Matched Effort Quotes

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In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again.
Anaïs Nin
And I want to play hide-and-seek and give you my clothes and tell you I like your shoes and sit on the steps while you take a bath and massage your neck and kiss your feet and hold your hand and go for a meal and not mind when you eat my food and meet you at Rudy's and talk about the day and type up your letters and carry your boxes and laugh at your paranoia and give you tapes you don't listen to and watch great films and watch terrible films and complain about the radio and take pictures of you when you're sleeping and get up to fetch you coffee and bagels and Danish and go to Florent and drink coffee at midnight and have you steal my cigarettes and never be able to find a match and tell you about the tv programme I saw the night before and take you to the eye hospital and not laugh at your jokes and want you in the morning but let you sleep for a while and kiss your back and stroke your skin and tell you how much I love your hair your eyes your lips your neck your breasts your arse your and sit on the steps smoking till your neighbour comes home and sit on the steps smoking till you come home and worry when you're late and be amazed when you're early and give you sunflowers and go to your party and dance till I'm black and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry and your eye has gone red and the other eye blue and your hair to the left and your face oriental and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I'm next to you and whimper when I'm not and dribble on your breast and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I'd ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten I'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do and get rid of the roaches and buy you presents you don't want and take them away again and ask you to marry me and you say no again but keep on asking because though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want what you want and think I'm losing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really don't want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you.
Sarah Kane (Crave)
I think this is the way love feels to people like you and me. Threatening and dangerous. We have to be in control, and love takes that away. People like us… We can't tolerate vulnerability. But despite our best efforts, sooner or later love seems to catch up with us. And then…And then we fall apart.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars, #6))
...and yet there was not a definable thought in his mind. Only a terrifying effort to get from one side of a match box to another.
Hubert Selby Jr. (Last Exit to Brooklyn)
What if it turns out our DNA doesn’t Match?” “Then we’ll be mindful that maybe we’ll need to put more effort into our relationship. Like John Lennon said, ‘All You Need Is Love.’” “Yes, but he also said, ‘I Am The Walrus,’ so let’s not hold too much credence to his pearls of wisdom.
John Marrs (The One)
Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. No, no, wait. Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a wee house in the woods. Once upon a time there were three soldiers, tramping together down the road after the war. Once upon a time there were three little pigs. Once upon a time there were three brothers. No, this is it. This is the variation I want. Once upon a time there were three Beautiful children, two boys and a girl. When each baby was born, the parents rejoiced, the heavens rejoiced, even the fairies rejoiced. The fairies came to christening parties and gave the babies magical gifts. Bounce, effort, and snark. Contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. Sugar, curiosity, and rain. And yet, there was a witch. There's always a witch. This which was the same age as the beautiful children, and as she and they grew, she was jealous of the girl, and jealous of the boys, too. They were blessed with all these fairy gifts, gifts the witch had been denied at her own christening. The eldest boy was strong and fast, capable and handsome. Though it's true, he was exceptionally short. The next boy was studious and open hearted. Though it's true, he was an outsider. And the girl was witty, Generous, and ethical. Though it's true, she felt powerless. The witch, she was none of these things, for her parents had angered the fairies. No gifts were ever bestowed upon her. She was lonely. Her only strength was her dark and ugly magic. She confuse being spartan with being charitable, and gave away her possessions without truly doing good with them. She confuse being sick with being brave, and suffered agonies while imagining she merited praise for it. She confused wit with intelligence, and made people laugh rather than lightening their hearts are making them think. Hey magic was all she had, and she used it to destroy what she most admired. She visited each young person in turn in their tenth birthday, but did not harm them out right. The protection of some kind fairy - the lilac fairy, perhaps - prevented her from doing so. What she did instead was cursed them. "When you are sixteen," proclaimed the witch in a rage of jealousy, "you shall prick your finger on a spindle - no, you shall strike a match - yes, you will strike a match and did in its flame." The parents of the beautiful children were frightened of the curse, and tried, as people will do, to avoid it. They moved themselves and the children far away, to a castle on a windswept Island. A castle where there were no matches. There, surely, they would be safe. There, Surely, the witch would never find them. But find them she did. And when they were fifteen, these beautiful children, just before their sixteenth birthdays and when they're nervous parents not yet expecting it, the jealous which toxic, hateful self into their lives in the shape of a blonde meeting. The maiden befriended the beautiful children. She kissed him and took them on the boat rides and brought them fudge and told them stories. Then she gave them a box of matches. The children were entranced, for nearly sixteen they have never seen fire. Go on, strike, said the witch, smiling. Fire is beautiful. Nothing bad will happen. Go on, she said, the flames will cleanse your souls. Go on, she said, for you are independent thinkers. Go on, she said. What is this life we lead, if you did not take action? And they listened. They took the matches from her and they struck them. The witch watched their beauty burn, Their bounce, Their intelligence, Their wit, Their open hearts, Their charm, Their dreams for the future. She watched it all disappear in smoke.
E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
Just as a wet match, when struck, does not produce fire, so a mind saturated with restlessness cannot produce the fire of concentration even when one makes great efforts to strike the cosmic spark.
Paramahansa Yogananda (Whispers from Eternity: A Book of Answered Prayers)
As we age and plasticity declines, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to change in response to the world, even if we want to. We find familiar types of stimulation pleasurable; we seek out like-minded individuals to associate with, and research shows we tend to ignore or forget, or attempt to discredit, information that does not match our beliefs, or perception of the world, because it is very distressing and difficult to think and perceive in unfamiliar ways. Increasingly the aging individual acts to preserve the structures within, and when there is a mismatch between his internal neurocognitive structures and the world, he seek to change the world. In small ways he begins to micromanage his environment, to control it, and make it familiar. But this process, writ large, often leads whole cultural groups to try to impose their view of the world on other cultures, and they often become violent, especially in the modern world, where globalization has brought different cultures closer together, exacerbating the problem. Wexler's point, then, is that much of the cross-cultural conflict we see is a product of the relative decrease in plasticity. One could add that totalitarian regimes seem to have an intuitive awareness that it becomes hard for people to change after a certain age, which is why so much effort is made to indoctrinate the young from an early age.
Norman Doidge (The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science)
In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again. What was she seeking to salvage from the daily current of living, what sudden revulsions drove her back into the solitary cell of the dream?
Anaïs Nin (Children of the Albatross (Cities of the Interior #2))
The most common theory points to the fact that men are stronger than women and that they have used their greater physical power to force women into submission. A more subtle version of this claim argues that their strength allows men to monopolize tasks that demand hard manual labor, such as plowing and harvesting. This gives them control of food production, which in turn translates into political clout. There are two problems with this emphasis on muscle power. First, the statement that men are stronger is true only on average and only with regard to certain types of strength. Women are generally more resistant to hunger, disease, and fatigue than men. There are also many women who can run faster and lift heavier weights than many men. Furthermore, and most problematically for this theory, women have, throughout history, mainly been excluded from jobs that required little physical effort, such as the priesthood, law, and politics, while engaging in hard manual labor in the fields....and in the household. If social power were divided in direct relation to physical strength or stamina, women should have got far more of it. Even more importantly, there simply is no direct relation between physical strength and social power among humans. People in their sixties usually exercise power over people in their twenties, even though twenty-somethings are much stronger than their elders. ...Boxing matches were not used to select Egyptian pharaohs or Catholic popes. In forager societies, political dominance generally resides with the person possessing the best social skills rather than the most developed musculature. In fact, human history shows that there is often an inverse relation between physical prowess and social power. In most societies, it’s the lower classes who do the manual labor. Another theory explains that masculine dominance results not from strength but from aggression. Millions of years of evolution have made men far more violent than women. Women can match men as far as hatred, greed, and abuse are concern, but when push comes to shove…men are more willing to engage in raw physical violence. This is why, throughout history, warfare has been a masculine prerogative. In times of war, men’s control of the armed forces has made them the masters of civilian society too. They then use their control of civilian society to fight more and more wars. …Recent studies of the hormonal and cognitive systems of men and women strengthen the assumption that men indeed have more aggressive and violent tendencies and are…on average, better suited to serve as common soldiers. Yet, granted that the common soldiers are all men, does it follow that the ones managing the war and enjoying its fruits must also be men? That makes no sense. It’s like assuming that because all the slaves cultivating cotton fields are all Black, plantation owners will be Black as well. Just as an all-Black workforce might be controlled by an all-White management, why couldn’t an all-male soldiery be controlled by an all-female government?
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Of course we measure ourselves by many standards. Our strength and our intelligence, our wealth and even our good luck, are things which warm our heart and make us feel ourselves a match for life. But deeper than all such things, and able to suffice until itself without them, is the sense of the amount of effort which we can put forth.
William James (The Principles of Psychology: Volume 1)
Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lost the courts and wait for a White House scandal. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes like this: The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach. ...Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine". It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics.
Barack Obama (The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream)
Brian came in heavy at that moment on his guitar, the rapid, high-pitched squeal ranging back and forth as his fingers flew along the frets. As the intro's tempo grew more rapid, Bekka heard Derek's subtle bass line as it worked its way in. After another few seconds Will came in, slow at first, but racing along to match the others' pace. When their combined efforts seemed unable to get any heavier, David jumped into the mix. As the sound got nice and heavy, Bekka began to rock back-and-forth onstage. In front of her, hundreds of metal-lovers began to jump and gyrate to their music. She matched their movements for a moment, enjoying the connection that was being made, before stepping over to the keyboard that had been set up behind her. Sliding her microphone into an attached cradle, she assumed her position and got ready. Right on cue, all the others stopped playing, throwing the auditorium into an abrupt silence. Before the crowd could react, however, Bekka's fingers began to work the keys, issuing a rhythm that was much softer and slower than what had been built up. The audience's violent thrash-dance calmed at that moment and they began to sway in response. Bekka smiled to herself. This is what she lived for.
N+M (Death Metal)
Calling resists privatization by insisting on the totality of faith. Calling resists politicization by demanding a tension with every human allegiance and association. Calling resists polarization by requiring an attitude toward, and action in, society that is inevitably transforming because it is constantly engaged. Grand Christian movements will rise and fall. Grand campaigns will be mounted and grand coalitions assembled. But all together such coordinated efforts will never match the influence of untold numbers of followers of Christ living out their callings faithfully across the vastness and complexity of modern society.
Os Guinness (The Call)
Many or few alternatives can be at hand. A wise and skilful choice acts from a sincere effort. Solutions and results come from cooperation, hard work and efficiency. With high intention matched with a flexible, patient heart and proficient action gets best quality and value. As for the restless grumbles raving from unconsciousness of complexity of matters, best be brushed off ducking out wisely from discourtesies.
Angelica Hopes
Unhealthy relationships drain all the goodness out of us. We give everything to someone who just won’t match our efforts and willingness to try. We empty our love bank to make them feel wealthier, while we become broke. We give ourselves up to someone who doesn’t respect us enough to treat us well in return.
Vex King (Good Vibes, Good Life: How Self-Love Is the Key to Unlocking Your Greatness: OVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD)
A number of terrible things about falling in love make it not worth the time and the effort. But the worst of these is that we can never truly fall in love with a person, but only what we think that person is - more precisely, we fall in love with an image of a person that we create in our minds based on a few inconsequential traits: hair color; bloodline; timbre of voice; preference in music or literature. We are so quick to make a judgment on first sight, and it is so easy for us to decide that the object of our love is unquestionably perfect. And while people can only be human at best, these same fallible humans are more than capable of imagining each other to be infallible gods. Any relationship we have with another human being is an ongoing process of error correction, altering this image that we see in our mind's eye whenever we lay love-blinded eyes on our beloved. It changes bit by bit until it matches the beloved herself, who is invariably less than perfect, often unworthy of love, and often incapable of giving love. This is why any extended interpersonal relationship other than the most superficial, be it a friendship, a romance, or a tie between father and daughter, must by necessity involve disappointment and pain. When the woman you worship behaves as a human being eventually will, she does not merely disappoint; she commits sacrilege, as if the God we worship were to somehow damn Himself.
