed to regard as masterpieces failed to reach this exalted standard was held to be quite irrelevant.
Unfortunately the new theory did not in practice prove quite so easy to carry out satisfactorily as hoped. Simplicity is not invariably and on every occasion a virtue, and while desperate attempts to lend some transient interest to a hopelessly uninspired structure by a top-dressing of cornice and pilasters are doubtless reprehensible, the bright, unvarnished truth tends too often to be even more depressing. After all few of us, by and large, look our best in the nude.
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Osbert Lancaster (Here, of All Places)
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Love is worth it, Bobby Ray. It’s the best part of being human.” He smiled. “‘Faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.’ It can last forever.
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Francine Rivers (The Masterpiece)
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The making of a ballplayer: the production of brute efficiency out of natural genius. For Schwartz this formed the paradox at the heart of baseball, or football, or any other sport. You loved it because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with a special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yes somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about The Human Condition. The Human Condition, basically, that we're alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not. // Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed ~sometimes, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer--you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted. What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability. Moments of inspiration were nothing compared to elimination of error. ... Can you perform on demand, like a car, a furnace, a gun? Can you make that throw one hundred times out of a hundred? If it can't be a hundred, it had better be ninety-nine.
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Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding)
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Ephesians 2:10 (NLT) For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. YouTube “Mandisa Unfinished
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Mark K. Fry Sr. (Determined: Encouragement for Living Your Best Life with a Chronic Illness)
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Fight the fight, day by day, whatever your circumstances. God loves you. YouTube “Danny Gokey Masterpiece
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Mark K. Fry Sr. (Determined: Encouragement for Living Your Best Life with a Chronic Illness)
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God may have created man before woman, but there is always a rough draft before the masterpiece.
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Krisanta Bella (JOKES : Collection of Funny Jokes And Funny Short Stories (Jokes, Best Jokes, Funny Jokes, Funny Short Stories, Funny Books, Collection of Jokes, Jokes For Adults))
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It turns out that when people assess your skills, they put more weight on your peaks18 than on your troughs. Even if you happened to see Serena Williams repeatedly double-fault on her serve, you’d recognize her excellence if you witnessed just one of her aces. When Steve Jobs flopped with the Apple Lisa, people still deemed him a visionary for his feats with the Mac. And we judge Shakespeare’s genius by his masterpieces (think Hamlet and King Lear), forgiving his forgettable plays (I’m looking at you, Timon of Athens and The Merry Wives of Windsor). People judge your potential from your best moments, not your worst. What if you gave yourself the same grace?
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Adam M. Grant (Hidden Potential)
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First, the frenzy to buy art meant that paintings turned up out of nowhere, every day, and sold with no questions asked. Second, the Nazis had endless reserves of cash. Third, Hitler and Goering were rubes who fancied themselves connoisseurs. (In Goering’s case, at least, his chief art expert was no great shakes, either.) Fourth, the Nazis were not the only ones in the market. Faced with the hideous prospect of Dutch masterpieces falling into German hands, Holland’s art establishment and its great industrialists flung money at the sellers. Best of all, from a schemer’s point of view, all the wheeling-and-dealing went on at hyperspeed, with no time for reflection or second thoughts. With ordinary paintings, this urgency posed no great danger—faced with a middling work, one could make only a middling mistake. But make the purchase of a lifetime in haste and you might well make the mistake of a lifetime.
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Edward Dolnick (The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century (P.S.))
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Astonishingly, most experts had no such qualms. With the exception of Duveen and a tiny handful of others, the leading scholars of the day all shared Bredius’s opinion that Emmaus was a masterpiece.* They focused their attention on the Vermeer touches they liked best and ignored or downplayed the others.
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Edward Dolnick (The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century (P.S.))
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He spoke with bitterness, and, having said thus, relapsed for some minutes into silence. Presently he raised his head from his hands, and added, with an altered voice and manner, “I, sir, paused, investigated, believed, and was not ashamed to state my convictions to the world. I, too, was branded as a visionary, held up to ridicule by my contemporaries, and hooted from that field of science in which I had laboured with honour during all the best years of my life. These things happened just three-and-twenty years ago. Since then, I have lived as you see me living now, and the world has forgotten me, as I have forgotten the world. You have my history.” “It is a very sad one,” I murmured, scarcely knowing what to answer. “It is a very common one,” he replied. “I have only suffered for the truth, as many a better and wiser man has suffered before me.
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Elsinore Books (Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces)
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In the tapestry of life, where each moment weaves its own thread, remember this: the past was but a canvas, and the present is the brushstroke of today. Embrace the masterpiece of your journey, for in every stroke, you'll find the promise that the best is yet to come.
