Medina Quotes

Take care not to listen to anyone who tells you what you can and can't be in life.

El amor no necesita se perfecto, sólo necesita ser verdadero. Y eso era lo que yo estaba buscando

Alex said. “This is Medina Station under occupation by a bunch of splinter Martian military expats. It’s not Baltimore.” Amos’ smile was as placid as always. “Everywhere’s Baltimore.

The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation.

No me considero una chica normal, con aspiraciones comunes y pensamientos convencionales. Me ha sido difícil encajar en la sociedad, la gente me mira como si fuera de otro planeta...tal vez tengan razón.

No trates de buscarme en los sueños, porque yo dejaré de invitarte a los míos.

You never forget the books you loved as a kid. You never forget the poems you memorized, the first book you read until the cover fell off, the book you read hidden from your mother. What an honor to hold hands with a child's imagination in this way.

Sometimes it's hard to wait for good things to happen. - Tia Isa

Children have never been good at listening to their parents, but they have never failed to imitate them.

All she really wanted to do was sleep, but it seemed her awareness level was operating at peak efficiency, for some reason.

We are bound to expire Even metal which is sturdiest, Rusts. Even oxygen, the breath of life, Soon transpires. 8/6/11 -Luis Medina

If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over.

We must do a better job of encouraging lifelong curiosity.

Moría de miedo, pero me sentía más valiente que nunca

She gazed at him alluringly and grinned. No further words were necessary.

siempre intentábamos ver esa chispa o magia en las cosas que generalmente las personas ven como algo común. Algo así como admirar las cosas como un niño lo haría, sin perder esa inocencia y capacidad de asombro.

The ‘Islamic State’, that strange miscegenation of Medina with Westphalia, is always in mortal danger of linking the moral austerity of monotheism with the repressive and supervisor powers of the modern nation state.

Sai bene che quando l’amore si spegne è più freddo della morte. Il problema è che le due parti in causa non si spengono contemporaneamente e quando sei la parte ancora accesa, preferiresti essere morto.

...but I realized now that love was more than a feeling. Love was something you did for another person...

No sé su nombre y ella no sabe que existo, lo cuál confirma mi pensamiento...soy patético.

Dadas las circunstancias hice lo que cualquier otro simple mortal haría en mi lugar...toqué el timbre.

Si no supiera la verdad pensaría que despertarla sería un crimen.

One of the greatest predictors of successful aging, they found, is the presence or absence of a sedentary lifestyle. Put

De pronto él llegó con las estrellas, materializándose a mi lado, como una especie de fantasma.

Sus brillantes ojos estaban llenos de bondad y esperanza, sus labios que nunca habían encontrado los míos sonreían ante la ilusión de encontrarme...

What you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like—it literally rewires it.

Buena suerte: que nadie tenga que cuidarte. Mala suerte: que nadie te cuide.

My confessor? ... Neither he, nor anyone else, God is my confessor.

Growing up is like walking through glass doors that only open one way--you can see where you came from but can't go back.

You may think that grown-ups create children. The reality is that children create grown-ups. They become their own person, and so do you. Children give so much more than they take.

El silencio es glorioso, ya que no escuchar nada, quiere decir que todo marcha bien.

Por un lado tengo miedo de equivocarme, de creer que él es quien he estado buscando pero que sea sólo un obstáculo entre lo que debería ser.

Trate de concentrarme y dejar de psicoanalizar a mi psicoanalista

Tengo el alma en su sitio, quiero ir más allá.

...no tener que esperar a dormir para comenzar a vivir.

Así como tu me llamas a tus sueños, yo te llamaré a la realidad

Studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors.

Having a first child is like swallowing an intoxicating drink made of equal parts joy and terror, chased with a bucketful of transitions nobody ever tells you about.

Un día me resigné y decidí dejarlo vivir en paz. Él no me molesta a mi, yo no lo molesto a él con ridículas diademas, moñitos o ligas.

Tal vez ella tiene razón...tal vez apareció en mi vida para que la salvara

What are words if you really don't mean them when you say them?

...podría estar con una chica más linda, más atractiva y femenina, sobretodo...alguien que estuviera consciente, que pudiera disfrutar del mundo real a su lado.

As Melvin Thompson screamed, he saw his life flash before his eyes. He was disappointed it was not a good life. Nothing good ever seemed to happen to him.

It seemed time flies when you aren’t having fun.

The unknown scares man, but those who confront it, will cease to fear it" (Rodolfo Rios Medina)

Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he forged for Medina, which - grounded as it was in the Quranic injunction, "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) - is arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human history.

...¡Querer que yo no la vea!¡Querer que no me le acerque, es pedir al pájaro que no cante, al sol que no alumbre, a la mariposa que no busque la luz, a los ojos que no vean, al corazón que no ame, al alma que no sienta, a mí, que no sea humano!

Es importante tener un cómplice. No es indispensable, pero parece buena idea contar con alguien que también provenga de aquel lugar. Ojos que conocieron la misma guerra, que perdieron la misma patria.

He could have been invisible and it wouldn’t have made a difference to them. He didn’t care, so long as he felt at ease, which was his original intention. He wasn’t there to make friends, nor did he want to.

You know where this Yaqui girl is going to be in a few years if she doesn't change? She'll still be there, same as always in her old neighborhood--a nobody with nothing. And guess what? That's her worst fear.

It happened so fast. No one had time to do anything, but watch.