Dexter Palmer (The Dream of Perpetual Motion)
In the mid-eighteenth century, Babel scholars were briefly seized by an astrology fad, and several state-of-the-art telescopes were ordered for the roof on behalf of scholars who thought they could derive useful match-pairs from the names of star signs. These efforts never yielded anything interesting, as astrology is fake, but the stargazing was pleasant.
R.F. Kuang (Babel)
God will match our effort, but he will never do our work for us.
Henry Cloud (Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life)
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The Sure Bettor
I am. I always was. I always am. I shall always be. The past and the future meet in the eternal now. I am the eternal now. I exist. I am. I am in the past. I am in the future. I am in the now. One is all, and all are one. We are one. Everything I see is a part of myself. Everything I can imagine is a part of myself. I could not imagine something that is not. Everyone I interact with is a part of myself. Whatever I put out, I get it back. My state of being matters, it crystallises in my circumstances. The way I respond to my circumstances reinforces my state of being. When I see an echo of an old belief I respond with peace in my heart. My actions are matched with the highest version of myself I can imagine in that moment. Everything changes, and everything transforms from one form of life to yet another. It is a constant flow of life. It is the heart of all existence. Nothing can perish, nothing can cease being. I am always new. I am always history free. I am always consequence free. Yet I can create an illusion of consequence. Everything is possible, yet not everything is probable. It all depends on my synchronicity. What I choose to explore shall present itself to me. What I believe to be true, is true. All illusions are made out of different beliefs. Yet there is only one knowledge. It is the wisdom of old, yet new. The thought gains the power, when it merges with the feeling. I feel what I desire. I always receive what I ask for. I always manifest instantly with no effort. My wisdom is to be aware of what I request. So it be. So it is. I ask for love, and I welcome bliss.
Raphael Zernoff
The problem? There has been no parallel effort to help our sons become multipurpose men. The female-only scholarships and affirmative action for our daughters to enter the STEM professions is not matched by the male-only scholarships and affirmative action for our sons to enter the "caring professions" -- elementary school teachers, social workers, nurses, dental hygienists, marriage and family therapists, or becoming a full-time dad.
Warren Farrell (The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It)
I really am going to try to be a better courtier, to match you,” she assured him. “I forbid you to even try.” “Why?” He shrugged again. “I want you to direct all your efforts into other channels.” “A better wife then?” she hazarded. “Less jealous and more understanding?” He frowned. “Is that what you want from me? You’re not getting it.” Fen gasped and then laughed. “No, that wasn’t what I meant…” “You can be as jealous as you want. Not that I give you any cause.” She just about forbore from pointing out that she didn’t give him any cause either. “What do you want me to direct my effort at then?” she asked in puzzlement. “Loving me,” he said simply. “Oh.” Fen found tears were pricking her eyes. “But that takes no effort at all.
Alice Coldbreath (His Forsaken Bride (Vawdrey Brothers, #2))
We are pursuing a marketed version of love. You know what I’m talking about. Happily ever after. The fairy tale of the perfect match, the soulmate, or the one where it “all makes sense.” An instantaneous and easy version of love that requires no effort with zero hurt.
Todd Baratz (How to Love Someone Without Losing Your Mind: Forget the Fairy Tale and Get Real)
She realized that she had always felt a sense of light-hearted relaxation in his presence and known that he shared it. He was the only man she knew to whom she could speak without strain or effort. This, she thought, was a mind she respected, an adversary worth matching.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
Visenya and Rhaenys, took a special delight in arranging these matches. Through their efforts, young Ronnel Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, took a daughter of Torrhen Stark of Winterfell to wed, whilst Loren Lannister’s eldest son, heir to Casterly Rock, married a Redwyne girl from the Arbor. When three girls, triplets, were born to the Evenstar of Tarth, Queen Rhaenys arranged betrothals for them with House Corbray, House Hightower, and House Harlaw. Queen Visenya brokered a double wedding between House Blackwood and House Bracken, rivals whose history of enmity went back centuries, matching a son of each house with a daughter of the other to seal a peace between them. And when a Rowan girl in Rhaenys’s service found herself with child by a scullion, the queen found a knight to marry her in White Harbor, and another in Lannisport who was willing to take on her bastard as a fosterling.
George R.R. Martin (Fire & Blood (A Targaryen History, #1))
Despite his sense of futility, the effort had proved helpful in at least one regard: Arya no longer defeated him every time they crossed blades. He had watched her with redoubled attention--studying her as closely as a deer he was stalking--and as a result, he had won a few of their matches. However, he still was not her equal, much less her better.
Christopher Paolini (Inheritance (The Inheritance Cycle, #4))
Curiously, the surveillance, harassment, infiltration, arrests, sabotage, slander, disruption, and petty bullshit endured by the left is only rarely matched by the level police action against the right. Even during World War II, when the U.S. was at war with Nazi Germany and allied with the Soviet Union, the NYPD still invested more resources in infiltrating the Communist Party than in monitoring fascists. Likewise, though the FBI eventually initiated COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE against the Klan—an effort that lasted seven years and included infiltration, sabotage, snitch-jacketing, electronic surveillance, black-bag jobs, and petty harassment — 98 percent of COINTELPRO files concerned leftist movements.
Kristian Williams (Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America)
If I could give the young people ... but one word of advice, it would be this - 'Believe in yourself with all your might'. That is, believe that your destiny is inside you, that there is a power within you which if awakened, aroused, developed and matched with honest effort, will not only make a noble man or woman of you, but will also make you successful and happy.
Orison Swett Marden
She thought suddenly that she was wrong about his lack of emotion: the hidden undertone of his manner was enjoyment. She realized that she had always felt a sense of light-hearted relaxation in his presence and known that he shared it. He was the only man she knew to whom she could speak without strain or effort. This, she thought, was a mind she respected, an adversary worth matching.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
At low speeds, the effort is primarily aerobic (meaning “with oxygen”), since oxygen is required for the most efficient conversion of stored food energy into a form your muscles can use. Your VO2max reflects your aerobic limits. At higher speeds, your legs demand energy at a rate that aerobic processes can’t match, so you have to draw on fast-burning anaerobic (“without oxygen”) energy sources.
Alex Hutchinson (Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance)
You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modern ink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn. But when you push an inkstick along an inkstone, you take the first step to cleansing your mind and your heart. You push and you ask yourself, What are my intentions? What is my heart that matches my mind?
Amy Tan (The Bonesetter's Daughter)
The computer hasn’t proved anything yet,’ angry Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion, said after his defeat in New York in May 1997. ‘If we were playing a real competitive match, I would tear down Deep Blue into pieces.’ But Kasparov’s efforts to downplay the significance of his defeat in the sixgame match was futile. The fact that Kasparov – probably the greatest chess player the world has seen – was beaten by a computer marked a turning point in the quest for intelligent machines.
Ifalaye Books (Artificial Intelligence: A Guide to Intelligent Systems)
Old folks here will tell you there’s fire in dry bamboo. In the past, matches were hard to come by and didn’t always work. When people went into the forest, they could just find some dry wood, and they knew there was fire in it. Whenever they wanted to cook, they only had to rub two pieces of dry bamboo together to start a fire. They would just keep rubbing them together. At first the wood was cold. Rubbing for a while, it got hot, then after some time there was smoke. But it did take a while to get hot, and even more time to make smoke and finally fire. Now we, their children and descendants in these times, don’t have much patience. If we try to rub pieces of bamboo to make fire, within two minutes we’re getting restless. We get fed up and put the sticks down: “Time to take a break!” Then when we pick them up again, we find they’re cold. We start rubbing once more, but we’re starting from the beginning again so they don’t get hot very quickly, and again we get impatient. Like this, we could keep at it for an hour or a whole day and wouldn’t see any fire. We rub and stop, rub and stop. Then we start to criticize the old people: “These old-timers are crazy. I don’t know what they’re talking about. They must be lying. I’ve been rubbing the sticks all this time and still there’s nothing.” This is what happens if our understanding and commitment to practice don’t go far enough. There’s not enough heat, but we expect to have fire. The old folks have done that, but they know it takes some effort. You have to keep rubbing without taking a break; if you take a break, you only get cold sticks.
Ajahn Chah (Everything Arises, Everything Falls Away: Teachings on Impermanence and the End of Suffering)
The Mongols loved competitions of all sorts, and they organized debates among rival religions the same way they organized wrestling matches. It began on a specific date with a panel of judges to oversee it. In this case Mongke Khan ordered them to debate before three judges: a Christian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. A large audience assembled to watch the affair, which began with great seriousness and formality. An official lay down the strict rules by which Mongke wanted the debate to proceed: on pain of death “no one shall dare to speak words of contention.” Rubruck and the other Christians joined together in one team with the Muslims in an effort to refute the Buddhist doctrines. As these men gathered together in all their robes and regalia in the tents on the dusty plains of Mongolia, they were doing something that no other set of scholars or theologians had ever done in history. It is doubtful that representatives of so many types of Christianity had come to a single meeting, and certainly they had not debated, as equals, with representatives of the various Muslim and Buddhist faiths. The religious scholars had to compete on the basis of their beliefs and ideas, using no weapons or the authority of any ruler or army behind them. They could use only words and logic to test the ability of their ideas to persuade. In the initial round, Rubruck faced a Buddhist from North China who began by asking how the world was made and what happened to the soul after death. Rubruck countered that the Buddhist monk was asking the wrong questions; the first issue should be about God from whom all things flow. The umpires awarded the first points to Rubruck. Their debate ranged back and forth over the topics of evil versus good, God’s nature, what happens to the souls of animals, the existence of reincarnation, and whether God had created evil. As they debated, the clerics formed shifting coalitions among the various religions according to the topic. Between each round of wrestling, Mongol athletes would drink fermented mare’s milk; in keeping with that tradition, after each round of the debate, the learned men paused to drink deeply in preparation for the next match. No side seemed to convince the other of anything. Finally, as the effects of the alcohol became stronger, the Christians gave up trying to persuade anyone with logical arguments, and resorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responded by loudly reciting the Koran in an effort to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditation. At the end of the debate, unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded, with everyone simply too drunk to continue.
Jack Weatherford (Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World)
Here we’ll describe four signs that you have to disengage from your autonomous efforts and seek connection. Each of these emotions is a different form of hunger for connection—that is, they’re all different ways of feeling lonely: When you have been gaslit. When you’re asking yourself, “Am I crazy, or is there something completely unacceptable happening right now?” turn to someone who can relate; let them give you the reality check that yes, the gaslights are flickering. When you feel “not enough.” No individual can meet all the needs of the world. Humans are not built to do big things alone. We are built to do them together. When you experience the empty-handed feeling that you are just one person, unable to meet all the demands the world makes on you, helpless in the face of the endless, yawning need you see around you, recognize that emotion for what it is: a form of loneliness. ... When you’re sad. In the animated film Inside Out, the emotions in the head of a tween girl, Riley, struggle to cope with the exigencies of growing up.... When you are boiling with rage. Rage has a special place in women’s lives and a special role in the Bubble of Love. More, even, than sadness, many of us have been taught to swallow our rage, hide it even from ourselves. We have been taught to fear rage—our own, as well as others’—because its power can be used as a weapon. Can be. A chef’s knife can be used as a weapon. And it can help you prepare a feast. It’s all in how you use it. We don’t want to hurt anyone, and rage is indeed very, very powerful. Bring your rage into the Bubble with your loved ones’ permission, and complete the stress response cycle with them. If your Bubble is a rugby team, you can leverage your rage in a match or practice. If your Bubble is a knitting circle, you might need to get creative. Use your body. Jump up and down, get noisy, release all that energy, share it with others. “Yes!” say the people in your Bubble. “That was some bullshit you dealt with!” Rage gives you strength and energy and the urge to fight, and sharing that energy in the Bubble changes it from something potentially dangerous to something safe and potentially transformative.