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Samuel Asumadu-Sarkodie
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I had felt utterly incapable of playing the part of ignorance properly, and therefore was afraid to try. It is also certain that he had brought some ready-made suspicions with him, and that he viewed my politeness as a strange and unnatural phenomenon. And yet how else could I have received him? Not heartily! That was impossible for psychological reasons, which I need not state here. My only object was to keep off his inquiries. Surlily? Yes, but surliness might have provoked a point-blank question. From its novelty to him and from its nature, punctilious courtesy was the manner best calculated to restrain the man. But there was the danger of his breaking through my defence bluntly. I could not, I think, have met him by a direct lie, also for psychological (not moral) reasons. If he had only known how afraid I was of his putting my feeling of identity with the other to the test! But, strangely enough—(I thought of it only afterwards)—I believe that he was not a little disconcerted by the reverse side of that weird situation, by something in me that reminded him of the man he was seeking—suggested a mysterious similitude to the young fellow he had distrusted and disliked from the first.
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Elsinore Books (Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces)
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PROBLEMS IN YOUR LIFE. Though many things feel random and wrong, remember that I am sovereign over everything. I can fit everything into a pattern for good, but only to the extent that you trust Me. Every problem can teach you something, transforming you little by little into the masterpiece I created you to be. The very same problem can become a stumbling block over which you fall, if you react with distrust and defiance. The choice is up to you, and you will have to choose many times each day whether to trust Me or defy Me. The best way to befriend your problems is to thank Me for them. This simple act opens your mind to the possibility of benefits flowing from your difficulties. You can even give persistent problems nicknames, helping you to approach them with familiarity rather than with dread. The next step is to introduce them to Me, enabling Me to embrace them in My loving Presence. I will not necessarily remove your problems, but My wisdom is sufficient to bring good out of every one of them. We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose. ROMANS 8 : 28 (AMP) But we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1 CORINTHIANS 1 : 23 – 24
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Sarah Young (Jesus Calling, with Scripture References: Enjoying Peace in His Presence (A 365-Day Devotional) (Jesus Calling®))
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Assume your service is bad. It can’t hurt, and it will force you to improve.” – Harry Beckwith, Selling the Invisible Originally recommended by Derek Sivers to me as “the best book on marketing he’s ever read,” Selling the Invisible is a masterpiece. In it, Harry Beckwith repeatedly makes the point that, before you do any fancy marketing, you need to make your service good. And he recommends you start by assuming it’s bad.
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Sebastian Marshall (PROGRESSION)
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Be the best that you can be
The scripture says God has given us the power to enjoy what’s appointed and allotted to us, which means I don’t have the power to enjoy your life. You may have more money, more gifts, more friends, and a better job. But if you put me in your life, I will not enjoy it.
You are uniquely created to run your own race. Quit wishing you were someone else or thinking things such as, “If I had his talent…” If God wanted you to have his talent He would give it to you. Take what you have and develop it. Make the most of your gifts.
Instead of thinking things such as, “If I had her looks…,” be grateful for the looks God gave you. That’s not an accident. The life you have is perfectly matched for you.
Why don’t you get excited about your life? Be excited about your looks, your talent, and your personality. When you are passionate about who you are, you bring honor to God. That’s when God will breathe in your direction, and the seeds of greatness He’s planted on the inside will spring forth.
Really, it’s an insult to God to wish you were someone else. You are saying, “God, why did you make me subpar? Why did you make me less than others?”
God didn’t make anyone inferior. He didn’t create anyone to be second-class. You are a masterpiece. You are fully loaded and totally equipped for the race that’s designed for you.
Your attitude should be: “I may not be as tall, as tan, or as talented as someone else, but that’s okay. Nobody will ever be a better me. I’m anointed to be me. I’m equipped to be me. And not only that, it’s also easy to be me.”
It’s easy to be yourself. It’s easy to run your race because you’re equipped for what you need. But so many times, people try to be something they are not. I’ve known dark-skinned people who apply cream to try to be lighter. And I know light-skinned people who go to a tanning bed to try to be darker.
I had an older lady touch my hair at a book signing recently. She said, “Joel, I wish I had that curly hair.” Nowadays you can do something about it. If you have straight hair and you want curly hair, you can perm it. If you have gray hair and you want brown hair, dye it. If you have no hair and you want hair, buy it!
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Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
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Sometimes the best way to relax, unwind, and get everything straightened out... is to curl up with a good book. – Douglas Pagels, from 100 Things to Always Remember and One Thing to Never Forget
Give something of yourself to the day... even if it’s just a smile to someone walking the other way. – Douglas Pagels, from 100 Things to Always Remember and One Thing to Never Forget
Even if you can’t just snap your fingers and make a dream come true, you can travel in the direction of your dream, every single day, and you can keep shortening the distance between the two of you. – Douglas Pagels, from 100 Things to Always Remember and One Thing to Never Forget
Rest assured that, whenever you need them, your guardian angels are great about working overtime. – Douglas Pagels, from A Special Christmas Blessing Just for You
Never forget what a treasure you are. That special person in the mirror may not always get to hear all the compliments you so sweetly deserve, but you are so worthy of such an abundance... of friendship, joy, and love. – Douglas Pagels, from You Are One Amazing Lady
I love that I get to wake up every morning in a world that has people like you in it. – Douglas Pagels, from You Are One Amazing Lady
Be someone who doesn’t make your guardian angel work too hard or worry too much. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life!
Each day is a blank page in the diary of your life. Every day, you’re given a chance to determine what the words will say and how the story will unfold. The more rewarding you can make each page, the more amazing the entire book will be. And I would love for you to write a masterpiece. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life!
Practice your tree pose. I want you to have a goal of finding a way to bring everything in your life into balance. Let the roots of all your dreams go deep. Let the hopes of all your tomorrows grow high. Bend, but don’t break. Take the seasons as they come. Stick up for yourself. And reach for the sky. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life!
Remember that a new morning is good medicine... and one of the joys of life is realizing that you have the ability to make this a really great day. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life!
Find comfort in knowing that “rising above” is something you can always find a way to do. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life!
Look up “onward” in the thesaurus and utilize every one of those synonyms whenever you’re wondering which direction to go in. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life!
Don’t judge yourself – love yourself. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life!
If you have a choice between a la-di-da life and an ooh-la-la! one, well... you know what to do. Choose the one that requires you to dust off your dancing shoes. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life!
Write out your own definition of success. Fill it with a mix of stardust and wishes and down-to-earth things, and provide all the insight you can give it. Imagine what it takes to have a really happy, rewarding life. And then go out... and live it. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life!
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Douglas Pagels
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Benny Jackson
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Make your 86400$ per day: The best investment of the day, the best masterpiece of your life, the best proudest identity of your own. Organise it as you want, but in the end, you have to gain some good results.
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ZINEB SKARABI
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
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Various (50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 1)
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The lovely young lady in the mirror was not a stranger, nor was she Lady Overlooked. Once again, Brierly had found some essential core of her model and designed the whole dress around it. Brierly had gathered Nissa’s brown hair in a loose pile on top of her head, with a curl spilling over here and there. The comb secured a single rose just verging on full bloom. Nissa still looked short and sturdy but—endearingly so. A friendly elf. Youthful, but not childish. The dress flattered and concealed the correct curves. Not even Aunt Perturbance would mistake her for fifteen tonight. Nissa blushed–ith pleasure at her appearance, yes–but mainly that her childhood heroine would think so highly of her as to craft such a masterpiece. That she would know her so well as to reflect the true Nissa, but love her so well as to reflect the best possible Nissa.
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Sarah E. Morin (Waking Beauty)
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It’s not enough to be the best. You also have to be seen by the most. A masterpiece painting hanging in the storage unit of the artist who painted it is not art—it’s irrelevant. It’s also a tragedy.
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Jarod Kintz (A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom)
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We may fail at times to keep our faith strong, because we don't see our prayers get answered. Remember it's his timing, not yours, so keep doing what you need to do, stay focused on becoming the best you, God will work out the rest! God is good. He never fails. He takes us as we are, and turns our lives into beautiful masterpieces.
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Arik Hoover
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She also managed to save Gilbert Stuart’s masterpiece portrait of George Washington, one of the few works of art to survive the ensuing fire.
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Thomas R. Flagel (The History Buff's Guide to the Presidents: Top Ten Rankings of the Best, Worst, Largest, and Most Controversial Facets of the American Presidency (History Buff's Guides))
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Play it once for old times' sake. Play it twice to not forsake. And play it thrice if you cannot fake. Joyous life is your to take. You always get what you make.
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Ana Claudia Antunes (A-Z of Happiness: Tips for Living and Breaking Through the Chain that Separates You from Getting That Dream Job)
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What do Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Picasso, Monet, Bach, Mozart, Wagner, Schubert, Brahms, and Dostoyevsky all have in common? They all produced far more than their contemporaries. Importantly, not every one of their creations was a masterpiece. Today, in fact, they are remembered for a mere fraction of their complete body of work. Creative geniuses simply do not generate masterpieces on a regular basis. Yet the quality that distinguishes them would be impossible without the quantity of attempts.
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Ron Friedman (The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace)
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Is it conceivable, the Impartial Observer asks, that a caring Creator—the Good Father—who is fond of laughter, delighted by happiness and has the best interests of life forever in the fore, arrange his great masterpiece in such a way that obscene levels of meaningless suffering are not just allowed for, but underpin everything?
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John Zande (The Owner of All Infernal Names: An Introductory Treatise on the Existence, Nature & Government of our Omnimalevolent Creator)