¿Para qué quieres soñar con algo que no es real? ¡Vive tu vida y ya! Necesitas olvidarte de Leila, pero necesitas olvidarla conscientemente, no mientras duermes.

No es que no quiera olvidar a Leila, es que quiero conocer a Sarah

No temas, mi amor; primero dejaré de existir antes de amarte.

Sin haberse dado cuenta, el exchimuelo me había proporcionado información valiosa

Prefiero estar bajo la supervisión de Dios, y ser moldeada aunque duela; que estar bajo el pie del enemigo y sentir que no valgo nada

There is nothing wrong with being weird. Anyone who tells you different is only trying to be normal, which is too weird for me.

Emotionally charged events are better remembered—for longer, and with more accuracy—than neutral events.

The most common communication mistakes? Relating too much information, with not enough time devoted to connecting the dots.

Your soul will find me.. and when it does, I will make love to it in a way that no one will understand.

The problem in today’s economy is that people are typically starting a family at the very time they are also supposed to be doing their best work. They are trying to be productive at some of the most stressful times of their lives. What if companies took this unhappy collision of life events seriously? They could offer Gottman’s intervention as a benefit for every newly married, or newly pregnant, employee.

We know Jesus taught that if someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to the left. We know that Mohammed was sacked from his village and stoned at Ta'if, but he quietly left for Medina. If both of these men, beaten, and bloodied—the incarnations of their respective faiths—asked God to forgive their aggressors, then who were today's religious leaders to advocate holy war?

How People Learn. If you want people to be able to pay attention, don’t start with details. Start with the key ideas and, in a hierarchical fashion, form the details around these larger notions. Meaning before details.

He looked upwards at the brilliant blue sky. It was high noon because the sun was right overhead. The clouds danced around slowly, while drifting across the sky. He closed his eyes and felt the warmth of the sun glowing orange on his eyelids. It was a wonderful feeling.

When I write now, I pretend I'm holding hands with the old me. I try to make sense of all those questions for her...

Cuando visito a un doctor de la vista mi carta de presentación es: "¡Hola! Y no...no tengo glaucoma. Mi nervio óptico mide el doble de lo normal

Trying to forge my own destiny had nearly destroyed me, but his love held the power to heal.

We are never alone God will always be with us.

We are trained fighting machines. Peace is not an option for us. We’re jarheads. What the hell do we know about peace?

(preschoolers demand some form of attention 180 times per hour, behavioral psychologists say),

He began to feel overwhelmingly guilty for still being alive, while others continued to die around him.

Whatever happens, I’m glad we met. You’ve made the past few days more bearable for me. Thank you.

Alonso ha de ser tuyo; que serás dichosa espero con hombre que es en Castilla "la gala de Medina, la flor de Olmedo.

People view their own behaviors as originating from amendable, situational constraints,but they view other people's behavior as originating from inherent, immutable personality traits.

The Prophet once said to his Companions, “Do you want to see a man of Paradise?” A man then passed by, and the Prophet said, “That man is of the people of Paradise.” One of Companion of the Prophet wanted to find out what it was about this man that earned him such a commendation from the Messenger of God , so he decided to spend some time with this man and observe him closely. He noticed that this man did not perform the night prayer vigil (tahajjud) or do anything extraordinary. He appeared to be an average man of Medina. The Companion finally told the man what the Prophet had said about him and asked if he did anything special. The man replied, “The only thing that I can think of, other than what everybody else does, is that I make sure that I never sleep with any rancor in my heart towards another.” That was his secret.

There are four nutrients you will want in your behavioral formula, adjusting them as your baby gets older: breast-feeding, talking to your baby, guided play, and praising effort rather than accomplishment. Brain research tells us there are also several toxins: pushing your child to perform tasks his brain is not developmentally ready to take on; stressing your child to the point of a psychological state termed “learned helplessness”; and, for the under-2 set, television.

When I look up, I’m surprised to find myself in front of the old building. My feet must have gone on autopilot. I’m like one of those African elephants that finds her way home, no matter how far she’s roamed.

The brain appears to be designed to (1) solve problems (2) related to surviving (3) in an unstable outdoor environment, and (4) to do so in nearly constant motion. I call this the brain’s performance envelope.

How can you say bad things about someone you don’t know?” I shout. “How can you hate a stranger? Why do you have to pick on people?” she’s not better than Yaqui. It’s like everywhere there’s a bully in my face.

Medina is shorter and not as physically gifted as Susan, but she has this intangible something that drives men crazy. Her tangible isn’t bad either- she’s five feet five inches of brown skin and killer curves, and those brown eyes of hers could charm cash from a miser. Help me, Jesus. Nate Carter in Long Term, from The Soul Of A Man

La vida tiene varias dimensiones pero estamos condenados a elegir e ignorar las demás. Estamos condenados a sentir que, por bien que estemos, nuestra elección fue incorrecta. Estamos condenados a vivir con alguien mientras deseamos día tras día a otros. Estamos condenados a mentir, a dar besos fríos, a seguir dando golpes en la oscuridad fingiendo una pasión que se fue hace años. ¿Por qué lo hacemos? El miedo a aceptar el fracaso podría ser una de las razones.

I am frightened, too,' he says. 'We all are. But we are the Suarez family, Merci. We are strong enough to face this together.

- Darío - El protector

¿qué pasaría con la fortuna del padre de Leila, en caso de que ella no estuviera ni viva ni muerta?

Para mí, el mundo era él.