Emily Nagoski (Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle)
When I’m in a match, I feel like I’m at the bottom of a deep, deep hole. So far inside I can’t see anyone else and no one can see me. Way down there in the darkness, doing battle. All alone. But not sad alone,” said Ozawa. “There’s all different kinds of loneliness. There’s the tragic loneliness that tears at your nerves with pain. And then there’s the loneliness that isn’t like that at all—though in order to reach that point, you’ve got to pare your body down. If you make the effort, you get back what you put in. That’s what I learned from boxing.
Haruki Murakami (The Elephant Vanishes)
the trouble seems rooted in the nature of beauty itself, a surprisingly elusive quality and rarely one you can buy outright. It flees in the face of too much effort. It rewards casualness, and most of all it deigns to arrive by whim, by accident. On my travels, I became a devotee of found art: a shaft of light on a dilapidated 1914 gun factory, an abandoned billboard whose layers have worn into a beguiling pentimento collage of Coca-Cola, Chevrolet, and Burma Shave, cut-rate pensions whose faded cushions perfectly match, in that unplanned way, the fluttering sun-blanched curtains.
Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
He broke away a little to murmur, ‘You’re sure about this?’ ‘I need to feel alive, Mac,’ said Simone ‘I have to know it . . . I don’t need flowers . . . I don’t need dinner . . . I don’t need romance . . . I need fucked.’ The word had an electric effect on Macandrew, who despite now wanting Simone so badly, still had reservations about the situation – mainly the fear that he was taking advantage of it. He felt the last of them wash away as she uttered the word. He pinned her to the wall and freed himself before reaching under her skirt to push her panties to one side and enter her hard and long. He cupped his hands round her backside and pulled her on to him, matching the thrust of his hips and being exhorted to ever greater efforts by Simone’s moans in his ear. ‘Christ, I want you,’ he gasped. ‘Then have me . . .’ The all too brief outcome of such passion left Macandrew holding Simone to him and resting his forehead on the wall as his breathing subsided. Simone broke the silence. ‘Tell me how you feel?’ she murmured. ‘After a moment’s thought, Macandrew said, ‘Embarrassed. Dare I ask about you?’ ‘Fucked,’ replied Simone. Macandrew smiled, feeling such a surge of relief when he saw that Simone was smiling too. She ran the tips of her fingers softly down his cheek. ‘Let’s go shower,’ she said. Showering together was as gentle an experience as their love-making had been passionate. They took lingering pleasure in tracing the contours of each other with soap and sponge and found it deliciously sensual. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do now?’ murmured Simone. ‘Tell me,’ said Macandrew drowsily as he closed his eyes and put his head back on the shower wall. Simone reached up and yanked the regulator over to COLD, causing Macandrew to let out a yelp of surprise. ‘Make an omelette,’ she said.
Ken McClure (Past Lives)
You grabbed my tit a little, Mr. Old Timey Talker.” Blake seemed to swallow a smile. “Manhandling a lady is inexcusable. I would only do so if said woman was too stubborn to remove herself from a dangerous situation.” He took Kyle’s hand and kissed the top of it lightly. “Aw, crap. Well, aren’t you too fucking charming for words?” Kyle smiled despite her best efforts to look tough. “All right, Mr. Old Timey, I’ll let you get away with the boob palming this time.” “That’s fortunate because I hate ingesting my own testicles.” He gave her a devilish grin with naughty eyes to match. Kyle looked at Livia. “He’s adorable.
Debra Anastasia (Poughkeepsie (Poughkeepsie Brotherhood, #1))
Then I had to invent fire. NASA put a lot of effort into making sure nothing here can burn. Everything is made of metal or flame-retardant plastic and the uniforms are synthetic. I needed something that could hold a flame, some kind of pilot light. I don’t have the skills to keep enough H2 flowing to feed a flame without killing myself. Too narrow a margin there. After a search of everyone’s personal items (hey, if they wanted privacy, they shouldn’t have abandoned me on Mars with their stuff) I found my answer. Martinez is a devout Catholic. I knew that. What I didn’t know was he brought along a small wooden cross. I’m sure NASA gave him shit about it, but I also know Martinez is one stubborn son of a bitch. I chipped his sacred religious item into long splinters using a pair of pliers and a screwdriver. I figure if there’s a God, He won’t mind, considering the situation I’m in. If ruining the only religious icon I have leaves me vulnerable to Martian vampires, I’ll have to risk it. There were plenty of wires and batteries around to make a spark. But you can’t just ignite wood with a small electric spark. So I collected ribbons of bark from local palm trees, then got a couple of sticks and rubbed them together to create enough friction to… No not really. I vented pure oxygen at the stick and gave it a spark. It lit up like a match.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
It is a gratuitous pastime to belittle the material achievements of capitalism by observing that there are things that are more essential for mankind than bigger and speedier motorcars, and homes equipped with central heating, air conditioning, refrigerators, washing machines, and television sets. There certainly are such higher and nobler pursuits. But they are higher and nobler precisely because they cannot be aspired to by any external effort, but require the individual’s personal determination and exertion. those levelling this reproach against capitalism display a rather crude and materialistic view in assuming that moral and spiritual culture could be built either by the government or by the organization of production activities. All that these external factors can achieve in this regard is to bring about an environment and a competence which offers the individuals the opportunity to work at their own personal perfection and edification. It is not the fault of capitalism that the masses prefer a boxing match to a performance of Sophocles’ Antigone, jazz music to Beethoven symphonies, and comics to poetry. But it is certain that while pre-capitalistic conditions as they still prevail in the much greater part of the world makes these good things accessible only to a small minority of people, capitalism gives to the many a favorable chance of striving after them.
Ludwig von Mises (Liberty And Property)
In adopting these attitudes and practices, a parent will accomplish a large part of educating a child for responsibility. And yet, example alone is not enough. A sense of responsibility is attained by each child through his or her own efforts and experience. While the parents' example creates the favorable attitude and climate for learning, specific experiences consolidate the learning to make it part of the child's character. Therefore, it is important to give specific responsibilities to children matched to their different levels of maturity. In most homes children present problems, but parents find the solutions. If children are to mature, they must be given the opportunity to solve their own problems.
Haim G. Ginott (Between Parent and Child: Revised and Updated)
CHARACTERISTICS OF SYSTEM 1 generates impressions, feelings, and inclinations; when endorsed by System 2 these become beliefs, attitudes, and intentions operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort, and no sense of voluntary control can be programmed by System 2 to mobilize attention when a particular pattern is detected (search) executes skilled responses and generates skilled intuitions, after adequate training creates a coherent pattern of activated ideas in associative memory links a sense of cognitive ease to illusions of truth, pleasant feelings, and reduced vigilance distinguishes the surprising from the normal infers and invents causes and intentions neglects ambiguity and suppresses doubt is biased to believe and confirm exaggerates emotional consistency (halo effect) focuses on existing evidence and ignores absent evidence (WYSIATI) generates a limited set of basic assessments represents sets by norms and prototypes, does not integrate matches intensities across scales (e.g., size to loudness) computes more than intended (mental shotgun) sometimes substitutes an easier question for a difficult one (heuristics) is more sensitive to changes than to states (prospect theory)* overweights low probabilities* shows diminishing sensitivity to quantity (psychophysics)* responds more strongly to losses than to gains (loss aversion)* frames decision problems narrowly, in isolation from one another*
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
Awareness rippled through her as she was trapped between the cold, hard wall and the warm, hard man who held her. His body was different from how she remembered it, no longer loose-limbed and narrow, but bigger, heavier, imbued with the strength of a male in his full-blooded prime. McKenna was no longer the winsome boy she remembered... he had become someone else entirely. A powerful, ruthless man, with a body to match. Fascinated by the difference in him, Aline could not stop herself from sliding her hands beneath his coat. Her fingers passed over the burgeoning muscles of his chest, the sturdy vault of his ribs. McKenna went still, disciplining himself so sternly that a tremor of effort went through his limbs.
Lisa Kleypas (Again the Magic (Wallflowers, #0))
If I sequenced my own genome and showed it to a geneticist, she would be able to say approximately where on the planet I or my ancestors came from by matching variants in my genome with the geographic patterns of variants across the globe. She would not, however, be  able to tell whether I was smart or dumb, tall or short, or almost anything else that matters with respect to how I function as a human being. Indeed, despite the fact that most efforts to understand the genome have sprung from efforts to combat disease, for the vast majority of diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, or heart disease, our current understanding allows us only to assign vague probabilities to the likelihood that an individual will develop them.
Svante Pääbo (Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes)
Characteristics of System 1: • generates impressions, feelings, and inclinations; when endorsed by System 2 these become beliefs, attitudes, and intentions • operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort, and no sense of voluntary control • can be programmed by System 2 to mobilize attention when a particular pattern is detected (search) • executes skilled responses and generates skilled intuitions, after adequate training • creates a coherent pattern of activated ideas in associative memory • links a sense of cognitive ease to illusions of truth, pleasant feelings, and reduced vigilance • distinguishes the surprising from the normal • infers and invents causes and intentions • neglects ambiguity and suppresses doubt • is biased to believe and confirm • exaggerates emotional consistency (halo effect) • focuses on existing evidence and ignores absent evidence (WYSIATI) • generates a limited set of basic assessments • represents sets by norms and prototypes, does not integrate • matches intensities across scales (e.g., size to loudness) • computes more than intended (mental shotgun) • sometimes substitutes an easier question for a difficult one (heuristics) • is more sensitive to changes than to states (prospect theory)* • overweights low probabilities* • shows diminishing sensitivity to quantity (psychophysics)* • responds more strongly to losses than to gains (loss aversion)* • frames decision problems narrowly, in isolation from one another*
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
A crude analogy for resonance is that of a pendulum, often modeled as a child in a swing. If you are charged with pushing the child and you just thrust your arms out at random intervals, you will not do very well: you’d hit the child coming toward you and slow the swing down as often as you’d give the swing a push as it’s going away and speed it up. Even a regular pushing rate that did not match the movement of the swing would leave you pushing empty air most of the time. Only if you push exactly at the rate that matches when the child is directly in front of you and starting their descent will you achieve success. When the timing of your effort matches the frequency the swing is moving at, each push adds a little more energy into the system.