The more parents talk to their children, even in the earliest moments of life, the better their kids’ linguistic abilities become

It’s so quiet and peaceful here. Good place to die.

If ever there was a more perfect picture of love, it was the silhouette of this couple standing at the window with the full moon behind them in a star filled sky.

Why is it that people never listen when someone is trying to warn them? Why must people learn the hard way?

The more you exercise, the more tissues you can feed and the more toxic waste you can remove.

I wish I were a bird. I’d fly all the way up to the clouds and look down on this place, and then I’d go far away and never come back.

Nothing ends. There is only transformation, ugly as it may be.

To put it bluntly, research shows that we can’t multitask. We are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously.

Repeat to remember.

I promise I won’t let anything happen to either of you. Not while I’m still breathing.

By the time she awoke she couldn’t even remember if she had a dream or a nightmare. There had only been a deathlike peace.

Being the Novelist-in-Residence at a riad hotel in the kasbah of an Arabic North African city is a lot like trying to write one’s memoirs on shreds of napkins in a nuthouse.

Cruz has never been my favorite person, I'll give you that. But an enemy? There's no sense i having those if we can help it" -Papi

...popular is even weirder. Turns out, it's not the same thing as having friends at all" -Merci

After years of investigating aging populations, researchers’ answer to the question of how much is not much. If all you do is walk several times a week, your brain will benefit. Even

The jealous and the foolish ones thought that they won after Prophet Muhammad [S.A.W.] had gone from Mecca to Medina! In history, they are only known as the evil conspirators but Hazrat Muhammad [S.A.W.] is the last prophet and the greatest human being!

I don't know what is going to happen next year, no one does. But that's OK. I can handle it, I decide. It's just a harder gear, and I am ready. All I have to do is take a deep breath and ride.

I have identified five precepts central to the faith that have made it resistant to historical change and adaptation. Only when these five things are recognized as inherently harmful and when they are repudiated and nullified will a true Muslim Reformation have been achieved. The five things to be reformed are: 1. Muhammad’s semi-divine and infallible status along with the literalist reading of the Qur’an, particularly those parts that were revealed in Medina; 2. The investment in life after death instead of life before death; 3. Sharia, the body of legislation derived from the Qur’an, the hadith, and the rest of Islamic jurisprudence; 4. The practice of empowering individuals to enforce Islamic law by commanding right and forbidding wrong; 5. The imperative to wage jihad, or holy war.

Arabia would not exert political power again for more than a thousand years, until the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect emerged from the central highlands in the eighteenth century to carry out violent raids against Shia shrines in Iraq and even against the holy places of Mecca and Medina.

As I stood in front of the mirror in the beautiful little black dress, I knew that I was looking at a woman whom I would never see again. I wished I had never seen her in the first place, but the truth is she had always been there. I was being dishonest to myself by pretending that she hadn't.

He blamed television, movies, and books for his love of ghosts. It was a fascination that’s been with him since his youth. He always loved watching or reading anything that had to do with ghosts and haunted locations, especially historic sites like New Orleans, Salem, Tombstone, Gettysburg, and Old San Juan.

The abode of the Midianites is to be looked for near the place where the city of Medina is today. This name Medina may likely be a remnant of the habitation of the Midianites there. The identification of Midian and Medina may be further substantiated by the name of the Midianite priest, Jethro. The old Arabian name of Medina is Yathrib.

I can tell within a glance if someone hates me. Sometimes it only takes one word. Other times, it’s those subtle nonverbal cues – a shift of the eyes or arms folded over a chest in an attempt to hide all of that hate inside that’s dying to bore through their chest and grip mine until I choke or die. Nico Medina is subtle about it. It’s the way he doesn’t look at me, and how he breathes when I speak – the sound of air filling his chest so heavy I think it may just turn into fire and come back at me in flames.

In early 2002, as part of a new personal ritual, he took time after the holidays to think and read. (In this respect, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who also took such annual think weeks, served as a positive example.) Returning to the company after a few weeks, Bezos presented his next big idea to the S Team in the basement of his Medina, Washington, home. The entire company, he said, would restructure itself around what he called “two-pizza teams.” Employees would be organized into autonomous groups of fewer than ten people—small enough that, when working late, the team members could be fed with two pizza pies. These teams would be independently set loose on Amazon’s biggest problems.

Muhammad was gentle and flexible when he recognized sometimes that a greater good might be accomplished by releasing someone from a vow. When a young man happened to tell him that his pledge to emigrate with him (presumably to Medina) had made his parents cry, he humanely said: “Go back to them, and make them smile just as you had made them weep.

Over the long term, however, too much adrenaline produces scarring on the insides of your blood vessels. These scars become magnets for molecules to accumulate, creating lumps called plaques. These can grow large enough to block the blood vessels. If it happens in the blood vessels of your heart, you get a heart attack; in your brain, you get a stroke.

This hell on earth is unlike anything that’s ever taken place. Who knows when it will end, or if it ever will? We might all be in for a lot of pain in the near future, so we need to be strong and we need to stick together. There’s no telling how bad things will get.

She eyed him up and down, and then bit her bottom lip hungrily.

It did not take too long before his high hopes died and were replaced by hopes of being high, as depression got the better of him.

First of all, moron. You don’t know me. So, don’t act like you do.

Al-Lah alone decides whether we live or die. The rest is vanity.

If Fran Lebowitz and Ian Fleming had blessed the world with a love child it would have been author J. Fields Jr.