Matt Parker (Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors)
They passed each other at the door, she going out, and he returning from work. Unselfconsciously she put one hand up to his left cheek and, in passing, kissed him on the other. He was astonished, and, by the time that she reached the entrance to the yard, so wass she, because it was not until then that she suddenly realized what she had done. She stopped dead, as though having walked straight into a metaphysical but palpable stone wall. She felt her blood rising to the roots of her hair, and realised that she did not dare look back at him. Undoubtedly he too would be rooted to the spot. She could almost feel his eyes travelling from her feet to her head, finally settling upon the back of her head in the expectation that she would turn around. He called out, as she knew he would, 'Kyria Pelagia.' 'What?' she demanded curtly, as though an effort to be short with him could cancel out the hideously simple way in which she had betrayed her affection without even thinking about it. 'What's for dinner?' 'Don't tease me.' 'Would I tease you?' 'Don't make anything of it. I thought you were my father. I always kiss him like that when he comes in.' 'Very understandable. We are both old and small.' 'If you are going to tease me, I shall never speak to you again.' He came up behind her and around her, and threw himself upon his knees before her. 'O no,' he cried, 'anything but that.' He bowed his head to the ground and moaned piteously, 'Have mercy. Shoot me, flog me, but don't say you'll never speak to me.' He grasped her abou the knees and pretended to weep. 'The whole village is looking,' she protested, 'stop it at once. You are so embarrassing, get off me.' 'My heart is broken,' he wailed, and he grasped her hand and began to smatter it with kisses. 'Stupid goat, you are deranged.' 'I am tormented, I am burning, I am broken into pieces, my eyes spout forth with tears.' He leaned back and gestured poetically with his fingers to portray the extraordinary cascade of invisible tears that he intended her to envisage. 'Don't laugh at me,' he continued, having struck upon a new tack. 'O, light of my eyes, do not mock poor Antonio in his affliction.' 'Are you drunk again?' 'Drunk with sorrow, drunk with agony. Speak to me.' 'Did your battery win another football match?
Louis de Bernières (Corelli’s Mandolin)
Tell me what to do," she said, the words blowing against him. Whatever sanity Ross had left promptly burned to cinders. He gasped out instructions, his hands trembling as he clasped her head. "Use your tongue on the tip... yes... now take as much as you can in your... oh, God..." Sophia's fervor more than made up for her lack of experience. She did things that Eleanor would never have tried, tugging at his aching flesh, her velvety tongue swirling and lapping. Ross sank to his knees and pulled at her clothes, tearing them, and she gave a breathless laugh at his roughness. His mouth caught greedily at hers, while she wriggled to help him strip the shredded gown down her legs. A primal sound of satisfaction escaped him when Sophia's naked body was finally revealed. He lifted her to the bed, pausing only to remove his trousers before he joined her. Eagerly she slid between his legs and took his sex into her mouth once more, resisting his efforts to bring her face up to his. Groaning repeatedly, he surrendered to her ministrations, his fingers tangling in the locks of her hair. However, he was not satisfied for long- he wanted more, he craved the taste of her. Impatiently he seized her hips, maneuvering her until she was positioned at his mouth. He buried his face amid the intimate curls, his hands gripping her thighs as she jerked with surprise. He searched her with his tongue, licking deeply into the seam of moist folds. Avidly he hunted for the tiny engorged peak where her pleasure was concentrated. Finding it, he nibbled, stroked, darted his tongue at it, as he felt her stiffen in approaching climax. He backed off, gentling, while she moaned pleadingly around his cock. Twice more he brought her to the edge, making her suffer, tormenting until she responded with desperate tugs of her mouth. Each time Sophia drew on him, Ross sank his tongue deep inside her, matching his rhythm to hers, until she shuddered hard as her pleasure finally reached its zenith. She cried out against his groin, her mouth still clamped around him. His own culmination approached rapidly, and he moved his hands to her head. But she resisted his attempts to dislodge her, and the silly strokes of her tongue became too much to bear. The climax broke over him, and he arched and gasped as he was consumed in an explosion of pure white fire.
Lisa Kleypas (Lady Sophia's Lover (Bow Street Runners, #2))
And in many other cities which for him were all identical - hotel, taxi. a hall in a cafe or club. These cities, these regular rows of blurry lamps marching past and suddenly advancing and encircling a stone horse in a square, were as much a habitual and unnecessary integument as the wooden pieces and the black and white board, and he accepted this external life as something inevitable but completely uninteresting. Similarly, in his way of dressing and in the manner of his everyday life, he was prompted by extremely dim motives, stopping to think about nothing, rarely changing his linens, automatically winding his watch at night, shaving with the same safety blade until it ceased to cut altogether, and feeding haphazardly and plainly. From some kind of melancholy inertia he continued to order at dinner the same mineral water, which effervesced slightly in the sinuses and evoked a tickling sensation in the corner of his eyes, like tears for the vanished Valentinov. Only rarely did he notice his own existence, when for example lack of breath - the revenge of a heavy body - forced him to halt with open mouth on a staircase, or when he had a toothache, or when at a late hour during his chess cogitations an outstretched hand shaking a matchbox failed to evoke in it the rattle of matches, and the cigarette that seemed to have been thrust unnoticed into his mouth by someone else suddenly grew and asserted itself, solid, soulless, and static, and his whole life became concentrated in the single desire to smoke, although goodness knows how many cigarettes had already been unconsciously consumed, In general, life around him was so opaque and demanded so little effort of him that it sometimes seemed someone - a mysterious, invisible manager - continued to take him from tournament to tournament; but occasionally there were odd moments, such quietness all around, and when you looked out into the corridor - shoes, shoes, shoes, standing at all the door, and in your ears the roar of loneliness.
Vladimir Nabokov (The Luzhin Defense)
More vigorous yet is the strategy practiced by the influenza, common cold, and pertussis (whooping cough) microbes, which induce the victim to cough or sneeze, thereby launching a cloud of microbes toward prospective new hosts. Similarly, the cholera bacterium induces in its victim a massive diarrhea that delivers bacteria into the water supplies of potential new victims, while the virus responsible for Korean hemorrhagic fever broadcasts itself in the urine of mice. For modification of a host’s behavior, nothing matches rabies virus, which not only gets into the saliva of an infected dog but drives the dog into a frenzy of biting and thus infecting many new victims. But for physical effort on the bug’s own part, the prize still goes to worms such as hookworms and schistosomes, which actively burrow through a host’s skin from the water or soil into which their larvae had been excreted in a previous victim’s feces. Thus, from our point of view, genital sores, diarrhea, and coughing are “symptoms of disease.” From a germ’s point of view, they’re clever evolutionary strategies to broadcast the germ.
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
Having perfected his arrangements, he would get my pipe, and, lighting it, would hand it to me. Often he was obliged to strike a light for the occasion, and as the mode he adopted was entirely different from what I had ever seen or heard of before I will describe it. A straight, dry, and partly decayed stick of the Hibiscus, about six feet in length, and half as many inches in diameter, with a small, bit of wood not more than a foot long, and scarcely an inch wide, is as invariably to be met with in every house in Typee as a box of lucifer matches in the corner of a kitchen cupboard at home. The islander, placing the larger stick obliquely against some object, with one end elevated at an angle of forty-five degrees, mounts astride of it like an urchin about to gallop off upon a cane, and then grasping the smaller one firmly in both hands, he rubs its pointed end slowly up and down the extent of a few inches on the principal stick, until at last he makes a narrow groove in the wood, with an abrupt termination at the point furthest from him, where all the dusty particles which the friction creates are accumulated in a little heap. At first Kory-Kory goes to work quite leisurely, but gradually quickens his pace, and waxing warm in the employment, drives the stick furiously along the smoking channel, plying his hands to and fro with amazing rapidity, the perspiration starting from every pore. As he approaches the climax of his effort, he pants and gasps for breath, and his eyes almost start from their sockets with the violence of his exertions. This is the critical stage of the operation; all his previous labours are vain if he cannot sustain the rapidity of the movement until the reluctant spark is produced. Suddenly he stops, becoming perfectly motionless. His hands still retain their hold of the smaller stick, which is pressed convulsively against the further end of the channel among the fine powder there accumulated, as if he had just pierced through and through some little viper that was wriggling and struggling to escape from his clutches. The next moment a delicate wreath of smoke curls spirally into the air, the heap of dusty particles glows with fire, and Kory-Kory, almost breathless, dismounts from his steed.
Herman Melville
They passed each other at the door, she going out, and he returning from work. Unselfconsciously she put one hand up to his left cheek and, in passing, kissed him on the other. He was astonished, and, by the time that she reached the entrance to the yard, so was she, because it was not until then that she suddenly realized what she had done. She stopped dead, as though having walked straight into a metaphysical but palpable stone wall. She felt her blood rising to the roots of her hair, and realised that she did not dare look back at him. Undoubtedly he too would be rooted to the spot. She could almost feel his eyes travelling from her feet to her head, finally settling upon the back of her head in the expectation that she would turn around. He called out, as she knew he would, 'Kyria Pelagia.' 'What?' she demanded curtly, as though an effort to be short with him could cancel out the hideously simple way in which she had betrayed her affection without even thinking about it. 'What's for dinner?' 'Don't tease me.' 'Would I tease you?' 'Don't make anything of it. I thought you were my father. I always kiss him like that when he comes in.' 'Very understandable. We are both old and small.' 'If you are going to tease me, I shall never speak to you again.' He came up behind her and around her, and threw himself upon his knees before her. 'O no,' he cried, 'anything but that.' He bowed his head to the ground and moaned piteously, 'Have mercy. Shoot me, flog me, but don't say you'll never speak to me.' He grasped her about the knees and pretended to weep. 'The whole village is looking,' she protested, 'stop it at once. You are so embarrassing, get off me.' 'My heart is broken,' he wailed, and he grasped her hand and began to smatter it with kisses. 'Stupid goat, you are deranged.' 'I am tormented, I am burning, I am broken into pieces, my eyes spout forth with tears.' He leaned back and gestured poetically with his fingers to portray the extraordinary cascade of invisible tears that he intended her to envisage. 'Don't laugh at me,' he continued, having struck upon a new tack. 'O, light of my eyes, do not mock poor Antonio in his affliction.' 'Are you drunk again?' 'Drunk with sorrow, drunk with agony. Speak to me.' 'Did your battery win another football match?
Louis de Bernières (Corelli’s Mandolin)
Her gaze flickered to the balcony doors and back, her brows knitted in confusion. “My balcony doesn’t connect to yours.” “I jumped.” He grinned at the flash of concern he saw in “her eyes. “At dinner, your grandmother informed me that you’d be moving to the room beside mine. She also mentioned how close my balcony was to yours; so close that even an old lady like herself could leap between the two without the least effort.” Venetia’s cheeks heated and she pulled her nightgown closer. “Grandmama is anything but subtle.” “Almost as subtle as your mother.” “Oh, no! Not Mama, too.” Gregor paused beside a small table to pick up a silver tray holding a cut crystal decanter and matching glasses and set it on the table before Venetia. “Your mother was concerned I might be afraid of heights. She told me that if she were thinking of jumping between the balconies and couldn’t bring herself to make the leap, it might be possible to pick the lock on the connecting door with, say, a cravat pin.” Venetia blushed. “I’m surprised they aren’t in here now, throwing rose petals before you as you walk.” “I would never countenance petal tossing. Too showy.
Karen Hawkins (To Scotland, With Love (MacLean Curse, #2))
The ancient Greeks set very high store by physical prowess and encouraged its pursuit by awarding valuable prizes to the winners of all sorts of athletic contests. But, strangely enough, there is no record that they ever offered prizes for intellectual prowess. ..... The prizes awarded at Greek contests were worth more than the performances that earned them, for the prizes were intended not only to stimulate effort but to reward achievement. Consequently, if one were to give a prize for intellectual prowess, for knowledge itself, one would have to find something to award which was more valuable than knowledge. But knowledge already is the rarest gem in the world. The Greeks, unwilling to debase the value of knowledge, piled up chests all crammed with gold to the height of Mount Olympus. They gathered in the wealth of Croesus, and wealth beyond that wealth, but in the end they recognized that the value of knowledge cannot be matched, let alone exceeded. So, masters of reason that they were, they decided that the prize should be nothing at all. From this, Suzuki, I trust you will have learnt that, whatever the color of your money, it is worthless stuff compared with learning.
Natsume Sōseki (I am a Cat II)
Plan-driven development works well if you are applying it to problems that are well defined, predictable, and unlikely to undergo any significant change. The problem is that most product development efforts are anything but predictable, especially at the beginning. So, while a plan-driven process gives the impression of an orderly, accountable, and measurable approach, that impression can lead to a false sense of security. After all, developing a product rarely goes as planned. For many, a plan-driven, sequential process just makes sense, understand it, design it, code it, test it, and deploy it, all according to a well-defined, prescribed plan. There is a belief that it should work. If applying a plan-driven approach doesn’t work, the prevailing attitude is that we must have done something wrong. Even if a plan-driven process repeatedly produces disappointing results, many organizations continue to apply the same approach, sure that if they just do it better, their results will improve. The problem, however, is not with the execution. It’s that plan-driven approaches are based on a set of beliefs that do not match the uncertainty inherent in most product development efforts.
Kenneth S. Rubin (Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process)
When I’m under stress,” he emphasized, sliding the magnificent emerald onto her finger, “I buy everything in sight. It took my last ounce of control not to buy one of those in every color.” Her eyes lifted from his smiling lips, dropped to the enormous jewel on her finger, and then widened in shock. “Oh, but-“ she exclaimed, staring at it and straightening in his arms. “It’s glorious. I do mean that, but I couldn’t let you-really, I couldn’t. Ian,” she burst out anxiously, sending a tremor through him when she called him by name, “I can’t let you do this. You’ve been extravagantly generous already.” She touched the huge stone almost reverently, then gave her head a practical shake. “I don’t need jewels, really I don’t. You’re doing this because of that stupid remark I made about someone offering me jewels as large as my palm, and now you’ve bought one nearly that large!” “Not quite,” he chuckled. “Why, a stone like this would pay for irrigating Havenhurst and all the servants’ wages for years and years and years, and food to-“ She reached to slide it off her finger. “Don’t!” he warned on a choked laugh, linking his hands behind her back. “I-“ he thought madly for some way to stop her objections-“I cannot possibly return it,” he said. “It’s part of a matched set.” “You don’t mean there’s more!” “I’m afraid so, though I meant to surprise you with them tonight. There’s a necklace and bracelet and earrings.” “Oh, I see,” she said, making a visible effort not to stare at her ring. “Well, I suppose…if it was a purchase of several pieces, the ring alone probably didn’t cost as much as it would have…Do not tell me,” she said severely, when his shoulders began to shake with suppressed mirth, “you actually paid full price for all of the pieces!” Laughing, Ian put his forehead against hers, and he nodded. “It’s very fortunate,” she said, protectively putting her fingers against the magnificent ring, “that I’ve agreed to marry you.” “If you hadn’t,” he laughed, “God knows what I would have bought.” “Or how much you would have paid for it,” she chuckled, cuddling in his arms-for the first time of her own volition. “Do you really do that?” she asked a moment later. “Do what?” he gasped, tears of mirth blurring his vision. “Spend money heedlessly when you’re disturbed about something?” “Yes,” he lied in a suffocated, laughing voice. “You’ll have to stop doing it.” “I’m going to try.” “I could help you.” “Please do.” “You may place yourself entirely in my hands.” “I’m very much looking forward to that.” It was the first time Ian had ever kissed a woman while he was laughing.
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
As he deployed his forces, Newton imposed the same empirical rigor on his new job as he had with his pendulums and prisms. The Mint could not operate any faster than his men could spin their capstans, and every other step had to be timed to match the work of his presses. So Newton watched to “judge of the workmen’s diligence.” He saw how quickly the brutal effort needed to turn the press wore out its team. He observed just how nimble the man loading blanks and pulling finished coins from the press had to be to keep his fingers. Eventually, he identified the perfect pace: if the press thumped just slightly slower than the human heart, striking fifty to fifty-five times a minute, men and machines could stamp out coins for hours at a time. By autumn, Newton had the Mint’s output up to £100,000 every working week—a century ahead of Adam Smith, and more than double again before Henry Ford showed the world just how powerful time-and-motion rigor could be. Newton continued to drive his horses and men for the next two and a half years until the nation’s entire silver money supply had been remade. In all, under his command, the Mint recoined over £6 million—£6,722,970 0s. 2d., to be exact. As that last tuppence indicates, Newton, having spent the whole of his prior life as an essentially solitary thinker, proved to be a truly extraordinary administrator, bringing the effort home with accounts accurate to the penny and stunningly free of corruption.
Thomas Levenson (Money For Nothing: The South Sea Bubble and the Invention of Modern Capitalism)
Helene was a person who had never been able to ask for help, and she couldn't ask for help now. She turned north and started walking toward her home, many miles away in San Rafael. It took her almost eight hours to reach there. After a short time her feet began to hurt, so she took off the heels and throw them away. As she walked on, her nylons tore and her feet began to bleed. She passed buildings that had collapsed, stumbled over rubble, waded through streets filled with filthy water from the fire-fighting efforts. Dirty, sweaty, and disheveled, she walked down the Marina to the Golden Gate Bridge and crossed it into the next county. She reached her home sometime after midnight and knocked on her own front door. It was opened by her fiance, who had never before seen her with her hair uncombed. Without a word, he took her into his arms, kicked the door closed, covered her dirty, tearstained face with kisses, and made love to her right there on the floor. Helene is a very intelligent person but she could not understand why she had never met this ardent lover before. When she asked him, he said simply, 'I was always afraid of smearing your lipstick.' She tells me that now when she begins to relapse into her former perfectionism, she remembers the look of love in her fiance's eyes when he opened the door. She had been looked at by men all of her life but she had never seen that expression in a man's eyes before. At the heart of any real intimacy is a certain vulnerability. It is hard to trust someone with your vulnerability unless you can see in them a matching vulnerability and know that you will not be judged. In some basic way it is our imperfections and even our pain that draws others close to us.
Rachel Naomi Remen (Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal)
CONGRUENCE Have you ever felt stuck? Maybe you haven’t recruited anyone in a while, and you just can’t seem to break the streak of no success. This causes you to not feel like picking up the phone and getting any more rejection. You don’t feel like talking about the business that day, so you don’t. Can you relate? This is critical for you to always remember. You cannot avoid rejection. Ninety percent of people are always going to tell you that your business is not for them. You have to go through the no’s to get to the yeses. There is no other way around it. You may not like making calls and accepting no’s, but you will like the results and income you will get by doing it consistently enough. Bank on it. So here’s what happens to everyone, myself included. You have a bad day, where everyone says no. You wake up the next day and you just cannot get yourself to make some calls. The whole day goes by and you did nothing to grow your business. The next day, you have a nagging little feeling of guilt about doing nothing the day before, so you start to internalize it. You question whether you know what you are doing. Does the business work? Is it worth the effort? You know the answer is yes, so you don’t quit — but you also do no activity. The next day, that little guilt feeling has mushroomed even bigger. And as time goes on, the guilt turns into self-loathing. You get down on yourself for not performing like you know you could and should. You begin to beat yourself up and even compare yourself to others. Sadly, this can become a downward spiral that is self-inflicted and hard to break out of. Without being wise enough to seek direct help from an upline expert, some people never recover. Instead of fixing their mindset and bringing their goals and the actions back into alignment — getting congruent — they quit the business. These are the blamers who walk the Earth claiming the business didn’t work. No! They stopped working! Don’t be a blamer. Be congruent. Make your activity match up with your WHY in the business. Pick up the phone and snap back into action. Don’t allow yourself to be depressed, because it is a form of depression. Your upline can help you snap out of it. How
Brian Carruthers (Building an Empire:The Most Complete Blueprint to Building a Massive Network Marketing Business)
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim, Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,— Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved! Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine, This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise! Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine, Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise! And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell, Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things, Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well, Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs. And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was, Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest, Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass, Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest: For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, When a great illumination surprises a festal night— Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire) Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight. In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth, Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I; And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth, As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky: Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star; Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine, For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far. Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow, Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast, Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow, Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last; Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone, But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new: What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;
Robert Browning
Gray froze as Miss Turner emerged from the hold. For weeks, she’d plagued him-by day, he suffered glimpses of her beauty; by night, he was haunted by memories of her touch. And just when he thought he’d finally wrangled his desire into submission, today she’d ruined everything. She’d gone and changed her dress. Gone was that serge shroud, that forbidding thundercloud of a garment that had loomed in his peripheral vision for weeks. Today, she wore a cap-sleeved frock of sprigged muslin. She stepped onto the deck, smiling face tilted to the wind. A flower opening to greet the sun. She bobbed on her toes, as though resisting the urge to make a girlish twirl. The pale, sheer fabric of her dress billowed and swelled in the breeze, pulling the undulating contour of calf, thigh, hip into relief. Gray thought she just might be the loveliest creature he’d ever seen. Therefore, he knew he ought to look away. He did, for a moment. He made an honest attempt to scan the horizon for clouds. He checked the hour on his pocket watch, wound the small knob one, two, three, four times. He wiped a bit of salt spray from its glass face. He thought of England. And France, and Cuba, and Spain. He remembered his brother, his sister, and his singularly ugly Aunt Rosamond, on whom he hadn’t clapped eyes in decades. And all this Herculean effort resulting in nothing but a fine sheen of sweat on his brow and precisely thirty seconds’ delay in the inevitable. He looked at her again. Desire swept through his body with starling intensity. And beneath that hot surge of lust, a deeper emotion swelled. It wasn’t something Gray wished to examine. He preferred to let it sink back into the murky depths of his being. An unnamed creature of the deep, let for a more intrepid adventurer to catalog. Instead, he examined Miss Turner’s new frock. The fabric was of fine quality, the sprig pattern evenly stamped, without variations in shape or hue. The dressmaker had taken great pains to match the pattern at the seams. The sleeves of the frock fit perfectly square with her shoulders, in a moment of calm, the skirt’s single flounce lapped the laces of her boots. Unlike that gray serge abomination, this dress was expensive, and it had been fashioned for her alone. But it no longer fit. As she turned, Gray noted how the neckline gaped slightly, and the column of her skirt that ought to have skimmed the swell of her hip instead caught on nothing but air. He frowned. And in that instant, she turned to face him. Their gazes caught and held. Her own smile faded to a quizzical expression. And because Gray didn’t know how to answer the unspoken question in her eyes, and because he hated the fact that he’d banished the giddy delight from her face, he gave her a curt nod and a churlish, “Good morning.” And then he walked away.
Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
Many models are constructed to account for regularly observed phenomena. By design, their direct implications are consistent with reality. But others are built up from first principles, using the profession’s preferred building blocks. They may be mathematically elegant and match up well with the prevailing modeling conventions of the day. However, this does not make them necessarily more useful, especially when their conclusions have a tenuous relationship with reality. Macroeconomists have been particularly prone to this problem. In recent decades they have put considerable effort into developing macro models that require sophisticated mathematical tools, populated by fully rational, infinitely lived individuals solving complicated dynamic optimization problems under uncertainty. These are models that are “microfounded,” in the profession’s parlance: The macro-level implications are derived from the behavior of individuals, rather than simply postulated. This is a good thing, in principle. For example, aggregate saving behavior derives from the optimization problem in which a representative consumer maximizes his consumption while adhering to a lifetime (intertemporal) budget constraint.† Keynesian models, by contrast, take a shortcut, assuming a fixed relationship between saving and national income. However, these models shed limited light on the classical questions of macroeconomics: Why are there economic booms and recessions? What generates unemployment? What roles can fiscal and monetary policy play in stabilizing the economy? In trying to render their models tractable, economists neglected many important aspects of the real world. In particular, they assumed away imperfections and frictions in markets for labor, capital, and goods. The ups and downs of the economy were ascribed to exogenous and vague “shocks” to technology and consumer preferences. The unemployed weren’t looking for jobs they couldn’t find; they represented a worker’s optimal trade-off between leisure and labor. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these models were poor forecasters of major macroeconomic variables such as inflation and growth.8 As long as the economy hummed along at a steady clip and unemployment was low, these shortcomings were not particularly evident. But their failures become more apparent and costly in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008–9. These newfangled models simply could not explain the magnitude and duration of the recession that followed. They needed, at the very least, to incorporate more realism about financial-market imperfections. Traditional Keynesian models, despite their lack of microfoundations, could explain how economies can get stuck with high unemployment and seemed more relevant than ever. Yet the advocates of the new models were reluctant to give up on them—not because these models did a better job of tracking reality, but because they were what models were supposed to look like. Their modeling strategy trumped the realism of conclusions. Economists’ attachment to particular modeling conventions—rational, forward-looking individuals, well-functioning markets, and so on—often leads them to overlook obvious conflicts with the world around them.
Dani Rodrik (Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science)
Arthur was tired out. He had been broken by the two battles which he had fought already, the one at Dover, the other at Barbara Down. His wife was a prisoner. His oldest friend was banished. His son was trying to kill him. Gawaine was buried. His Table was dispersed. His country was at war. Yet he could have breasted all these things in some way, if the central tenet of his heart had not been ravaged. Long ago, when his mind had been a nimble boy's called Wart—long ago he had been taught by an aged benevolence, wagging a white beard. He had been taught by Merlyn to believe that man was perfectible: that he was on the whole more decent than beastly: that good was worth trying: that there was no such thing as original sin. He had been forged as a weapon for the aid of man, on the assumption that men were good. He had been forged, by that deluded old teacher, into a sort of Pasteur or Curie or patient discoverer of insulin. The service for which he had been destined had been against Force, the mental illness of humanity. His Table, his idea of Chivalry, his Holy Grail, his devotion to Justice: these had been progressive steps in the effort for which he had been bred He was like a scientist who had pursued the root of cancer all his life. Might—to have ended it— to have made men happier. But the whole structure depended on the first premise: that man was decent. Looking back at his life, it seemed to him that he had been struggling all the time to dam a flood, which, whenever he had checked it, had broken through at a new place, setting him his work to do again. It was the flood of Force Majeur. During the earliest days before his marriage he had tried to match its strength with strength—in his battles against the Gaelic confederation—only to find that two wrongs did not make a right. But he had crushed the feudal dream of war successfully. Then, with his Round Table, he had tried to harness Tyranny in lesser forms, so that its power might be used for useful ends. He had sent out the men of might to rescue the oppressed and to straighten evil —to put down the individual might of barons, just as he had put down the might of kings. They had done so—until, in the course of time, the ends had been achieved, but the force had remained upon his hands unchastened. So he had sought for a new channel, had sent them out on God's business, searching for the Holy Grail. That too had been a failure, because those who had achieved the Quest had become perfect and been lost to the world, while those who had failed in it had soon returned no better. At last he had sought to make a map of force, as it were, to bind it down by laws. He had tried to codify the evil uses of might by individuals, so that he might set bounds to them by the impersonal justice of the state. He had been prepared to sacrifice his wife and his best friend, to the impersonality of Justice. And then, even as the might of the individual seemed to have been curbed, the Principle of Might had sprung up behind him in another shape—in the shape of collective might, of banded ferocity, of numerous armies insusceptible to individual laws. He had bound the might of units, only to find that it was assumed by pluralities. He had conquered murder, to be faced with war. There were no Laws for that.
T.H. White (The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-5))
Under these circumstances the most anodyne book was a source of danger from the simple fact that love was alluded to, and woman depicted as an attractive creature; and this was enough to account for all—for the inherent ignorance of Catholics, since it was proclaimed as the preventive cure for temptations—for the instinctive horror of art, since to these craven souls every written and studied work was in its nature a vehicle of sin and an incitement to fall. Would it not really be far more sensible and judicious to open the windows, to air the rooms, to treat these souls as manly beings, to teach them not to be so much afraid of their own flesh, to inculcate the firmness and courage needed for resistance? For really it is rather like a dog which barks at your heels and snaps at your legs if you are afraid of him, but who beats a retreat if you turn on him boldly and drive him off. The fact remains that these schemes of education have resulted, on the one hand, in the triumph of the flesh in the greater number of men who have been thus brought up and then thrown into a worldly life, and on the other, in a wide diffusion of folly and fear, an abandonment of the possessions of the intellect and the capitulation of the Catholic army surrendering without a blow to the inroads of profane literature, which takes possession of territory that it has not even had the trouble of conquering. This really was madness! The Church had created art, had cherished it for centuries; and now by the effeteness of her sons she was cast into a corner. All the great movements of our day, one after the other—romanticism, naturalism—had been effected independently of her, or even against her will. If a book were not restricted to the simplest tales, or pleasing fiction ending in virtue rewarded and vice punished, that was enough; the propriety of beadledom was at once ready to bray. As soon as the most modern form of art, the most malleable and the broadest—the Novel—touched on scenes of real life, depicted passion, became a psychological study, an effort of analysis, the army of bigots fell back all along the line. The Catholic force, which might have been thought better prepared than any others to contest the ground which theology had long since explored, retired in good order, satisfied to cover its retreat by firing from a safe distance, with its old-fashioned match-lock blunderbusses, on works it had neither inspired nor written. The Church party, centuries behind the time, and having made no attempt to follow the evolution of style in the course of ages, now turned to the rustic who can scarcely read; it did not understand more than half of the words used by modern writers, and had become, it must be said, a camp of the illiterate. Incapable of distinguishing the good from the bad, it included in one condemnation the filth of pornography and real works of art; in short, it ended by emitting such folly and talking such preposterous nonsense, that it fell into utter discredit and ceased to count at all. And it would have been so easy for it to work on a little way, to try to keep up with the times, and to understand, to convince itself whether in any given work the author was writing up the Flesh, glorifying it, praising it, and nothing more, or whether, on the contrary, he depicted it merely to buffet it—hating it. And, again, it would have done well to convince itself that there is a chaste as well as a prurient nude, and that it should not cry shame on every picture in which the nude is shown. Above all, it ought to have recognized that vices may well be depicted and studied with a view to exciting disgust of them and showing their horrors.
Joris-Karl Huysmans (The Cathedral)
White Man, to you my voice is like the unheard call in the wilderness. It is there, though you do not hear it. But, this once, take the time to listen to what I have to say. Your history is highlighted by your wars. Why is it all right for your nations to conquer each other in your attempts at domination? When you sailed to our lands, you came with your advanced weapons. You claimed you were a progressive, civilized people. And today, White Man, you have the ultimate weapons. Warfare which could destroy all men, all creation. And you allow such power to be in the hands of those few who have such little value in true wisdom. White Man, when you first came, most of our tribes began with peace and trust in dealing with you, strange white intruders. We showed you how to survive in our homelands. We were willing to share with you our vast wealth. Instead of repaying us with gratitude, you, White Man, turned on us, your friends. You turned on us with your advanced weapons and your cunning trickery. When we, the Indian people, realized your intentions, we rose to do battle, to defend our nations, our homes, our food, our lives. And for our efforts, we are labelled savages, and our battles are called massacres. And when our primitive weapons could not match those which you had perfected through centuries of wars, we realized that peace could not be won, unless our mass destruction took place. And so we turned to treaties. And this time, we ran into your cunning trickery. And we lost our lands, our freedom, and were confined to reservations. And we are held in contempt. 'As long as the Sun shall rise...' For you, White Man, these are words without meaning. White Man, there is much in the deep, simple wisdom of our forefathers. We were here for centuries. We kept the land, the waters, the air clean and pure, for our children and our children's children. Now that you are here, White Man, the rivers bleed with contamination. The winds moan with the heavy weight of pollution in the air. The land vomits up the poisons which have been fed into it. Our Mother Earth is no longer clean and healthy. She is dying. White Man, in your greedy rush for money and power, you are destroying. Why must you have power over everything? Why can't you live in peace and harmony? Why can't you share the beauty and the wealth which Mother Earth has given us? You do not stop at confining us to small pieces of rock an muskeg. Where are the animals of the wilderness to go when there is no more wilderness? Why are the birds of the skies falling to their extinction? Is there joy for you when you bring down the mighty trees of our forests? No living things seems sacred to you. In the name of progress, everything is cut down. And progress means only profits. White Man, you say that we are a people without dignity. But when we are sick, weak, hungry, poor, when there is nothing for us but death, what are we to do? We cannot accept a life which has been imposed on us. You say that we are drunkards, that we live for drinking. But drinking is a way of dying. Dying without enjoying life. You have given us many diseases. It is true that you have found immunizations for many of these diseases. But this was done more for your own benefit. The worst disease, for which there is no immunity, is the disease of alcoholism. And you condemn us for being its easy victims. And those who do not condemn us weep for us and pity us. So, we the Indian people, we are still dying. The land we lost is dying, too. White Man, you have our land now. Respect it. As we once did. Take care of it. As we once did. Love it. As we once did. White Man, our wisdom is dying. As we are. But take heed, if Indian wisdom dies, you, White Man, will not be far behind. So weep not for us. Weep for yourselves. And for your children. And for their children. Because you are taking everything today. And tomorrow, there will be nothing left for them.
Beatrice Mosionier (In Search of April Raintree)
The Law of Activity Many times we have boundary problems because we lack initiative - the God-given ability to propel ourselves into life. We respond to invitations and push ourselves into life. The best boundaries are formed when a child is pushing against the world naturally, and the outside world sets its limits on the child. In this way, the aggressive child has learned limits without losing his or her spirit. Our spiritual and emotional well-being depends on our having this spirit. Consider the contrast in the parable of the talents. The ones who succeeded were ACTIVE and assertive. They initiated and pushed. The one who lost out was PASSIVE and inactive. The sad thing is that many people who are passive are not inherently evil or bad people. But evil is an active force and passivity can become an ally of evil by NOT pushing against it. Passivity never pays off. God will match our effort, but he will never do our work for us. That would be an invasion of our boundaries. He wants us to be assertive and active, seeking and knocking on the door of life. We know that God is not mean to people who are afraid; the Scriptures is full of examples of his compassion. But he will not enable passivity. The wicked and lazy servant was passive. He did not try. God's grace covers failure but it cannot makeup for passivity. We have to do our part. The sin God rebukes is not trying and failing, but failing to try. Trying, failing, and trying again is called learning. Failing to try will have no good result; evil will triumph. HEBREWS 10:38-39 … do not shrink back. Passive shrinking back is intolerable to God, and when we understand how destructive it is to the soul, we can see why God does not tolerate it. God wants us to preserve our souls. That is the role of boundaries; they define and preserve our property, our soul. p. 99
Henry Cloud (Boundaries)
It takes a lot of effort to transform a tree into a match but it doesn't require effort for a match to burn a forest! It's for us to be careful.