A lifetime of exercise can result in a sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance, compared with those who are sedentary.

We cant change who we are, but we can change the way we do things.

Hasta que aprendiera a controlarme a mí misma, no sería capaz de controlar mi destino

It was like I was suffocating in everything that was Liam.

This was the quiet before the storm and I was in the path of destruction.

La fe y el amor son el conjunto perfecto para recibir el abrazo de Dios diariamente en nuestras vidas

Though we have been stuffing them into classrooms and cubicles for decades, our brains actually were built to survive in jungles and grasslands. We have not outgrown this.

There are two ways to beat the cruelty of a harsh environment: You can become stronger or you can become smarter.

I don’t do Facebook.

Cuando una persona tiene ansiedad, pierde la relación de la velocidad de lo que piensa con la velocidad de las cosas que suceden alrededor.

He closed his eyes and wanted to cry, as the reality of his situation set in.

WE DO NOT SEE with our eyes. We see with our brains.

I know you are not perfect. Neither am I, but you are perfect for me.

When the brain is fully working, it uses more energy per unit of tissue weight than a fully exercising quadricep.

(mi superyó dice que si cometo esa estupidez se mudará a otra mente)

Approach everything with a careful tongue. - Elder God from The Thousand Years War

One of the greatest predictors of performance in school turns out to be the emotional stability of the home.

Kids come into the world before their brains are fully developed. The result? Parenthood.

There’s one last reason why none of us ever tries to escape. There are a few of us who just don’t have anywhere else to go.

So, Ray... you seem like a cool cat,” she said. “Are you into alternative lifestyle parties?

He really didn’t care, but he tried to pretend he did.

It was too late to think about what could have been or what should have been. What’s done is done. The past was in the past and there was no changing it.

Stress hormones can do some truly nasty things to your brain if boatloads of the stuff are given free access to your central nervous system.

The mammalian brain's functions include what researchers call the "four F's": fighting, feeding, feeling and ... reproductive behavior.

They held each other tight and cried, while a dozen infected took turns tearing into their warm flesh.

He had the look of death in his eyes.

Tenía en mis manos la posibilidad de vivir la vida que yo deseaba; no luchando ni huyendo, sino recurriendo a mi ingenio.

Maybe we only tell our scary secrets when we have no choice.

In Larry’s experience anything that seemed too good to be true was usually coated with lies and deceit.

He wasn’t sure if it was because of the full moon, but he could tell this was no ordinary night. He could feel it in his gut and he was ready for anything. Of course, he would not be ready for what he was about to experience. How could anyone be ready for this madness?

It was Ma who first noticed my body changing, but she wasn't exactly tactful about my getting cuerpo. "Put on a bra already, Piddy," she said after she noticed a man on the bus gawking at my chest one day. "You can't go around with two loose onions in your shirt for all the boys to stare at," she snapped, like it was my fault that the man had helped himself to the show.

I’ve been thinking lately that growing up is like walking through glass doors that only open one way — you can see where you came from but can’t go back. That’s how it is for me, anyway.

I wish I had something reassuring to tell you, but I don’t. It’s not safe out there. People are rioting and looting. There’s no telling what could happen to you, if you went out there. We need to play this safe.

Now utter (this supplication, and then prepare yourself to migrate to Medina), “My Lord!  Let my entrance be an honest entrance, let my exit be an honest exit, and bestow upon me power from You to help me.” [80] 

Jill was born into an inner-city home. Her father began having sex with Jill and her sister during their preschool years. Her mother was institutionalized twice because of what used to be termed “nervous breakdowns.” When Jill was 7 years old, her agitated dad called a family meeting in the living room. In front of the whole clan, he put a handgun to his head, said, “You drove me to this,” and then blew his brains out. The mother’s mental condition continued to deteriorate, and she revolved in and out of mental hospitals for years. When Mom was home, she would beat Jill. Beginning in her early teens, Jill was forced to work outside the home to help make ends meet. As Jill got older, we would have expected to see deep psychiatric scars, severe emotional damage, drugs, maybe even a pregnancy or two. Instead, Jill developed into a charming and quite popular young woman at school. She became a talented singer, an honor student, and president of her high-school class. By every measure, she was emotionally well-adjusted and seemingly unscathed by the awful circumstances of her childhood. Her story, published in a leading psychiatric journal, illustrates the unevenness of the human response to stress. Psychiatrists long have observed that some people are more tolerant of stress than others.

As C.S. Lewis observed in The Silver Chair, one book in the Chronicles of Narnia series: “Crying is all right in its own way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.

Per un pò ci ho provato, ma sai bene che quando l'amore si spegne è più freddo della morte. Il problema è che le due parti in causa non si spengono contemporaneamente e quando sei la parte ancora accesa preferiresti essere morto.

I want him to tell me that he still loves me. That he can't imagine life without me, the way I can't imagine my life without him. But he doesn't. And he won't. Because he's Finn. And Finn doesn't need anybody. And Finn doesn't beg.

The number of his wives is uncertain. Abulfeda, who writes with more caution than other of the Arabian historians, limits it to fifteen, though some make it as much as twenty-five. At the time of his death he had nine, each in her separate dwelling, and all in the vicinity of the mosque at Medina. The plea alleged for his indulging in a greater number of wives than he permitted to his followers, was a desire to beget a race of prophets for his people. If such indeed were his desire, it was disappointed. Of all his children, Fatima the wife of Ali alone survived him, and she died within a short time after his death. Of her descendants, none excepting her eldest son Hassan ever sat on the throne of the Caliphs.

Ansar is an Arabic term that means helpers or supporters. They were the citizens of Medina who helped Prophet Mohammed upon His arrival to the Holy city. While 'Hussain' is a derivation of 'Hassan' that means 'GOOD' (I also owe this one to Khaled Hosseini). That's how my favorite character in my debut novel 'When Strangers meet..' gets his name... HUSSAIN ANSARI, because he is the one who helps Jai realize the truth in the story and inspires his son, Arshad, to have FAITH in Allah.

Today, Medina is simultaneously the archetype of Islamic democracy and the impetus for Islamic militancy. Islamic Modernists like the Egyptian writer and political philosopher Ali Abd ar-Raziq (d. 1966) pointed to Muhammad’s community in Medina as proof that Islam advocated the separation of religious and temporal power, while Muslim extremists in Afghanistan and Iran have used the same community to fashion various models of Islamic theocracy. In their struggle for equal rights, Muslim feminists have consistently drawn inspiration from the legal reforms Muhammad instituted in Medina, while at the same time, Muslim traditionalists have construed those same legal reforms as grounds for maintaining the subjugation of women in Islamic society. For some, Muhammad’s actions in Medina serve as the model for Muslim-Jewish relations; for others, they demonstrate the insurmountable conflict that has always existed, and will always exist, between the two sons of Abraham. Yet regardless of whether one is labeled a Modernist or a Traditionalist, a reformist or a fundamentalist, a feminist or a chauvinist, all Muslims regard Medina as the model of Islamic perfection. Simply put, Medina is what Islam was meant to be.

Una vez que se secan las lágrimas, los ojos parecen listos para mirarlo todo distinto, como si fuera la primera vez. No hay primeras veces. Tan sólo la repetición infinita del mismo episodio incomprensible. Con lágrimas no se forman ríos, sino pantanos.

You see death is a tool to degrade and destroy people, I see it as a life lesson that I use to empower myself and I remind myself that the dead are still alive. However, only the ones who are good, not evil pieces of shit like you will enjoy peace of mind

Running away has been futile. Wherever I went life would be the same. Resisting my chains only seem to tighten them. Yet all around me women found ways to slip those bonds, to discreetly flout the rules and then return to their so-called captivity before anyone noticed.

Christianity was found in places, notably in Yemen, and among the Arab tribes in the north under Byzantine rule; Judaism too was practised in Yemen, and in and around Yathrib, later renamed Madina (Medina), but the vast majority of the population of Arabia were polytheists.

He tensed up at the thought of going back to work. Avoid stressful thoughts, he reminded himself. There was no need to rush his vacation thinking about such foul things as coming back home or going back to work. The vacation had only just begun and it was going to be a good one.

First, it is a commitment to particularism, to giving priority to the specificity of particulars, not to abstractions and generalities that divert our attention away from concrete realities. Idealizations tend to be partial and distorting, obscuring the heterogeneity and complexity of actual experiences and concrete practices, which is why they do not provide an adequate standpoint for the diagnosis of social problems and injustices.

We have welcomed fundamentalist preachers into our cities and stood idly by as thousands of disaffected young people have been radicalized by their rantings. Worse, we have made almost not attempt to counter the proselytizing of the Medina Muslims. If we continue this policy of nonintervention in the culture war, we will never extricate ourselves from the actual battlefield. For we cannot fight an ideology solely with air strikes and drones or even boots on the ground. We need to fight it with ideas – with better ideas, with positive ideas. We need to fight it with an alternative vision.

Surprised huh, thought you had me back in prison didn’t you? To answer your question what keeps me alive is my drive, my drive to kill you! I have nothing, but hate for you and your family. It will be my pleasure taking you out. I don’t care about power, plutonium or even being rich. None of that matters to me. I only care about taking you out. Even if I die I want to be the one who is called the killer of Angel Medina! There’s no where for you to go. Now we will truly see who is better! Come on put up you hands and prepare for your final battle of your life! - Orlando from Framed: The Second Book of the Thousand Years War

Sometimes we must walk the same path together, but we must always remember that we are also walking our own paths alone. At some point the path we share will divide. We must continue on our separate paths. Think fondly of the time we shared, as we continue on our own paths. And it is true that paths may often cross more than once, but they will always split at some point. Our main focus must be to reach the end of our own path and to become masters of our own destinies.

She beckoned for him to come closer and he did. He crawled onto the bed from the bottom and worked his way up to her legs. His hands caressed the smoothness of her recently shaven legs. She moaned at his touch. He hovered over her and she pulled him closer. Their lips met, once more, and, somehow, it was even better than before.

Many families actively discourage the expression of tough emotions like fear and anger. Happiness and tranquility, meanwhile, make it to the top of the list of “approved” emotions. There is no such thing as a bad emotion. There is no such thing as a good emotion. An emotion is either there—or it is not. These parents seem to know that emotions don’t make people weak and they don’t make people strong. They only make people human. The result is a savvy let-the-children-be-who-they-are attitude. -They do not judge emotions. -They acknowledge the reflexive nature of emotions. -They know that behavior is a choice, even though an emotion is not. -They see a crisis as a teachable moment.

Alas! We really do not choose the ending of a journey, especially journeys that transforn1 our lives. For women, security would never return to the city. No more than dreams, can a journey back in time change the fact that the Medina of women would be forever frozen in its violent posture. From then on, women would have to walk the streets of uncaring, unsafe cities, ever watchful, wrapped in their hijab. The veil, which was intended to protect them from violence in the street, would accompany them for centuries, whatever the security situation of the city. For them, peace would never return. Muslim women were to display their hijab everywhere, the vestige of a civil war that would never come to an end.

There was never a vote and no one really called him the leader, but everyone knew it and accepted it. They often looked to him for answers. It was just the way things were.

This was, by far, the absolute worst weekend in his life.

Mami says feelings are tricky, because sometimes they get disguised.

He had nothing to offer and frankly nothing to lose. He was dying.

Before he realized it, he had smoked away the next five years of his life. Nothing else mattered to him, but his next fix.

Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. —Anonymous

The whole building was probably listening in on her escandalo through the pipes; maybe even the whole block could hear. That tells you how mad she was, because if there’s one thing Ma hates, it’s looking low. The worst thing you can be is a chusma. She thinks we get a bad rap as Latinos, which she’s always trying to undo by being extra quiet and polite all the time.

Charles never felt more helpless. To hear a cop calling for help and not be able to respond in what may very well be a life and death situation, drove him insane with anger and frustration.

The Prophet ﷺ said, “The most beloved people to Allah are those who are most beneficial to the people. The most beloved deed to Allah is to make a Muslim happy, or to remove one of his troubles, or to forgive his debt, or to feed his hunger. That I walk with a brother regarding a need is more beloved to me than that I seclude myself in this mosque in Medina for a month. Whoever swallows his anger, then Allah will conceal his faults. Whoever suppresses his rage, even though he could fulfill his anger if he wished, then Allah will secure his heart on the Day of Resurrection. Whoever walks with his brother regarding a need until he secures it for him, then Allah the Exalted will make his footing firm across the bridge on the day when the footings are shaken.”19

I know you and Roli are smart enough to be here — more than smart enough. But we don’t pay for tuition like most of the other families. So the value you add to the school has to come from you, because it’s not coming from our wallets.” “That’s not fair,” I say. “Maybe not. But I still think it’s worth it. Your education will open doors later, Merci, believe me. I just don’t want you to blow it.

For a while she cried silently until she tired herself out and the overwhelming feeling of sleepiness overcame her. The room around her was fairly silent, although she wasn’t the only one crying herself to sleep. It was quite common at places like this to hear cries in the dark. There were so many saddened and lonesome souls around her. It was usually at night when they were reminded of just how sad and lonely they actually were.

mothers suffered from major nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. When the children reached school age, 21 percent scored 130 or more points on a standard IQ test, a level considered gifted. If their mothers had no morning sickness, only 7 percent of kids did that well. The researchers have a theory—still to be proven—about why. Two hormones that stimulate a woman to vomit may also act like neural fertilizer for the developing brain.

As always, there are exceptions. Adults with training can still learn to distinguish speech sounds in other languages. But in general, the brain appears to have a limited window of opportunity in an astonishingly early time frame. The cognitive door begins swinging shut at 6 months old, and then, unless something pushes against it, the door closes. By 12 months, your baby’s brain has made decisions that affect her the rest of her life.

If A Tree Could Wander Oh, if a tree could wander and move with foot and wings! It would not suffer the axe blows and not the pain of saws! For would the sun not wander away in every night ? How could at ev'ry morning the world be lighted up? And if the ocean's water would not rise to the sky, How would the plants be quickened by streams and gentle rain? The drop that left its homeland, the sea, and then returned ? It found an oyster waiting and grew into a pearl. Did Yusaf not leave his father, in grief and tears and despair? Did he not, by such a journey, gain kingdom and fortune wide? Did not the Prophet travel to far Medina, friend? And there he found a new kingdom and ruled a hundred lands. You lack a foot to travel? Then journey into yourself! And like a mine of rubies receive the sunbeams? print! Out of yourself ? such a journey will lead you to your self, It leads to transformation of dust into pure gold!

Please, be sure to display your stickers, so that I won’t misplace any of you. I lost a few people, while crossing the street, during the last tour. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but apparently, the boss frowns upon that sort of thing.

Ma pulls me to her and hugs me so tight and for so long that I can feel her heart beating in her throat. It’s so pure that it takes my breath away. It’s as if she’s pressing all her strength through my skin and into the marrow of my bones.

Is there something to the notion "Let me sleep on it."? Mountains of data says there is. For example, Mendeleyev - the creator of the Periodic Table of Elements - says that he came up with this idea in his sleep. Contemplating the nature of the universe while playing Solitaire one evening, he nodded off. When he awoke, he knew how all the atoms in the universe were organised, and he promptly created his famous table. Interestingly, he organised the atoms in repeating groups of seven, just the way you play Solitaire.

It’s complete madness! There are cars on fire, shops being looted by teenagers, people rioting and protesting over something they have no control over. And these are people that haven’t even had to deal with the infected, yet! They’re destroying their neighborhoods like savages, instead of preparing for the hell that’s about to hit them like a tsunami! Mark my words, when the infection reaches this area, they are all going to be infected within the first hour because they are not prepared to defend themselves. They are too busy being stupid!

Ethan’s parents constantly told him how brainy he was. “You’re so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan’s accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this “appealing to fixed mindsets.” The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic. 　　Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn’t know the ingredients making him successful, he didn’t know what to do when he failed. You don’t have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed. What happens when you say, ‘You’re so smart’ 　　Research shows that Ethan’s unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are statistically likely to happen: 　　First, your child will begin to perceive mistakes as failures. Because you told her that success was due to some static ability over which she had no control, she will start to think of failure (such as a bad grade) as a static thing, too—now perceived as a lack of ability. Successes are thought of as gifts rather than the governable product of effort. 　　Second, perhaps as a reaction to the first, she will become more concerned with looking smart than with actually learning something. (Though Ethan was intelligent, he was more preoccupied with breezing through and appearing smart to the people who mattered to him. He developed little regard for learning.) 　　Third, she will be less willing to confront the reasons behind any deficiencies, less willing to make an effort. Such kids have a difficult time admitting errors. There is simply too much at stake for failure. 　　  　　What to say instead: ‘You really worked hard’ 　　What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research shows a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.

Every American should own a Koran. There are no excuses. Every day you can switch on the television or the radio or open a newspaper and hear or read pronouncements about what Islam is and“what the Koran says. Most of it is wrong—very wrong. You owe it to yourself, your family, and all the Americans killed on 9/11 and since to know the truth. Do not take anyone’s word for it. Find out for yourself by reading the actual Koran. One of the most reliable and recognized versions is the The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. Once you have a Koran and start to read it, take care to note the enormous differences between the half reportedly communicated to Mohammed in the beginning in Mecca, when he was weak and without followers, and the latter half, allegedly written after he returned from Medina with thousands of followers, the leader of a mighty military force. It is the post-Medina chapters of the Koran that are naturally favored by groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. They are not in fact perverting religious texts but skillfully applying those alleged revelations that best support their cause.

Are you a lark, an owl or a hummingbird? Lark, also called early chronotype, is someone who does usually wake up very early. They are most active during morning around 6:00 am. Approximately 10% of people are larks. Owl, also called late chronotype, is someome who does usually wake up very late. They are most active in the evening around 6:00 pm. They usually drink a lot of coffee and accumulate a massive sleep debt as they go through life. Approximately 10% of people are owls. The rest, around 80% of people, are hummingbirds. Some hummingbirds are more larkish, some more owlish and some are in between.

Write this across your heart before your child comes into the world: Parenting is a not a race. Kids are not proxies for adult success. Competition can be inspiring, but brands of it can wire your child’s brain in a toxic way. Comparing your kids with your friends’ kids will not get them, or you, where you want to go.

He still had not realized there was no coming back from this mess. He was hopeful they would persevere, no matter how long it took. In the meantime, there was no time to think inside the lines anymore. They had to break some rules, if they were going to survive the night. It was all out war on the infected. No holds barred.

But as a Puerto Rican woman, she belonged to not one but two minority groups. New research suggests that her double minority status may have amplified the costs and the benefits of speaking up. Management researcher Ashleigh Rosette, who is African American, noticed that she was treated differently when she led assertively than were both white women and black men. Working with colleagues, she found that double minority group members faced double jeopardy. When black women failed, they were evaluated much more harshly than black men and white leaders of both sexes. They didn’t fit the stereotype of leaders as black or as female, and they shouldered an unfair share of the blame for mistakes. For double minorities, Rosette’s team pointed out, failure is not an option. Interestingly, though, Rosette and her colleagues found that when black women acted dominantly, they didn’t face the same penalties as white women and black men. As double minorities, black women defy categories. Because people don’t know which stereotypes to apply to them, they have greater flexibility to act “black” or “female” without violating stereotypes. But this only holds true when there’s clear evidence of their competence. For minority-group members, it’s particularly important to earn status before exercising power. By quietly advancing the agenda of putting intelligence online as part of her job, Carmen Medina was able to build up successes without attracting too much attention. “I was able to fly under the radar,” she says. “Nobody really noticed what I was doing, and I was making headway by iterating to make us more of a publish-when-ready organization. It was almost like a backyard experiment. I pretty much proceeded unfettered.” Once Medina had accumulated enough wins, she started speaking up again—and this time, people were ready to listen. Rosette has discovered that when women climb to the top and it’s clear that they’re in the driver’s seat, people recognize that since they’ve overcome prejudice and double standards, they must be unusually motivated and talented. But what happens when voice falls on deaf ears?

«Non verrò», tagliai corto con il mio solito sorriso tagliente. Prese un respiro profondo e, con le mani sulle ginocchia, si piegò in avanti. Le iridi violacee sembrarono sporgersi dalle occhiaie infossate e, per qualche secondo, andò in cerca dei miei pensieri oltre il mio sguardo. «Perché non vuoi? La vita che ti stai costruendo è molto riduttiva per uno che possiede le tue capacità». «Capacità? Togliere o donare l’ossigeno alle persone è una capacità?». «Hai ragione, mi correggo. Diciamo piuttosto una proprietà.» «Certo, ora detta così sembra meno orribile», tossii una risata, «non tentare di parlare di chimica con me, Medina, non ne ho mai voluto sapere e mai ne vorrò. Per me, queste “proprietà” sono solo una maledizione». «Maledizione», valutò la parola a occhi chiusi per poi far esplodere il suo pensiero in un colpo: «Tu sei diverso, Andrea! Diverso come lo sono io. Hai passato la tua intera vita avendone paura e quando si ha paura di essere diversi, si rischia di diventare come tutti gli altri». «Non sono diverso. Voglio essere me stesso». «Allora incomincia da oggi. Vieni con noi». «Me stesso… » dissi, sedendomi di peso sul divano e stappando la vodka, «con la mia dose giornaliera di alcol e nicotina». Cesare Medina incurvò un sopracciglio e un sorriso sornione scattò sul suo volto. «Complimenti, vedo che non ci lasci altra scelta». «Smettila di parlare a nome di tutti, stavo per offrirti un po’ di vodka e non ne ho abbastanza per una popolazione». Annoiato, versai il liquido trasparente nel bicchiere e lo mandai giù di colpo. «Stai solo cercando di dimenticare chi sei in questo modo».

Three researchers at Stanford University noticed the same thing about the undergraduates they were teaching, and they decided to study it. First, they noticed that while all the students seemed to use digital devices incessantly, not all students did. True to stereotype, some kids were zombified, hyperdigital users. But some kids used their devices in a low-key fashion: not all the time, and not with two dozen windows open simultaneously. The researchers called the first category of students Heavy Media Multitaskers. Their less frantic colleagues were called Light Media Multitaskers. If you asked heavy users to concentrate on a problem while simultaneously giving them lots of distractions, the researchers wondered, how good was their ability to maintain focus? The hypothesis: Compared to light users, the heavy users would be faster and more accurate at switching from one task to another, because they were already so used to switching between browser windows and projects and media inputs. The hypothesis was wrong. In every attentional test the researchers threw at these students, the heavy users did consistently worse than the light users. Sometimes dramatically worse. They weren’t as good at filtering out irrelevant information. They couldn’t organize their memories as well. And they did worse on every task-switching experiment. Psychologist Eyal Ophir, an author of the study, said of the heavy users: “They couldn’t help thinking about the task they weren’t doing. The high multitaskers are always drawing from all the information in front of them. They can’t keep things separate in their minds.” This is just the latest illustration of the fact that the brain cannot multitask. Even if you are a Stanford student in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Because we don’t fully understand how our brains work, we do dumb things. We try to talk on our cell phones and drive at the same time, even though it is literally impossible for our brains to multitask when it comes to paying attention. We have created high-stress office environments, even though a stressed brain is significantly less productive than a non-stressed brain. Our schools are designed so that most real learning has to occur at home. Taken together, what do the studies in this book show? Mostly this: If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over.

Affect detection. First, a person must detect a change in the emotional disposition of someone else. In the behavioral sciences, “affect” means the external expression of an emotion or mood, generally associated with an idea or an action. Kids who are autistic usually don’t get to this step; as a result, they rarely behave with empathy. • Imaginative transposition. Once a person detects an emotional change, he transposes what he observes onto his own psychological interiors. He “tries on” the perceived feelings as if they were clothes, then observes how he would react given similar circumstances. For those of you in the theater, this is the heart of Stanislavski’s Method Acting. For those of you about to have children, you have just begun to learn how to have a fair fight with them, not to mention your spouse. • Boundary formation. The person who is empathizing realizes at all times that the emotion is happening to the other person, never to the observer. Empathy is powerful, but it is also has boundaries.

　　A former fighter pilot, teaching at an aeronautics university, discovered how this works in the classroom. One of his students had been a star in ground school but was having trouble in the air. During a training flight, she misinterpreted an instrument reading, and he yelled at her, thinking it would force her to concentrate. Instead, she started crying, and though she tried to continue reading the instruments, she couldn’t focus. He landed the plane, lesson over. What was wrong? From the brain’s perspective, nothing was wrong. The student’s mind was focusing on the source of the threat, just as it had been molded to do over the past few million years. The teacher’s anger could not direct the student to the instrument to be learned because the instrument was not the source of danger. The teacher was the source of danger. This is weapons focus, merely replacing “Saturday Night Special” with “ex-fighter pilot.” 　　The same is true if you are a parenting a child rather than teaching a student. The brain will never outgrow its preoccupation with survival.

So the question arose now, as it had in the wake of the Mongol holocaust: if the triumphant expansion of the Muslim project proved the truth of the revelation, what did the impotence of Muslims in the face of these new foreigners signify about the faith? With this question looming over the Muslim world, movements to revive Islam could not be extricated from the need to resurrect Muslim power. Reformers could not merely offer proposals for achieving more authentic religions experiences. They had to expound on how the authenticity they proposed would get history back on course, how their proposals would restore the dignity and splendor of the Umma, how they would get Muslims moving again toward the proper endpoint of history: perfecting the community of justice and compassion that flourished in Medina in the original golden moment and enlarging it until it included all the world. Many reformers emerged and many movements bubbled up, but all of them can sorted into three general sorts of responses to the troubling question. One response was to say that what needed changing was not Islam, but Muslims. Innovation, alterations, and accretions had corrupted the faith, so that no one was practicing the true Islam anymore. What Muslims needed to do was to shut out Western influence and restore Islam to its pristine, original form. Another response was to say that the West was right. Muslims had gotten mired in obsolete religious ideas; they had ceded control of Islam to ignorant clerics who were out of touch with changing times; they needed to modernize their faith along Western lines by clearing out superstition, renouncing magical thinking, and rethinking Islam as an ethical system compatible with science and secular activities. A third response was to declare Islam the true religion but concede that Muslims had certain things to learn from the West. In this view, Muslims needed to rediscover and strengthen the essence of their own faith, history and traditions, but absorb Western learning in the fields of science and technology. According to this river of reform, Muslims needed to modernize but could do so in a distinctively Muslim way: science was compatible with the Muslim faith and modernization did not have to mean Westernization.