Bruce Mbanzabugabo (The Inspirer, Book of Quotes)
These diverse tactics for retaining mates succeed by exploiting the psychological adaptations of mates and rivals. The beneficial tactics, such as giving love and resources, work for a man because they fulfill the psychological desires that led the woman to choose him to begin with. For a woman, enhancing her physical appearance and providing sexual resources succeeds because they match men’s psychology of desire. Indeed, our study of married couples found that men intensify their mate retention efforts when they perceive their partner to be attractive, just as women ramp up their mate retention efforts with partners who are higher in status and income.70
David M. Buss (The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating)
Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance. No one finds a match so perfect that the need for continued attention and work vanishes (and, besides, if you found the perfect person, he or she would run away from ever-so-imperfect you in justifiable horror). In truth, what you need—what you deserve, after all—is someone exactly as imperfect as you.
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
When Bouchard’s twin-processing operation was in full swing, he amassed a staff of eighteen—psychologists, psychiatrists, ophthalmologists, cardiologists, pathologists, geneticists, even dentists. Several of his collaborators were highly distinguished: David Lykken was a widely recognized expert on personality, and Auke Tellegen, a Dutch psychologist on the Minnesota faculty, was an expert on personality measuring. In scheduling his twin-evaluations, Bouchard tried limiting the testing to one pair of twins at a time so that he and his colleagues could devote the entire week—with a grueling fifty hours of tests—to two genetically identical individuals. Because it is not a simple matter to determine zygosity—that is, whether twins are identical or fraternal—this was always the first item of business. It was done primarily by comparing blood samples, fingerprint ridge counts, electrocardiograms, and brain waves. As much background information as possible was collected from oral histories and, when possible, from interviews with relatives and spouses. I.Q. was tested with three different instruments: the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, a Raven, Mill-Hill composite test, and the first principal components of two multiple abilities batteries. The Minnesota team also administered four personality inventories (lengthy questionnaires aimed at characterizing and measuring personality traits) and three tests of occupational interests. In all the many personality facets so laboriously measured, the Minnesota team was looking for degrees of concordance and degrees of difference between the separated twins. If there was no connection between the mean scores of all twins sets on a series of related tests—I.Q. tests, for instance—the concordance figure would be zero percent. If the scores of every twin matched his or her twin exactly, the concordance figure would be 100 percent. Statistically, any concordance above 30 percent was considered significant, or rather indicated the presence of some degree of genetic influence. As the week of testing progressed, the twins were wired with electrodes, X-rayed, run on treadmills, hooked up for twenty-four hours with monitoring devices. They were videotaped and a series of questionnaires and interviews elicited their family backgrounds, educations, sexual histories, major life events, and they were assessed for psychiatric problems such as phobias and anxieties. An effort was made to avoid adding questions to the tests once the program was under way because that meant tampering with someone else’s test; it also would necessitate returning to the twins already tested with more questions. But the researchers were tempted. In interviews, a few traits not on the tests appeared similar in enough twin pairs to raise suspicions of a genetic component. One of these was religiosity. The twins might follow different faiths, but if one was religious, his or her twin more often than not was religious as well. Conversely, when one was a nonbeliever, the other generally was too. Because this discovery was considered too intriguing to pass by, an entire additional test was added, an existing instrument that included questions relating to spiritual beliefs. Bouchard would later insist that while he and his colleagues had fully expected to find traits with a high degree of heritability, they also expected to find traits that had no genetic component. He was certain, he says, that they would find some traits that proved to be purely environmental. They were astonished when they did not. While the degree of heritability varied widely—from the low thirties to the high seventies— every trait they measured showed at least some degree of genetic influence. Many showed a lot.
William Wright (Born That Way: Genes, Behavior, Personality)
Given anything other than an outright winner by an opponent, professional tennis players can make the shot they want almost all the time: hard or soft, deep or short, left or right, flat or with spin. Professional players aren’t troubled by the things that make the game challenging for amateurs: bad bounces; wind; sun in the eyes; limitations on speed, stamina and skill; or an opponent’s efforts to put the ball beyond reach. The pros can get to most shots their opponents hit and do what they want with the ball almost all the time. In fact, pros can do this so consistently that tennis statisticians keep track of the relatively rare exceptions under the heading “unforced errors.” But the tennis the rest of us play is a “loser’s game,” with the match going to the player who hits the fewest losers. The winner just keeps the ball in play until the loser hits it into the net or off the court. In other words, in amateur tennis, points aren’t won; they’re lost. I recognized in Ramo’s loss-avoidance strategy the version of tennis I try to play.
Howard Marks (The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor (Columbia Business School Publishing))
The founder of eHarmony, Neil Clark Warren, wants to get into matching people with the perfect job or the perfect financial adviser or even the perfect friend. That may be good business, but you have to wonder whether this effort will work any better for recruiters and job seekers than it does for singles.
Tim Harford (Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives)
Intention. This purposeful reason... is enough to change the direction of your life. It is the spark that ignites the lucid dreams of wanting. Yet, without striking the match, further efforts will go undone. It is not enough to desire… for without effort, intention stays just that… an unfulfilled dream.
Andrew Pacholyk (Pearls of Light: passion, poetry & positive affirmations)
At low speeds, the effort is primarily aerobic (meaning “with oxygen”), since oxygen is required for the most efficient conversion of stored food energy into a form your muscles can use. Your VO2max reflects your aerobic limits. At higher speeds, your legs demand energy at a rate that aerobic processes can’t match, so you have to draw on fast-burning anaerobic (“without oxygen”) energy sources. The problem, as Hopkins and Fletcher had shown in 1907, is that muscles contracting without oxygen generate lactic acid. Your muscles’ ability to tolerate high levels of lactic acid—what we would now call anaerobic capacity—is the other key determinant of endurance, Hill concluded, particularly in events lasting less than about ten minutes.
Alex Hutchinson (Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance)
Similarly, tuned oscillators, that is to say things that can vibrate at the same frequency, require very little effort to transfer energy from one to the other. In this case, the string on the guitar absorbs the piano's energy waves, as it is tuned to the same frequency. Each time oscillators are similarly tuned they form what's called a resonant structure. The string of a guitar and a piano resonates with each other. If grandfather-type pendulum clocks were mounted against a wall with their pendulums swinging out of phase to each other, their pendulums would lock into phase and beat together in a matter of days. In this scenario, it would be enough energy transmitted through the common wall to cause the clocks to come into sync with each other. This is entrainment, a process that allows two closely tuned devices to coordinate their movement and energy in a rhythm and step match.
Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
No relationship should ever be a 90/10 type of love. Find someone who gives it their all and matches your efforts.
Jennae Cecelia (Uncaged Wallflower)
Harry Truman proposed a national healthcare system twice, once in 1945 and again as part of his Fair Deal package in 1949, but his appeal for public support was no match for the well-financed PR efforts of the American Medical Association and other industry lobbyists. Opponents didn’t just kill Truman’s effort. They convinced a large swath of the public that “socialized medicine” would lead to rationing, the loss of your family doctor, and the freedoms Americans hold so dear.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
There was always a sense that money and effort had gone into mixing my preparation, and I’d jolly well better bake and set in the right mould and not go off my onion in any way. The reward is, well, all the finer things–children, a family, some peace of mind–but the cost is matching the recipe. And I am a little off my onion, you know
Kaliane Bradley (The Ministry of Time)
BROADCASTING RESONANCE Anchored in nonlocal consciousness, your local life begins to change. As you resonate with the cycles of nature, as your heart’s coherence conditions the energy space around you, as you vibrate to the signal of love and joy in your consciousness, you attract people and conditions that match your states and traits. Without effort, as your magnificent new signal broadcasts out around you, resonating with the music of the universe, you’ll come into synchrony with people and events that bless and delight you. You’ll discover that you’re not alone. As you tune to the great symphony of life each day, you’ll find that you’re tuned to millions of other people who are likewise attuned. With no effort at all, you’ll discover wonderful new friends and companions wherever you travel. As the light shines from your eyes, it meets the light in the eyes of others. When you’re awake, you naturally enjoy others who are awake. 9.3. Coming into synchrony. LOVING THE SLEEPER Not everyone is awake, and that’s fine. Sometimes your friends and family members are tossing in their sleep, suffering unnecessarily. Their plight touches you. You feel their misery. You would love to see them wake up, and shed those beliefs, thoughts, and habits that drag them down. You can’t force them to do so, no matter how much you love them. Everyone makes their own choice. What you can do for people who are suffering is shine brightly yourself. If they’re ready, they’ll wake up. If they don’t, trust the universe. We each wake up when the time is right. Their time might come later; it’s not up to you. You can share this book and other resources with them. You can share your story as I have shared mine, and perhaps these examples will inspire them. If and when each of us wakes up is our choice. UNLOCKING YOUR POTENTIAL As you live in synchrony with the universe, enjoying the community of other Bliss Brainers, you find new possibilities opening up. You start to unlock potential that’s been trapped inside the suffering, selfing self. Increasingly, you’re not just in Bliss Brain during meditation. You’re in the Awakened Mind state with your eyes open, going about your day. All kinds of possibilities that were previously unavailable to you now become available.
Dawson Church (Bliss Brain: The Neuroscience of Remodeling Your Brain for Resilience, Creativity, and Joy)
We measure ourselves by many standards. Our strength and our intelligence, our wealth and even our good luck, are things which warm our heart and make us feel ourselves a match for life. But deeper than all such things and able to suffice unto itself without them, is the sense of the amount of effort we can put forth  .  .  .  He who can make none is but a shadow; he who can make much is a hero. William James
Robert D. Richardson Jr. (Emerson: The Mind on Fire)
Practically speaking, in what ways do I see people putting their foot on the brake? Split Energy – Fear of moving forward, fear of taking action, or fear of the consequences of having that desire. Negative Emotions – Especially the dominant ones, pulling you from alignment and preventing you from being a vibrational match to the desire. Impatience – Keeping you in the vibration and awareness of the absence (lack) of the desire. Desperation – Keeping you in lack energy, once again practicing the vibration of the absence of the desire. Stuck in a current reality loop – Constantly creating more of the same stuck-ness by observing more of the same current reality circumstances. Effort – Effort once again keeps you in the vibration of lack as you’re continually pushing against what you don’t want, which likely takes you out of alignment as well.
Nick Breau (Power Manifesting: Unlock Your Full Potential as a Leading Edge Creator)
She straightened the paper and read, “I don’t know what kind of woman I’m looking for. All that I do know is she’s out there. I’ve spent my life looking for love in all the wrong places. I’ve spent most of my life misunderstanding love. Not the love that I have for my daughter. I do understand that love. I mean the kind you share between partners. After a lifetime of doing it wrong, I finally know what love means. Love is something we do as an offering, expecting nothing in return. Love requires trust. Love takes everything you have. Love is not a lusty affair. Love is a commitment beyond any others, an action that takes every ounce of effort you have. I’m looking for a woman who will allow me to love her with everything I have.” Margot looked at the man she’d chosen to love for the rest of her life. “Do you know who wrote that?” “I did. That was my Match.com profile.” “Yeah.” She reached for his hand. “From this moment forward, I’m going to be that woman. I don’t know why I’ve been so afraid to let myself go, and I don’t know why I’ve ever doubted you…but no more. You have all of me.” She looked down at her body and smirked. “And I mean all of me.” “You don’t think I know that, Margot? I’ve never doubted you for a moment, and I definitely never gave up on you.” She let go of his hand. “Thank you.” They sipped their coffee together and laughed and fell back into being the couple they used to be. When Jasper came down, he sat at his Steinway and filled the house with beautiful sounds. Margot loved that he could say more with his music than anyone could say with words, and each note seemed to tickle her soul. Carly followed shortly after. “Good morning, everyone.” She approached her father and kissed his head. Margot couldn’t help noticing Carly’s head was free of the hoodie and any other material. Her long brown hair even appeared to be washed.
Boo Walker (The Red Mountain Chronicles Box Set: Books 1-3 + Prequel)
Even before realization struck me, I sailed through the build-up, the spark, the explosion, and the aftermath, which research testified were the four stages of frustration; the root cause of which hailed from the system’s failure to match my skills, qualifications, and experience with suitable jobs; and all evil forces, whether real or imagined, conniving against my efforts to seek employment.
DR NEETHA JOSEPH (A Recusant’s Incarnation: A Memoir)
Focus your attention, your study efforts and your praise on Jesus himself. In other words, fill yourself with the knowledge of Jesus and believe on him. (John 7:37–39) 2. Invite the Lord to empower your life and overflow you with the Holy Spirit for the benefit of others. 3. Believe and accept that he is now working in your life. Since all God’s gifts are received by faith, you can trust that he will answer this prayer. 4. Watch to see what new events will happen in your life, what new power will be there, what new understandings, what new energy for service, what new drive toward purity. 5. Do not close the door to the miraculous or to new experiences if they match Scripture. Be bold and watch God work. 6. Pray for boldness to speak God’s word and ask God to heal and “perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of Jesus.” In the early church, God responded with an overflow of the Holy Spirit when this prayer was prayed. (Acts 4:29–30) 7. The Holy Spirit was also given as a down payment in our lives to assure us of our salvation. (2 Corinthians 1:22 and 5:5) If you lack this sense, ask the Lord to reveal this reassurance to you. Then just enjoy watching what the Holy Spirit is doing in your life. 8. Pray more and more unselfishly. Discover the promise that the Holy Spirit also prays in our behalf in keeping with the will of God. That cooperation unlocks great power. (Romans 8:26, 27) 9. Abandon fear. With the Holy Spirit in your life, you have a restful assurance of God’s relationship to you. Enjoy it! (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6) 10. Prepare to know him more and to be more like Jesus because of the action of the Holy Spirit in your life.
Gayle D. Erwin (Handbook for Servants)
I couldn’t have imagined a better day. At least I hadn’t until Cal lifts Cami up on to his shoulders so she can get a better look at the evening show happening in front of the castle. I never stood a chance at surviving this trip without falling in love with Cal. It was a valiant effort on my part to even think otherwise, but I’m no match for the girl dad energy he is giving off.
Lauren Asher (Final Offer (Dreamland Billionaires, #3))
The three pioneering efforts weren’t perfect index funds, in that they didn’t buy every single stock in the S&P 500. Doing so would be too costly at a time when Wall Street firms still charged fixed commissions, and the tradability of smaller stocks in the blue-chip index was still poor. They were also simply too small to be able to buy all the stocks. To varying degrees, they replicated the benchmark through a process known as sampling—picking a broad but smaller subset of stocks that would best match the overall index.
Robin Wigglesworth (Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever)
Put yourself out there! You'll find your match - you're soulmate is waiting right around the corner! Where do I find her? You just have to look around, keep meeting new people! I've tried that, I've gone out for days on end going to countless bars and clubs - I've gone all the way to the other side of the earth and still nothing. Well it'll fall into your lap when you least expect it. Really? Yeah you can't be looking for it - well I'm NOT looking for it. And where on earth am I supposed to find her? In the bushes? On the street corner? In the cafe where everyone is looking at their phone and has airpods shoved into their ears? In the library where there are empty tables? In the bar were everyone is drunk and foolishly polluting their own bodies? In the churches that young people have abandoned? On the dating apps that are shown to be ineffective for men? Wil she fall out of the sky onto my lap? It got to a point where I was happy to be alone. It was to much vain effort trying to find the right person. Anyways who brought the wine? And it better be pino grigio!
Albert Ahlf
rYou think love will always hurt, then you meet someone who makes it feel like healing. You think loyalty is extinct, then you meet someone who makes it clear you’re their first and only choice. You think every relationship comes with a side of anxiety, then you meet someone who feels like a deep breath. You think your honesty will push people away, then you meet someone who’s drawn to it. You think consistency is a myth, then you meet someone who still shows up as they promised from day one. You think love’s always one-sided, then you meet someone who matches your effort without hesitation. You think your independence is a turn-off, then you meet someone who loves you without wanting to control you. You think your ambition intimidates people, then you meet someone who treats your dreams like your destiny.
Case Kenny
Put yourself out there! You'll find your match - you're soulmate is waiting right around the corner! Where do I find her? You just have to look around, keep meeting new people! I've tried that, I've got out for days on end going to countless bars and clubs - I've gone all the way to the other side of the earth and still nothing. Well it'll fall into your lap when you least expect it. Really? Yeah you can't be looking for it - well I'm NOT looking for it. Adn where on earth am I supposed to find her? In the bushes? On the street corner? In the cafe where everyone is looking at their phone and has airpods shoved into their ears? In the library where there are empty tables? In the bar were everyone is drunk and foolishly polluting their own bodies? In the churches that young people have abandoned? On the dating apps that are shown to be ineffective for men? Wil she fall out of the sky onto my lap? It got to a point where I was happy to be alone. It was to much vain effort trying to find the right person. Anyways who brought the wine? And it better be pino grigio!
alber ahlf
According to the Fogg Behavior Model, ability is the capacity to do a particular behavior.   *** Fogg describes six “elements of simplicity” — the factors that influence a task’s difficulty.[lxi] These are:   - Time - How long it takes to complete an action. - Money - The fiscal cost of taking an action. - Physical Effort - The amount of labor involved in taking the action. - Brain Cycles - The level of mental effort and focus required to take an action. - Social Deviance - How accepted the behavior is by others. - Non-Routine - According to Fogg, “How much the action matches or disrupts existing routines.
Nir Eyal (Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products)
Workaholism’ is endemic, and for many of us our life is governed entirely by work. Once upon a time, we worked to live; now, we live to work. Any ‘life’ we do have is merely recovery from work. We work, recover from work and then work again. We go to the office to work. After work, we bring some work home with us. For rest, we go to the gym for a workout. Totally exhausted, we go to therapy to work through our problems – ’I’ve done a lot of work on myself,’ we say. After all that, there’s the housework! Finally, we go to bed, too tired to be happy, but our mind is still working and we can’t sleep. No problem. Insomnia is a wonderful chance to get more work done! The work ethic is motivated by the belief that anything worthwhile requires great work, effort and labour. According to the work ethic – creativity isn’t inspiration, it’s perspiration; love is a labour, not a joy; success is a marathon, it never comes easily; health is about a ‘no pain, no gain’ attitude; salvation is hardest of all – it is a wrestling match with the angels, just ask Jacob. Nothing comes easily, according to the work ethic. Has it ever occurred to you that ... you’re trying too hard to be happy?
Robert Holden (Happiness Now!: Timeless Wisdom for Feeling Good Fast)
partners are neither perfect as individuals nor perfectly matched, even in the best scenarios. All partners have some traits that are less desirable, and those traits can drive us crazy. When those traits go unmitigated and manifest themselves as chronic meanness, cruelty or a lack of concern, then people are right to point out these concerning characteristics and to ask for some mindful changes on the part of the guilty party. When we are guilty of allowing our worst traits to get the best of us and of allowing those traits to consistently have a negative impact on our relationship, reasonable requests for discussion should not be ignored or dismissed. No partner is perfect, and part of a relationship is showing a consistent effort to manage your own weaknesses, while showing some consistent grace when it comes to your partner’s weaknesses.
Ty Tashiro (The Science of Happily Ever After: What Really Matters in the Quest for Enduring Love)
He knew what it was to work for something he wanted, something he valued. He’d expend no less effort to win Tori’s trust and affection. And God willing, her hand in marriage. She was his matched pair. He felt it in his bones. “Mr.
Karen Witemeyer (Worth the Wait (Ladies of Harper’s Station, #1.5))
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The Sure Bettor
The story she then told was as all attempts at sympathy are: an effort to match in form and size and detail what another has known: to hold one experience next to another the way lovers and children match fingers and hands, as if these two, side by side, are linked by their likeness, are both identical and unique.
Alice McDermott (That Night)
You will only ever achieve the level of success that matches your wisdom or personal development level.
Mensah Oteh
Even annoyed, as she was now, she vibrated the kind of barely restrained energy that made every part of him spark to life. Some parts more enthusiastically than others. He shifted his weight and sidestepped slightly in an effort to keep that reality as unnoticeable as possible. He’d become a master of that particular skill during the last few months she’d been on the station. He needn’t have worried. She didn’t so much as glance at him. Her irritation was focused solely on her big brother. “Did you really just perp walk Cooper down the harbor?” Logan’s eyebrows lifted along with his hands, which he held up at his sides, palms out. “Hold up, I didn’t--” “Save it,” Kerry said. She turned to Cooper. “I apologize. He forgets I’m an adult woman who can handle her own affairs.” She glared at her brother during that last part. “She’s right, you know.” This came from a little spitfire brunette who, given Kerry’s descriptions of her family, must be the middle McCrae sister, Fiona. Fists planted on her hips, managing to somehow look down her cute little nose at her much taller and much bigger brother, she added, “We’re trying to plan my wedding and grill her about Mr. Hot and Aussie here. I’d think by now you’d know that we’ve got this covered.” She made a brief gesture to the other women standing alongside her. “If we thought he was a danger to society, we would have called.” Cooper watched the ricocheting dialogue like a spectator at a cricket match, unable to squelch a grin. It was like watching his own sister, all grown up and in triplicate. As Kerry and Fiona closed in on a somehow now hapless-looking lumberjack of a police chief, Cooper stepped forward and stuck out his hand toward the taller, willowy young woman who stood just behind Fiona. Where Kerry was Amazonian and Fiona a little firebrand, their oldest sister was the epitome of cool, calm, and collected. “Hannah Blue, I presume? I’m Cooper Jax. Sorry for the disruption of your sister’s wedding plans. I didn’t know.” This had Fiona turning his way. “And how could you, given Kerry couldn’t be bothered to so much as send you a postcard?” “Hey,” Kerry said, looking at her sister now. “Whose side are you on?” Fiona looked back at her. “The side that keeps this guy here and you looking all pent up and googly-eyed.” “Googly-eyed?” Kerry shot back. Cooper, grinning unrepentantly now, turned his attention back to Hannah and continued, as if her sisters weren’t getting all up in each other’s personal space. “I understand congratulations are in order on your recent nuptials as well.” Hannah gave him a swift, all-encompassing once-over as only a former defense attorney could. Then, in the face of his unrelenting goodwill, she took his hand, her mouth curving up in the barest hint of a smile as she gave it a firm, quick shake. “You’re a charmer, Mr. Jax, I’ll give you that.” “Go with your strength,” he replied.
Donna Kauffman (Starfish Moon (Brides of Blueberry Cove, #3))
Lehman and Belady have studied the history of successive releases in a large operating system.[6] They find that the total number of modules increases linearly with release number, but that the number of modules affected increases exponentially with release number. All repairs tend to destroy the structure, to increase the entropy and disorder of the system. Less and less effort is spent on fixing original design flaws; more and more is spent on fixing flaws introduced by earlier fixes. As time passes, the system becomes less and less well-ordered. Sooner or later the fixing ceases to gain any ground. Each forward step is matched by a backward one. Although in principle usable forever, the system has worn out as a base for progress. Furthermore, machines change, configurations change, and user requirements change, so the system is not in fact usable forever. A brand-new, from-the-ground-up redesign is necessary.
Frederick P. Brooks Jr. (The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering)