Pairs Inspirational Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Pairs Inspirational. Here they are! All 100 of them:

WATNEY: Look! A pair of boobs! -> (.Y.).
Andy Weir (The Martian)
You've been given the innate power to shape your life...but you cannot just speak change, you have to LIVE change. Intent paired with action builds the bridge to success. You can't just want it; you have to do it, live it...BE it! Success isn't something you have, it's something you DO!
Steve Maraboli
. . . if you can't see the good man he is, you need to unscrew them eyeballs of yours and try on a different pair.
Karen Witemeyer (To Win Her Heart)
Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child. Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness—even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile—reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength—to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.
Dean Koontz (From the Corner of His Eye)
My dad likes to say, ‘Life is never simple’. This is one of his favourite aphorisms. I actually think it’s incorrect. Life is often simple, but you don’t notice how simple it was until it gets incredibly complicated, like how you never feel grateful for being well until you’re ill, or how you never appreciate your tights drawer until you rip a pair and have no spares.
Beth O'Leary (The Flatshare)
There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous." (Great Thought, February 19, 1938)
Raymond Chandler (The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler; and English Summer: A Gothic Romance)
Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.
Sierra D. Waters (Debbie.)
A couple in love is like a pair of scissors. Two useless pieces of metal, until they are inextricably connected at the core so that they can move together as one and accomplish great things.
Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul: Married Life!: 101 Inspirational Stories about Fun, Family, and Wedded Bliss)
I have a special pair of poop shoes under my desk. Whenever I need to drop a deuce, I slip them on and scurry to the restroom, and no one ever knows it's me. Like, if I'm wearing Louboutins that day, and my producer sees Earth shoes in the stall....well, you get the idea. It was truly a lightbulb moment when that came to me.
Oprah Winfrey
I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty women can bestow.' Miss Bingley immediately fixated her eyes on his face, and desired he would tell her what lady had the credit of inspiring such reflections. Mr. Darcy replied: 'Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, #1))
Love, he realized, was like the daggers he made in his forge: When you first got one it was shiny and new and the blade glinted bright in the light. Holding it against your palm, you were full of optimism for what it would be like in the field, and you couldn't wait to try it out. Except those first couple of nights out were usually awkward as you got used to it and it got used to you. Over time, the steel lost its brand-new gleam, and the hilt became stained, and maybe you nicked the shit out of the thing a couple of times. What you got in return, however, saved your life: Once the pair of you were well acquainted, it became such a part of you that it was an extension of your own arm. It protected you and gave you a means to protect your brothers; it provided you with the confidnece and the power to face whatever came out of the night; and wherever you went, it stayed with you, right over your heart, always there when you needed it. You had to keep the blade up, however. And rewrap the hilt from time to time. And double-check the weight. Funny...all of that was well, duh when it came to weapons. Why hadn't it dawned on him that matings were the same? (From the thoughts of Vishous)
J.R. Ward (Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #9))
Red Rover, Red Rover, send Ardor right over," Eliza said. They laughed. The asteroid was a little bigger now, brighter, and still they went on laughing. Laughing in the face of what they couldn't predict or change or control. Would it be fire and brimstone? Would it be Armageddon? Or would it be a second chance? Eliza held tight to her friends, laughing, and a pair of hands land soft as feathers on her shoulders, like the hands of a ghost, laughing and laughing as Ardor swept along its fated course, laughing and through that laughter, praying. Praying for forgiveness. Praying for grace. Praying for mercy. 0
Tommy Wallach (We All Looked Up)
In modern times couples are more concerned about loyalty than love.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
Locking in your brand and pairing it with a coherent story is the first step to being a rainmaker.
Areva Martin (Make It Rain!: How to Use the Media to Revolutionize Your Business & Brand)
Because that happened to me when I was little, this is how I will now treat other people"; "Because so and so beat me up and hurt me a long time ago, that gives me the right to treat people the way I treat them, today"; "Because life was hard on me, life should be hard on everyone else around me"— does this sound/ look familiar? It's called victim mentality. When people choose to be the direct product of everything that happened to them, the direct product of every single pair of hands that hurt them. And the world, to these people, must bend over backwards in order to accommodate their wounds. Some people don't want to be loved; they just want to make the world pay.
C. JoyBell C.
If at eighty you're not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin' and keepin' power. If you are young in years but already weary in spirit, already on your way to becoming an automaton, it may do you good to say to your boss - under your breath, of course - "Fuck you, Jack! you don't own me." If you can whistle up your ass, if you can be turned on by a fetching bottom or a lovely pair of teats, if you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from going sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you've got it half licked.
Henry Miller (Sextet: Six essays)
Delk shifted in his chair, the arrow point never wavering. "What do you want?" "Oh, the usual.World peace, a pair of Christian Louboton heels, a perfect wedding.
MaryJanice Davidson (Undead and Uneasy (Undead, #6))
If we're open to it, God can use even the smallest thing to change our lives... to change us. It might be a laughing child, car brakes that need fixing, a sale on pot roast, a cloudless sky, a trip to the woods to cut down a Christmas tree, a school teacher, a Dunhill Billiard pipe...or even a pair of shoes. Some people will never believe. They may feel that such things are too trivial, too simple, or too insignificant to forever change a life. But I believe. And I always will.
Donna VanLiere
Like a pair of old slippers, I feel comfort and warmth as I slip into you. No, that is too crude. Like the match to the wick, I ignite when we touch. My counterpart and life's purpose. Yes, as though I've known you my whole life. Every scar, every failure has become an affirmation of what should be: You. Yes, as though I've loved you my whole life.
Kamand Kojouri
Don't use drowsy EYES to look at what Christ used a passionate BLOOD to do for you. Don't use a sluggish LEG to walk towards what Christ used a compassionate FLESH to build for you
Israelmore Ayivor
You've a soul for a compass, and a heart for a pair of wings...Why walk when you can fly?
Mary Chapin-Carpenter
How can a falling dove turn again into a flying dove once again? It really takes the eyes of someone who sees you for the beauty that you really are. And if there are no other eyes there to see you in that way, then you had better be those pair of eyes, for yourself, to see yourself with!
C. JoyBell C.
In the absence of a formally agreed, worldwide dictionary definition of 'Quotography' (in 2016), here are my two cents worth: 'Quotography is the art of pairing unique quotations with complementary images in order to express thought-provoking ideas, challenging concepts, profound sentiments'.
Alex Morritt (Lines & Lenses)
The night following the reading, Gansey woke up to a completely unfamiliar sound and fumbled for his glasses. It sounded a little like one of his roommates was being killed by a possum, or possibly the final moments of a fatal cat fight. He wasn’t certain of the specifics, but he was sure death was involved. Noah stood in the doorway to his room, his face pathetic and long-suffering. “Make it stop,” he said. Ronan’s room was sacred, and yet here Gansey was, twice in the same weak, pushing the door open. He found the lamp on and Ronan hunched on the bed, wearing only boxers. Six months before, Ronan had gotten the intricate black tattoo that covered most of his back and snaked up his neck, and now the monochromatic lines of it were stark in the claustrophobic lamplight, more real than anything else in the room. It was a peculiar tattoo, both vicious and lovely, and every time Gansey saw it, he saw something different in the pattern. Tonight, nestled in an inked glen of wicked, beautiful flowers, was a beak where before he’d seen a scythe. The ragged sound cut through the apartment again. “What fresh hell is this?” Gansey asked pleasantly. Ronan was wearing headphones as usual, so Gansey stretched forward far enough to tug them down around his neck. Music wailed faintly into the air. Ronan lifted his head. As he did, the wicked flowers on his back shifted and hid behind his sharp shoulder blades. In his lap was the half-formed raven, its head tilted back, beak agape. “I thought we were clear on what a closed door meant,” Ronan said. He held a pair of tweezers in one hand. “I thought we were clear that night was for sleeping.” Ronan shrugged. “Perhaps for you.” “Not tonight. Your pterodactyl woke me. Why is it making that sound?” In response, Ronan dipped the tweezers into a plastic baggy on the blanket in front of him. Gansey wasn’t certain he wanted to know what the gray substance was in the tweezers’ grasp. As soon as the raven heard the rustle of the bag, it made the ghastly sound again—a rasping squeal that became a gurgle as it slurped down the offering. At once, it inspired both Gansey’s compassion and his gag reflex. “Well, this is not going to do,” he said. “You’re going to have to make it stop.” “She has to be fed,” Ronan replied. The ravel gargled down another bite. This time it sounded a lot like vacuuming potato salad. “It’s only every two hours for the first six weeks.” “Can’t you keep her downstairs?” In reply, Ronan half-lifted the little bird toward him. “You tell me.
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))
One of the greatest comforts of this life is friendship; and one of the comforts of friendship is that of having someone we can trust with a secret. But friendship does not pair us off into couples, as marriage does; each of us generally has more than one friend to his name, and so a chain is formed, of which no man can see the end. When we allow ourselves the comfort of depositing a secret in the bosom of a friend, we inspire him with the wish to enjoy the same comfort for himself. It is true that we always ask him not to tell anyone else; and this is a condition which, if taken literally, would break the series of comforting confidences at once. But the general practice is to regard the obligation as one which prevents a man from passing the secret on, except to an equally trusted friend and on the same condition of silence. From trusted friend to trusted friend, the secret travels and travels along an unending chain, until it reaches the ears of the very man or men from whom the first speaker meant to keep it for ever. It would generally require a long time to get there, if each of us only had two friends—one to confide the secret to us, and another to whom we can pass it on. But there are some privileged men who have hundreds of friends, and once a secret reaches one of them, its subsequent journeys are so rapid and multitudinous that no one can keep track of them.
Alessandro Manzoni
Each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined – those dead, those living, those generations yet to come – that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.
Dean R. Koontz
You will always feel a little discomfort when you are installing a new habit. It’s sort of like breaking in a new pair of shoes—at first it’s a little hard to wear them but soon they fit like a glove. The best amongst us get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Robin Sharma (Daily Inspiration From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari)
You pounce on everything you said with a pair of tweezers and pluck it about until you can't remember exactly what it is you said, what context it was in, if you even said it, and if anyone heard you at all.
Carrie Fisher (The Princess Diarist)
The word “brotherhood" is, to be sure, a fine word, but we oughtn't to forget its ambiguity. The first pair of brothers in the history of the world were, according to the Bible, Cain and Abel, and the one murdered the other.
Pope Benedict XVI
Every journey we take requires a good pair of wellingtons because there are some thorns and puddles along the way.
Euginia Herlihy
There’s more to this amazing body than awe-inspiring abs. I have a pair of ears, too, and they happen to work superbly.
Kody Keplinger (The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend (Hamilton High, #1))
Every day, I commit to purging one item from my house. It can be anything—like a worn-out pair of socks, a book I’ll never read again, a gift I could live without, a shirt that doesn’t fit, or an old magazine article. It doesn’t take much effort, and at the end of the year, my home is at least 365 items lighter.
Francine Jay (Miss Minimalist: Inspiration to Downsize, Declutter, and Simplify)
You know, all poetry may be a cry of generalised love, for this, or that, or the universe - which must be loved in its particularity, not its generality, but for its universal life in every minute particular. I have always supposed it to be a cry of ;unsatisfied love; - and so it may be indeed - for satisfaction may surfeit it and so it may die. I know many poets who write only when in an exalted state of mind which they compare to ;being in love;,when they do not simply state, that they are in love, that they seek love - for this fresh damsel - or that lively young woman - in order to find a fresh metaphor, or a new bright vision of things in themselves. And to tell you the truth, I have always believed I could diagnose this state of ;being in love; which they regard as ;most particular;, as inspired by item, one pair of black eyes or indifferent blue, ;item;, one graceful attitude of body or mind, ;item;, one female history of some twenty-two years from, shall we say 1821-1844 – I have always believed this ;in love; to be of something of the most abstract masking itself under the particular forms of both lover and beloved. And Poet who assumes and informs both.
A.S. Byatt (Possession)
The only item that stood out was a pair of orange Crocs I bought one day when I was feeling particularly jaunty. I had a special distaste for these shoes, because I was 76 percent sure that I was dumped as a result of once wearing them.
Charles McDowell (Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story)
The Louis XIII style in perfumery, composed of the elements dear to that period - orris-powder, musk, civet and myrtle-water, already known by the name of angel-water - was scarcely adequate to express the cavalierish graces, the rather crude colours of the time which certain sonnets by Saint-Amand have preserved for us. Later on, with the aid of myrrh and frankincense, the potent and austere scents of religion, it became almost possible to render the stately pomp of the age of Louis XIV, the pleonastic artifices of classical oratory, the ample, sustained, wordy style of Bossuet and the other masters of the pulpit. Later still, the blase, sophisticated graces of French society under Louis XV found their interpreters more easily in frangipane and marechale, which offered in a way the very synthesis of the period. And then, after the indifference and incuriosity of the First Empire, which used eau-de-Cologne and rosemary to excess, perfumery followed Victor Hugo and Gautier and went for inspiration to the lands of the sun; it composed its own Oriental verses, its own highly spiced salaams, discovered intonations and audacious antitheses, sorted out and revived forgotten nuances which it complicated, subtilized and paired off, and in short resolutely repudiated the voluntary decrepitude to which it had been reduced by its Malesherbes, its Boileaus, its Andrieux, its Baour-Lormians, the vulgar distillers of its poems.
Joris-Karl Huysmans (Against Nature)
To see things as the poet sees them I must share his consciousness and not attend to it; I must look where he looks and not turn round to face him; I must make of him not a spectacle but a pair of spectacles; in fine, as Professor Alexander would say, I must enjoy him and not contemplate him.
C.S. Lewis (The Personal Heresy: A Controversy)
To a casual passerby, his appearance would not have inspired much confidence. His overcoat was patched in spots and frayed at the cuffs, he wore an old tweed suit that was missing a button, his white shirt was stained with ink and tobacco, and his tie--this was perhaps the strangest of all--was knotted not once, but twice, as if he'd forgotten whether he'd tied it and, rather than glancing down to check, had simply tied it again for good measure. His white hair poked out from beneath his hat, and his eyebrows rose from his forehead like great snowy horns, curling over a pair of bent and patched tortoiseshell glasses. All in all, he looked like someone who'd gotten dressed in the midst of a whirlwind and, thinking he still looked too presentable, had thrown himself down a flight of stairs. It was when you looked in his eyes that everything changed. Reflecting no light save their own, they shone brightly in the snow-muffled night, and there was in them a look of such uncommon energy and kindness and understanding that you forgot entirely about the tobacco and ink stains on his shirt and the patches on his glasses and that his tie was knotted twice over. You looked in them and knew that you were in the presence of true wisdom.
John Stephens (The Emerald Atlas (The Books of Beginning, #1))
All you need are a pair of tennis shoes and motivation to change the course of your life.
Heidi Bond (Who's the New Kid?: How an Ordinary Mom Helped Her Daughter Overcome Childhood Obesity-- And You Can, Too!)
When we hold-on to someone's imperfections we become emotionally pair-bonded to their maladies.
Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
On the way home, I saw a fist fight between an adverb and a pair of parentheses. I kept on walking.
Peter James West
Opportunity and risk come in pairs
Bangambiki Habyarimana (The Great Pearl of Wisdom)
When we truly understand that the tribe doesn't give a damn, we're free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us.
Steven Pressfield
Temptation bundling is one way to make your habits more attractive. The strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
I love the idea of a home in our hearts. A sanctuary of love and peace right in the center of our being. A place of inner beauty, inner peace, inner healing, inner rest, and so much more. A simple and quiet life can be a beautiful one when it’s paired with an abundant and cavernous inner world. And when Jesus is dwelling there in spirit, it’s certainly a place worth coming home to.
Rachel Braunscheidel (The Heart-Home Builder: Cultivating an Inner Sanctuary with Christ amid Life’s Difficulties)
HIGGINS. It's all you'll get until you stop being a common idiot. If you're going to be a lady, you'll have to give up feeling neglected if the men you know don't spend half their time snivelling over you and the other half giving you black eyes. If you can't stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work til you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and squabble and drink til you fall asleep. Oh, it's a fine life, the life of the gutter. It's real: it's warm: it's violent: you can feel it through the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any training or any work. Not like Science and Literature and Classical Music and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, don't you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like. Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you can't appreciate what you've got, you'd better get what you can appreciate.
George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion)
When I was a kid growing up in the country, my dad taught me that the best way to carry something heavy is to carry something equally heavy in the other hand. From personal experience, this applies to buckets of water, overstuffed suitcases, concrete blocks, grocery bags filled with large cans of Spaghetti-Os, and dense emotions. Decades later, I remain a distracted and forgetful student of balance. Gratitude and sorrow aren't, as I once believed, mutually exclusive. They pair quite well together, one in each hand. It can be easy to ebb into the dark seas of sadness, staring too long at grief and disunity. The trick is to keep filling the other bucket.
Shannan Martin (The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God's Goodness Around You)
I Used to think that I knew everything, I was alone. My heart was empty, a single soul experience of life. When I discovered in a pair of eyes, a light reflection of mine, I found my mate, my match, my soul.” Katia M. S.
Katia M. S.
When people can't handle your light, it's because they haven't yet discovered their own, and you are a reminder of that. Don't take it personal, and don't shrink or hide. Either they will choose to shine or grab a pair of shades.
Catrice M. Jackson
It is from this beautiful, feral place that we are able to respond to the breath of inspiration that summons us to the fullness of our creativity. Full, because we are cognizant that we are not a lone pair of hands or a single voice, that we do not create in isolation but bring our gift, the art of our lives, to one another, to the earth. We each touch the seven starlings closest to us in our own mumuration, and the ripple spreads faster than we could have imagined. .
Lyanda Lynn Haupt (Mozart's Starling)
His intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors act intelligent, but Philip was the real thing: a shining, artistic polymath with an intelligence that came at you like a pair of headlights and enveloped you from the moment he grabbed your hand, put a huge arm round your neck and shoved a cheek against yours; or if the mood took him, hugged you to him like a big, pudgy schoolboy, then stood and beamed at you while he took stock of the effect. (About Philip Seymour Hoffman)
John Le Carré
Much will have been gained for aesthetics once we have succeeded in apprehending directly — rather than merely ascertaining — that art owes its continuous evolution to the Apollinian-Dionysian duality, even as the propagation of the species depends on the duality of the sexes, their constant conflicts and periodic acts of reconciliation. I have borrowed my adjectives from the Greeks, who developed their mystical doctrines of art through plausible embodiments, not through purely conceptual means. It is by those two art sponsoring deities, Apollo and Dionysus, that we are made to recognize the tremendous split, as regards both origins and objectives, between the plastic, Apollinian arts and the nonvisual art of music inspired by Dionysus. The two creative tendencies developed alongside one another, usually in fierce opposition, each by its taunts forcing the other to more energetic production, both perpetuating in a discordant concord that agon which the term art but feebly denominates: until at last, by the thaumaturgy of an Hellenic act of will, the pair accepted the yoke of marriage and, in this condition, begot Attic tragedy, which exhibits the salient features of both parents.
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy)
Watanabe-san and Sadie exchanged gifts. She brought him a pair of carved wooden Ichigo chopsticks that their Japanese distributor had had made to celebrate the release of the second Ichigo in Japan. In return, he gave her a silk scarf with a reproduction of Cherry Blossoms at Night, by Katsushika Ōi, on it. The painting depicts a woman composing a poem on a slate in the foreground. The titular cherry blossoms are in the background, all but a few of them in deep shadow. Despite the title, the cherry blossoms are not the subject; it is a painting about the creative process---its solitude and the ways in which an artist, particularly a female one, is expected to disappear. The woman's slate appears to be blank. "I know Hokusai is an inspiration for you," Watanabe-san said. "This is by Hokusai's daughter. Only a handful of her paintings survived, but I think she is even better than the father.
Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow)
God Will, I wish you'd stop telling me what to do. What if I like watching television? What if I don't want to do much else other than read a book?" My voice had become shrill. "What if I'm tired when I get home? What if I don't need to fill my days with activity?" "Bur one day you might wish you had", he said quietly. "Do you know what I would do if I were you?" I put down my peeler. "I suspect you're going to tell me." "Yes. And I'm completely unembarrassed about telling you. I'd be doing night school. I'd be training as a seamstress or a fashion designer or whatever it is that taps into what you really love." He gestured at my minidress, a Sixties-inspired Pucci-type dress, made with the fabric that had once been a pair of Grandad's curtains. The first time Dad had seen it he had pointed at me and yelled, "Hey, Lou, pull yourself together!" It had taken him a full five minutes to stop laughing. "I'd be finding out what I could do that didn't cost much - keep-fit classes, swimming, volunteering, whatever. I'd be teaching myself music or going for long walks with somebody else's dog, or -" "Okay, okay, I get the message," I said, irritably. "But I'm not you, Will." "Luckily for you.
Jojo Moyes (Me Before You (Me Before You, #1))
Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Corrigan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where d'you think you're going?'Our father gripped the bannister. His hands were liverspotted and I could see him trembling in his pause. 'That's not your room,' sad Corrigan. Our father tottered on the stairs. He took another step up. 'Don't,' said my brother. His voice was clear, full, confidant. Our father stood stunned. He climbed one more step and then turned, descended, looked around, lost. 'My own sons,' he said. We made a bed for him on a sofa in the living room, but even then Corrigan refused to stay under the same roof; he went walking in the direction of the city center and I wondered what alley he might be found in later that night, what fist he might walk into, whose bottle he might climb down inside.
Colum McCann (Let the Great World Spin)
...I have always believed I cd diagnose this state of being in love, which they regard as most particular, as inspired by item, one pair of black eyes or indifferent blue, item, one graceful attitude of body or mind, item, one female history of some twenty-two years from, shall we say, 1821-1844--I have always believed this in love to be something of the most abstract masking itself under the particular forms of both lover and beloved. And Poet, who assumes and informs both. I wd have told you--no, I do tell you--friendship is rarer, more idiosyncratic, more individual and in every way more durable than this Love.
A.S. Byatt (Possession)
Our bodies cannot truly be hidden, no matter how many black outfits we wear. No matter how many pairs of Spanx we own. No matter how much we suck it in. Doesn't it seem like a better use of our time to just accept the fact that our bodies are our bodies and live our lives like there is no tomorrow? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.
Jes Baker (Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living)
I had a few glasses of wine at lunch. just the little bottle Sutter Home 4-pack from the party store. Kept it light. It's European, helps you relax, and lets you digest your food properly. Plus. I paired it with a new Artisan Bread sandwich from Quiznos. It's inspired by Europe. So good. Ate it in my car. Europeans love to dine outside.
Karl Welzein (Power Moves: Livin' the American Dream, USA Style)
a mentoring program that pairs new managers with experienced ones. A key facet of this program is that mentors and mentees work together for an extended period of time—eight months. They meet about all aspects of leadership, from career development and confidence building to managing personnel challenges and building healthy team environments.
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
I think most of us moms think it’s wrong to do nice things for ourselves, thinking we’re someone who should always be humble. Maybe God wants to bless our socks off and let us know it’s more than okay to get a manicure and a massage in the same year! We need to stop feeling bad when God wants us to feel cherished, pampered, and special. If a shiny purse or a pair of high heel shoes puts a spring in your step, work those heels girl! God created you to rock it! You still got it and show your kids and family that “Mommy’s Still the Hot Chick”! Maybe it will inspire your husband to get out of his sweat pants from 1987 and take you out in public to a restaurant that has menus you can’t color on!
Kerri Pomarolli (Moms' Night Out and Other Things I Miss: Devotions To Help You Survive)
That night he had been vapouring before her as to his intention to face his two guests and, instead of that inspiration he needed, had merely received the usual warning: “Be careful, Wilhelm.” He did not want to be told to be careful by an imbecile female. What he needed was a pair of woman’s arms which, flung round his neck, would brace him up for the encounter.
Joseph Conrad (Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels)
Loving someone who does not love you back hurts, alot, i know. It is liking seeing these pair of shoes at the retail store which do not fit you. Chances are, if you buy them knowing they are a small size, you will have blisters and probably hurt your toes. What i mean is, not everyone will love you back, therefore, never shove your love down anyone's throat. Accept it and appreciate the ones that do love you.
Nomthandazo Tsembeni
Unlike and superior to either of those two typical remnants of mediævalism, the old barn embodied practices which had suffered no mutilation at the hands of time. Here at least the spirit of the ancient builders was at one with the spirit of the modern beholder. Standing before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its present usage, the mind dwelt upon its past history, with a satisfied sense of functional continuity throughout—a feeling almost of gratitude, and quite of pride, at the permanence of the idea which had heaped it up. The fact that four centuries had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired any hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that had battered it down, invested this simple grey effort of old minds with a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt to disturb in its ecclesiastical and military compeers. For once mediævalism and modernism had a common stand-point. The lanceolate windows,
Thomas Hardy (Thomas Hardy Six Pack – Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, A Pair of Blue Eyes, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure and Elegy ... (Illustrated) (Six Pack Classics Book 5))
How we’re brought in to this world determines where we begin on life’s starting line. Are we born on the first row or in the back of the line? Do we have to stand in the back because of our gender, race or color? Do we have enough food in the house to eat breakfast this morning? Do we own a pair of running shoes? Do we wake up with a view of the mountains or with metal bars on our doors? Do we need permission before leaving the house? How long is it going to take us to realize the structure we’re born into?
Sadiqua Hamdan (Happy Am I. Holy Am I. Healthy Am I.)
At a cellular level of the human mind, Islamophobia is not really a matter of social stigma, rather it is a natural biological fear response of the general human mind, conditioned through countless pairings between terrorist attacks (unconditioned stimulus) and their apparent association with Islam (conditioned stimulus). Hence, Islamophobia cannot be eradicated completely, unless that pairing is severed and thereafter the conditioned stimulus of Islam is paired with something optimistic such as the heartwarming works of the 13th century Persian Muslim poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi.
Abhijit Naskar (What is Mind?)
friends and I used to play an invented parlor game called the Worst Records Never Made. The point was to hypothesize the most stunningly inappropriate albums we could imagine—pairings of artists and material so horrific that even the famously dunderheaded major labels would hardly consider making them. Most of our inspirations have been lost to memory, but the notion of discs like “Yodel with the Berlin Philharmonic,” “The Three Tenors Sing Gilbert and Sullivan,” and—my favorite—“The Chipmunks Present Your Favorite Spirituals” can still inspire what P. G. Wodehouse used to call “the raised eyebrow,
Tim Page (Parallel Play)
While it was true that Marshall Gu’s flute was a lethal weapon capable of besieging an army of thousands, it wouldn’t do to rely solely on the fear inspired by the Flower of the Northwest’s face and the piercing strains of his unholy demonic music. “What does it matter how others treat you? If others respect you, revere you, does that make you invincible? If others distain you like a pair of tattered shoes, does that make you an actual fucking clod of rotten mud? What can some insignificant barbarian woman who’s been dead for about 800 years, or some obscure shamanic poison that disturbs one’s, do to you now?
Priest (Stars of Chaos: Sha Po Lang, Vol. 3)
Looking to that future, there is every reason to believe that science and religion will both continue to flourish, to enlighten, to inspire; as well as to frustrate, to obfuscate, and to oppress. Some people may wish that one half of this essentially modern pairing could be disposed of, or could be persuaded to relinquish its troublesome claims to authority in some or other sphere of knowledge, morality, or politics. But such people should be careful what they wish for. Would they really prefer to live in a society where everyone agreed about the questions that this book has been about? What sort of place would that be?
Thomas Dixon Jr. (Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction)
I hadn't wanted to explain the lipstick. Or the mascara. Or the skinny jeans I'd snagged from Sienna's laundrey and washed under cover of darkness and paired with a black turtleneck that a jaunt through the dryer had made, to ne honest, a size too small. But this news about the Willing Archive trumped all of that. He gave me a careful once-over. "Well." I sat down next to him, aiming for casual. I should have aimed my butt. I sat on his geometry book. "Well what?" "Don't even.The day you become a good liar is the day I leave you for one of the Hannandas." "I have an appointment at the Willing Archive." I will say this for Frankie: He pays attention. "The utterly-off-limits, place-to-bury-your-face-in-Edward's-old-knickers archive?" "Nice.But yes,that one.Mrs. Evers got me in." "About time someone did." He bumped a shoulder against mine. "I really do hate to burst your bubble, Fiorella, but Edward is a century past appreciating the sight of you in tight jeans. So tell me whassup." I squirmed a little. "What sort of idiot do you think I am?" He sighed. "You look good, but I am concerned about the inspiration." "It's not a big deal. It's some makeup." "When I want a boy to look ta me, it's a day that ends in y. You, it's something else. It's a big deal.
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
I want to give credit to Bill Mollison and David Holmgren for creating the 12 Permaculture Design Principles, and to Adam Smith for being the father of Capitalism. The foundations they laid has benefitted billions of people across generations. Respectfully, I have gone beyond the work of these men – far beyond. And I have done that by standing on their shoulders, so to speak. What I have done that’s new and novel is pair permaculture design principles with capitalism as opposed to viewing the two as mutually exclusive. I have also infused my own observations and insights about natural phenomena into the Permaculture Economics framework. Furthermore, I’ve created a definite framework – a set of well thought out principles for policymakers, based on all of this. What I have created is not simply the economics of permaculture, or economics viewed through a permaculture lens, or permaculture plus capitalism. No, I have created an entirely new principles-based system that was inspired by but not exclusively dependent on Permaculture and Capitalism. It is new and novel, and it has a life of its own, and it will one day be the standard of a one global society. Permaculture Economics is unique- greater than the sum of its parts. The implementation of this system, globally, is essential to bringing about a new order of the world.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Principles of a Permaculture Economy)
Who knew it was in my power to make anyone so happy? Or that I could ever be so happy myself? My moods were a slingshot; after being locked-down and anesthetized for years my heart was zinging and slamming itself around like a bee under a glass, everything bright, sharp, confusing, wrong - but it was a clean pain as opposed to the dull misery that had plagued me for years under the drugs like a rotten tooth, the sick dirty ache of something spoiled. The clarity was exhilarating; it was as if I'd removed a pair of smudged-up glasses that fuzzed everything I saw. All summer long I had been practically delirious: tingling, daffy, energized, running on gin and shrimp cocktail and the invigorating whock of tennis balls. And all I could think was Kitsey, Kitsey, Kitsey!
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
Once in a great while, she was distressed by the way she looked. As she was rounding the bend to forty she would write to Avis DeVoto that whenever she read Vogue she "felt like a frump....but I suppose that is the purpose of all of it, to shame people out of their frumpery so they will go out and buy 48 pairs of red shoes, have a facial, pat themselves with deodorizers, buy a freezer, and put up the new crispy window curtains with a draped valence." Julia was able to deconstruct the disingenuous motives that drive women's magazines with the ease she normally reserved for deboning a duck, seeing quite clearly that while ostensibly offering inspiration and useful advice, the stories and articles quietly pummel the reader's sense of self, the better to drive her into the arms of the advertisers.
Karen Karbo (Julia Child Rules: Lessons On Savoring Life)
I grabbed a handful of tarragon and closed my eyes, inhaling its sweet fragrance. I could almost feel my grandmother next to me, smell the aromas embedded into her poppy-print apron, taste her creamy veloutés. Thanks to her, my skills in the kitchen started developing from the age of seven. I'd learned how to chop, slice, and dice without cutting my fingers, to sauté, fry, and grill, pairing flavors and taming them into submission. Just as I'd experienced with my grandmother's meals, when people ate my creations, I wanted them to think "now this is love"- while engaging all of the five senses. For me, cooking was the way I expressed myself, each dish a balance of flavors and ingredients representing my emotions- sweet, sour, salty, smoky, spicy-hot, and even bitter. My inspiration as a chef was to give people sensorial experiences, to bring them back to times of happiness, to let them relive their youth, or to awaken their minds.
Samantha Verant (The Secret French Recipes of Sophie Valroux (Sophie Valroux #1))
Garnish soft comfort foods with crunchy crumbs, toasted nuts, or crisp bits of bacon to make things interesting. Serve rich meats with bright, acidic sauces and clean-tasting blanched or raw vegetables. Serve mouth-drying starches with mouthwatering sauces, and recognize that a well-dressed, juicy salad can serve as both a side dish and a sauce. On the other hand, pair simply cooked meats, such as grilled steak or poached chicken, with roasted, sautéed, or fried vegetables glazed with Maillard’s dark lacquer. Let the seasons inspire you; foods that are in season together naturally complement one another on the plate. For example, corn, beans, and squash grow as companions in the field, then the three sisters find their way together into succotash. Tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, and basil become ratatouille, tian, or caponata depending on where you are on the Mediterranean coast. Sage, a hardy winter herb, is a natural complement to winter squash because its leaves—and its flavor—stand up to the cold of winter.
Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat)
Alice's Cutie Code TM Version 2.1 - Colour Expansion Pack (aka Because this stuff won’t stop being confusing and my friends are mean edition) From Red to Green, with all the colours in between (wait, okay, that rhymes, but green to red makes more sense. Dang.) From Green to Red, with all the colours in between Friend Sampling Group: Fennie, Casey, Logan, Aisha and Jocelyn Green  Friends’ Reaction: Induces a minimum amount of warm and fuzzies. If you don’t say “aw”, you’re “dead inside”  My Reaction: Sort of agree with friends minus the “dead inside” but because that’s a really awful thing to say. Puppies are a good example. So is Walter Bishop. Green-Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: A noticeable step up from Green warm and fuzzies. Transitioning from cute to slightly attractive. Acceptable crush material. “Kissing.”  My Reaction: A good dance song. Inspirational nature photos. Stuff that makes me laugh. Pairing: Madison and Allen from splash Yellow  Friends’ Reaction: Something that makes you super happy but you don’t know why. “Really pretty, but not too pretty.” Acceptable dating material. People you’d want to “bang on sight.”  My Reaction: Love songs for sure! Cookies for some reason or a really good meal. Makes me feel like it’s possible to hold sunshine, I think. Character: Maxon from the selection series. Music: Carly Rae Jepsen Yellow-Orange  Friends’ Reaction: (When asked for non-sexual examples, no one had an answer. From an objective perspective, *pushes up glasses* this is the breaking point. Answers definitely skew toward romantic or sexual after this.)  My Reaction: Something that really gets me in my feels. Also art – oil paintings of landscapes in particular. (What is with me and scenery? Maybe I should take an art class) Character: Dean Winchester. Model: Liu Wren. Orange  Friends’ Reaction: “So pretty it makes you jealous. Or gay.”  “Definitely agree about the gay part. No homo, though. There’s just some really hot dudes out there.”(Feenie’s side-eye was so intense while the others were answering this part LOLOLOLOLOL.) A really good first date with someone you’d want to see again.  My Reaction: People I would consider very beautiful. A near-perfect season finale. I’ve also cried at this level, which was interesting. o Possible tie-in to romantic feels? Not sure yet. Orange-Red  Friends’ Reaction: “When lust and love collide.” “That Japanese saying ‘koi no yokan.’ It’s kind of like love at first sight but not really. You meet someone and you know you two have a future, like someday you’ll fall in love. Just not right now.” (<-- I like this answer best, yes.) “If I really, really like a girl and I’m interested in her as a person, guess. I’d be cool if she liked the same games as me so we could play together.”  My Reaction: Something that gives me chills or has that time-stopping factor. Lots of staring. An extremely well-decorated room. Singers who have really good voices and can hit and hold superb high notes, like Whitney Houston. Model: Jasmine Tooke. Paring: Abbie and Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow o Romantic thoughts? Someday my prince (or princess, because who am I kidding?) will come? Red (aka the most controversial code)  Friends’ Reaction: “Panty-dropping levels” (<-- wtf Casey???).  “Naked girls.” ”Ryan. And ripped dudes who like to cook topless.”  “K-pop and anime girls.” (<-- Dear. God. The whole table went silent after he said that. Jocelyn was SO UNCOMFORTABLE but tried to hide it OMG it was bad. Fennie literally tried to slap some sense into him.)  My Reaction: Uncontrollable staring. Urge to touch is strong, which I must fight because not everyone is cool with that. There may even be slack-jawed drooling involved. I think that’s what would happen. I’ve never seen or experienced anything that I would give Red to.
Claire Kann (Let's Talk About Love)
(about Pilgrims) It would be difficult to imagine a group of people more ill-suited to a life in the wilderness. They packed as if they had misunderstood the purpose of the trip. They found room for sundials and candle snuffers, a drum, a trumpet, and a complete history of Turkey. One William Mullins packed 126 pairs of shoes and 13 pairs of boots. Yet, between them they failed to bring a single cow or horse or plough or fishing line. Among the professions represented on the Mayflower's manifest were two tailors, a printer, several merchants, a silk worker, a shopkeeper and a hatter- occupations whose importance is not immediately evident when one thinks of surviving in a hostile environment. Their military commander, Miles Standish, was so diminutive of stature that he was known to all as "Captain Shrimpe" hardly a figure to inspire awe in the savage natives from whom they confidently expected to encounter. With the uncertain exception of the little captain, probably none in the party had ever tried to bring down a wild animal. Hunting in seventeenth century Europe was a sport reserved for the aristocracy. Even those who labelled themselves farmers generally had scant practical knowledge of husbandry, since farmer in the 1600s, and for some time afterwards, signified an owner of land rather than one who worked it. They were, in short, dangerously unprepared for the rigours ahead, and they demonstrated their manifest incompetence in the most dramatic possible way: by dying in droves. Six expired in the first two weeks, eight the next month, seventeen more in February, a further thirteen in March. By April, when the Mayflower set sail back to England just fifty-four people, nearly half of them children, were left to begin the long work of turning this tenuous toe-hold into a self-sustaining colony.
Bill Bryson (Made in America an Informal History Of)
The mood at the table is convivial throughout the meal. A dried-sausage and prosciutto plate gives way to briny sardines, which give way to truffle-covered gnocchi topped with a plethora of herbs. Richness cut with acidity, herbaceousness and cool breezes at every turn. A simple ricotta and lemon fettuccine topped with sharp pecorino is the perfect counterpoint. I am not driving, and apparently Anjana isn't, either, so we both order a Cynar and soda. "How can we digest all the pasta without another digestif?" we exclaim to the waiter, giddily. Meat, carbs, sunshine, and lingering music coming from across the plaza have stirred us up, and soon our dessert--- some sort of chocolate cake with walnuts--- arrives. It's dense in that fudgey way a flourless concoction can be, like it has molded itself into the perfection of pure chocolate. The crunch of the walnuts is a counterweight, drawing me deeper into the flavor. I haven't been inspired by food like this in a long time, despite spending so much time thinking about food. The atmosphere at work has sucked so much of the joy out of thinking about recipes, but I find myself taking little notes on my phone for recipe experimentation when I get home. The realization jolts me. I've always felt like I have the perfect job for a creative who happens to also be left-brained. Recipes are an intriguing puzzle every single time. Today's fettuccine is the perfect example. The tartness of the lemon paired with the smooth pasta and pillowy ricotta is the no-brainer part. But the trickier puzzle piece--- the one that is necessary to connect the rest of the puzzle to the whole--- is the light grating of the pecorino on top. That tang, that edge, that cutting spice works in tangent with the lemon to give the dish its power. Lemon alone wouldn't have been enough. Pecorino alone wouldn't have been enough. The dish is so simple, but it has to fit together perfectly to work. These little moments, these exciting eurekas, are the elation I normally get in my job.
Ali Rosen (Recipe for Second Chances)
What are you so afraid of?” “Nothing!” He yelled so fiercely that a pair of oxen grazing in a nearby field snorted and moved farther away from us. It was the first time I ever saw fire in Milo’s eyes. “I’m no coward. That’s not why I wouldn’t go with your brothers. I have to go with you.” “Who said so? You’re free now, Milo. Don’t you know what that means? You can come and go anywhere you like. You ought to appreciate it.” “I appreciate you, Lady Helen!” Once Milo raised his voice, he couldn’t stop. He shouted so loudly that the two oxen trotted to the far side of the pasture as fast as they could move their massive bodies. “You’re the one who gave me my freedom. If I love to be fifty, I’ll never be able to repay you!” Milo’s uproar attracted the attention of the two guards, but I waved them back when I saw them coming toward us. “Do you think you could be grateful quietly?” I asked. “This is between us, not us and all Delphi. You owe me nothing. Listen, if you leave now, you might still be able to catch up to my brothers. I’ll ask the Pythia for help. There must be at least one of Apollo’s pilgrims heading north today, one who’s going on horseback. If she tells him to carry you with him, you’ll overtake Prince Jason’s party in no time! I’ll give you whatever you’ll need for the road and--” “Then I will be in your debt,” Milo encountered. “If you say I’m free, why aren’t I free to stay with you, if that’s what I want?” “Because it’s stupid!” I forgot my own caution about keeping our voices low. I’d decided that if I couldn’t win our argument with facts, I’d do it with volume. “Don’t you see, Milo? This is a better opportunity than anything that’s waiting for you in Sparta! What could you become if you went there? A potter, a tanner, a metalsmith, maybe a farmer’s boy or a shepherd. But if you sail to Colchis with my brothers, you could be--” “Seasick,” Milo finished for me. I raised my eyebrows. “Is that why you won’t go? Not even if it means passing up a once-in-a-lifetime chance for adventures? For a real future? I’m disappointed.” Milo folded his arms. “Why don’t you just command me not to be seasick? Command me to go away and leave you, while you’re at it. Command me to join your brothers. It’s not what I want, but I guess that doesn’t matter after all.” I was about to launch into another list of reasons why he should rush after my brothers when his words stopped me. Lord Oeneus was open-handed with commands, I thought. And it was worse for Milo when his hand closed into a fist. I shouldn’t bully Milo into joining the quest for the fleece just because I wish I could do it myself. In that instant, a happy inspiration struck me with the force of one of Zeus’s own thunderbolts: Why can’t I? I found an unripe acorn lying on the ground beside me and flicked it at Milo. “All right,” I told him. “You win. You can stay with me.” A look of utter relief spread across his face until I added, “But I win too. You’re going to go with my brothers.” “But how can I do that if--?” “And so am I.
Esther M. Friesner (Nobody's Princess (Nobody's Princess, #1))
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw On a cool fall evening in 2008, four students set out to revolutionize an industry. Buried in loans, they had lost and broken eyeglasses and were outraged at how much it cost to replace them. One of them had been wearing the same damaged pair for five years: He was using a paper clip to bind the frames together. Even after his prescription changed twice, he refused to pay for pricey new lenses. Luxottica, the 800-pound gorilla of the industry, controlled more than 80 percent of the eyewear market. To make glasses more affordable, the students would need to topple a giant. Having recently watched Zappos transform footwear by selling shoes online, they wondered if they could do the same with eyewear. When they casually mentioned their idea to friends, time and again they were blasted with scorching criticism. No one would ever buy glasses over the internet, their friends insisted. People had to try them on first. Sure, Zappos had pulled the concept off with shoes, but there was a reason it hadn’t happened with eyewear. “If this were a good idea,” they heard repeatedly, “someone would have done it already.” None of the students had a background in e-commerce and technology, let alone in retail, fashion, or apparel. Despite being told their idea was crazy, they walked away from lucrative job offers to start a company. They would sell eyeglasses that normally cost $500 in a store for $95 online, donating a pair to someone in the developing world with every purchase. The business depended on a functioning website. Without one, it would be impossible for customers to view or buy their products. After scrambling to pull a website together, they finally managed to get it online at 4 A.M. on the day before the launch in February 2010. They called the company Warby Parker, combining the names of two characters created by the novelist Jack Kerouac, who inspired them to break free from the shackles of social pressure and embark on their adventure. They admired his rebellious spirit, infusing it into their culture. And it paid off. The students expected to sell a pair or two of glasses per day. But when GQ called them “the Netflix of eyewear,” they hit their target for the entire first year in less than a month, selling out so fast that they had to put twenty thousand customers on a waiting list. It took them nine months to stock enough inventory to meet the demand. Fast forward to 2015, when Fast Company released a list of the world’s most innovative companies. Warby Parker didn’t just make the list—they came in first. The three previous winners were creative giants Google, Nike, and Apple, all with over fifty thousand employees. Warby Parker’s scrappy startup, a new kid on the block, had a staff of just five hundred. In the span of five years, the four friends built one of the most fashionable brands on the planet and donated over a million pairs of glasses to people in need. The company cleared $100 million in annual revenues and was valued at over $1 billion. Back in 2009, one of the founders pitched the company to me, offering me the chance to invest in Warby Parker. I declined. It was the worst financial decision I’ve ever made, and I needed to understand where I went wrong.
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
Blessed Man” is a tribute to Updike’s tenacious maternal grandmother, Katherine Hoyer, who died in 1955. Inspired by an heirloom, a silver thimble engraved with her initials, a keepsake Katherine gave to John and Mary as a wedding present (their best present, he told his mother), the story is an explicit attempt to bring her back to life (“O Lord, bless these poor paragraphs, that would do in their vile ignorance Your work of resurrection”), and a meditation on the extent to which it’s possible to recapture experience and preserve it through writing. The death of his grandparents diminished his family by two fifths and deprived him of a treasured part of his past, the sheltered years of his youth and childhood. Could he make his grandmother live again on the page? It’s certainly one of his finest prose portraits, tender, clear-eyed, wonderfully vivid. At one point the narrator remembers how, as a high-spirited teenager, he would scoop up his tiny grandmother, “lift her like a child, crooking one arm under her knees and cupping the other behind her back. Exultant in my height, my strength, I would lift that frail brittle body weighing perhaps a hundred pounds and twirl with it in my arms while the rest of the family watched with startled smiles of alarm.” When he adds, “I was giving my past a dance,” we hear the voice of John Updike exulting in his strength. Katherine takes center stage only after an account of the dramatic day of her husband’s death. John Hoyer died a few months after John and Mary were married, on the day both the newlyweds and Mary’s parents were due to arrive in Plowville. From this unfortunate coincidence, the Updike family managed to spin a pair of short stories. Six months before he wrote “Blessed Man,” Updike’s mother had her first story accepted by The New Yorker. For years her son had been doing his filial best to help get her work published—with no success. In college he sent out the manuscript of her novel about Ponce de León to the major Boston publishers, and when he landed at The New Yorker he made sure her stories were read by editors instead of languishing in the slush pile. These efforts finally bore fruit when an editor at the magazine named Rachel MacKenzie championed “Translation,” a portentous family saga featuring Linda’s version of her father’s demise. Maxwell assured Updike that his colleagues all thought his mother “immensely gifted”; if that sounds like tactful exaggeration, Maxwell’s idea that he could detect “the same quality of mind running through” mother and son is curious to say the least. Published in The New Yorker on March 11, 1961, “Translation” was signed Linda Grace Hoyer and narrated by a character named Linda—but it wasn’t likely to be mistaken for a memoir. The story is overstuffed with biblical allusion, psychodrama, and magical thinking, most of it Linda’s. She believes that her ninety-year-old father plans to be translated directly to heaven, ascending like Elijah in a whirlwind, with chariots of fire, and to pass his mantle to a new generation, again like Elijah. It’s not clear whether this grand design is his obsession, as she claims, or hers. As it happens, the whirlwind is only a tussle with his wife that lands the old folks on the floor beside the bed. Linda finds them there and says, “Of all things. . . . What are you two doing?” Her father answers, his voice “matter-of-fact and conversational”: “We are sitting on the floor.” Having spoken these words, he dies. Linda’s son Eric (a writer, of course) arrives on the scene almost immediately. When she tells him, “Grampy died,” he replies, “I know, Mother, I know. It happened as we turned off the turnpike. I felt
Adam Begley (Updike)
How to Get Verified on LinkedIn and Build Real Credibility Fast ✅➤WhatsApp:+1 (928) 4065180 ✅➤Telegram: @usaoldsmm1 In today’s digital age, LinkedIn is more than just a networking platform—it’s a vital tool for personal branding, professional growth, and business development. With millions of users competing for attention, standing out on LinkedIn has never been more important. One of the best ways to boost your presence and establish trust is by getting verified and building real credibility fast. But how exactly can you do that? Let’s break it down step by step. ⇔Contact For More Information⇔ ✅➤Email: usaoldsmm@gmail.com ✅➤WhatsApp:+1 (928) 4065180 ✅➤Telegram: @usaoldsmm1 What Does “Verified” Mean on LinkedIn? Unlike platforms like Instagram or Twitter, LinkedIn doesn’t offer a traditional blue checkmark for general public profiles. However, LinkedIn does have verification features through identity confirmation, workplace verification, and LinkedIn’s “About This Profile” feature. These tools help demonstrate authenticity and credibility, especially if you’re aiming to build a strong professional reputation. 1. Use LinkedIn’s Official Verification Tools LinkedIn offers limited verification options, but they are still powerful. Here are some ways to get “verified” or boost your profile’s legitimacy: Verify Your Workplace: Some companies partner with LinkedIn to verify their employees. If your employer uses LinkedIn’s verification system, make sure your profile reflects your current position accurately. Verify with CLEAR (U.S. Users Only): LinkedIn has partnered with identity verification platform CLEAR to confirm identity using government-issued IDs. Once verified, a badge will appear on your profile under the “About This Profile” section. LinkedIn Premium and Creator Mode: While not traditional verification, enabling features like Creator Mode or upgrading to LinkedIn Premium can increase your visibility and social proof, especially if paired with consistent, quality content. 2. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Credibility First impressions count, and your LinkedIn profile is no exception. A complete, optimized profile signals professionalism and increases your chances of being taken seriously. Use a Professional Profile Picture: Profiles with high-quality headshots get 14 times more views. Invest in a clean, well-lit, and approachable photo. Craft a Compelling Headline: Your headline should do more than list your job title. Use it to highlight your expertise, niche, or value proposition. For example: "Helping Startups Scale Through Strategic Branding | Fractional CMO | Speaker" Write a Strong Summary: Your About section should tell your story. Focus on who you are, what you do, who you help, and how you do it. Add Keywords: Use industry-relevant keywords naturally throughout your profile to improve discoverability through search—both on LinkedIn and search engines. 3. Build Authority Through Content Creation Want to build real credibility quickly? Start creating valuable content consistently. When you educate, inspire, or entertain your audience, you build trust and position yourself as a thought leader in your niche. Post Consistently: Aim for at least 2–3 posts per week. Mix it up with text posts, images, carousels, videos, and polls. Share Insights and Case Studies: Offer real-world examples of how you’ve solved problems or delivered value. Engage in Comments: Don’t just post—interact. Comment on others' content to expand your visibility and authority. Use Hashtags Strategically: Stick to 3–5 relevant hashtags per post to expand your reach without looking spammy. 4. Get Endorsements and Recommendations Social proof is one of the most powerful credibility boosters on LinkedIn. Ask colleagues, clients, or collaborators to endorse your skills or write recommendations.
How to Get Verified on LinkedIn and Build Real Credibility Fast
In the early 1680s, at just about the time that Edmond Halley and his friends Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke were settling down in a London coffee house and embarking on the casual wager that would result eventually in Isaac Newton’s Principia, Hemy Cavendish’s weighing of the Earth, and many of the other inspired and commendable undertakings that have occupied us for much of the past four hundred pages, a rather less desirable milestone was being passed on the island of Mauritius, far out in the Indian Ocean some eight hundred miles off the east coast of Madagascar. There, some forgotten sailor or sailor’s pet was harrying to death the last of the dodos, the famously flightless bird whose dim but trusting nature and lack of leggy zip made it a rather irresistible target for bored young tars on shore leave. Millions of years of peaceful isolation had not prepared it for the erratic and deeply unnerving behavior of human beings. We don’t know precisely the circumstances, or even year, attending the last moments of the last dodo, so we don’t know which arrived first a world that contained a Principia or one that had no dodos, but we do know that they happened at more or less the same time. You would be hard pressed, I would submit to find a better pairing of occurrences to illustrate the divine and felonious nature of the human being-a species of organism that is capable of unpicking the deepest secrets of the heavens while at the same time pounding into extinction, for no purpose at all, a creature that never did us any harm and wasn’t even remotely capable of understanding what we were doing to it as we did it. Indeed, dodos were so spectacularly short on insight it is reported, that if you wished to find all the dodos in a vicinity you had only to catch one and set it to squawking, and all the others would waddle along to see what was up. The indignities to the poor dodo didn’t end quite there. In 1755, some seventy years after the last dodo’s death, the director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford decided that the institution’s stuffed dodo was becoming unpleasantly musty and ordered it tossed on a bonfire. This was a surprising decision as it was by this time the only dodo in existence, stuffed or otherwise. A passing employee, aghast tried to rescue the bird but could save only its head and part of one limb. As a result of this and other departures from common sense, we are not now entirely sure what a living dodo was like. We possess much less information than most people suppose-a handful of crude descriptions by "unscientific voyagers, three or four oil paintings, and a few scattered osseous fragments," in the somewhat aggrieved words of the nineteenth century naturalist H. E. Strickland. As Strickland wistfully observed, we have more physical evidence of some ancient sea monsters and lumbering saurapods than we do of a bird that lived into modern times and required nothing of us to survive except our absence. So what is known of the dodo is this: it lived on Mauritius, was plump but not tasty, and was the biggest-ever member of the pigeon family, though by quite what margin is unknown as its weight was never accurately recorded. Extrapolations from Strickland’s "osseous fragments" and the Ashmolean’s modest remains show that it was a little over two and a half feet tall and about the same distance from beak tip to backside. Being flightless, it nested on the ground, leaving its eggs and chicks tragically easy prey for pigs, dogs, and monkeys brought to the island by outsiders. It was probably extinct by 1683 and was most certainly gone by 1693. Beyond that we know almost nothing except of course that we will not see its like again. We know nothing of its reproductive habits and diet, where it ranged, what sounds it made in tranquility or alarm. We don’t possess a single dodo egg. From beginning to end our acquaintance with animate dodos lasted just seventy years.
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
Rhonwyn pulled it open. A jumble of objects lay inside: a pair os scissors, more papyrus sheets, a ball of string, and a screwed-up piece of papyrus shoved into the back right corner. Rhonwyn picked up the crumpled papyrus. Something made it heavier than she expected. Her breathing became shallow as she unwrapped it.
Susan Holt (The Heart Casts No Shadow)
Marks … I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to find your spectacles in this wreckage.” “I have another pair at home,” she ventured. “Thank God.” Leo sat up with a quiet grunt of discomfort. “Now, if we stand on the highest pile of debris, it’s only a short distance to the surface. I’m going to hoist you up, get you out of here, and then you’re going to ride back to Ramsay House. Cam trained the horse, so you won’t need to guide him. He’ll find his way back home with no trouble.” “What are you going to do?” she asked, bewildered. He sounded rather sheepish. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to wait here until you send someone for me.” “Why?” “I have a—” He paused, searching for a word. “Splinter.” She felt indignant. “You’re going to make me ride back alone and unescorted and virtually blind, to send someone to rescue you? All because you have a splinter?” “A large one,” he volunteered. “Where is it? Your finger? Your hand? Maybe I can help to … Oh, God. ” This last as he took her hand and brought it to his shoulder. His shirt was wet with blood, and a thick shard of timber protruded from his shoulder. “That’s not a splinter,” she said in horror. “You’ve been impaled. What can I do? Shall I pull it out?” “No, it might be lodged against an artery. And I wouldn’t care to bleed out down here.” She crawled closer to him, bringing her face close to his to examine him anxiously... “Don’t worry,” he murmured. “It looks worse than it is.” But Catherine didn’t agree. If anything, it was worse than it looked... Stripping off her riding coat, she tried to lay it over his chest. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Trying to keep you warm.” Leo plucked the garment off his chest and made a scoffing sound. “Don’t be ridiculous. First, the injury isn’t that bad. Second, this tiny thing is not capable of keeping any part of me warm. Now, about my plan—” “It is obviously a significant injury,” she said, “and I do not agree to your plan. I have a better one.” “Of course you do,” he replied sardonically. “Marks, for once would you do as I ask?” “No, I’m not going to leave you here. I’m going to pile up enough debris for both of us to climb out.” “You can’t even see, damn it. And you can’t move these timbers and stones. You’re too small.” “There is no need to make derogatory remarks about my stature,” she said, lurching upward and squinting at her surroundings. Identifying the highest pile of debris, she made her way to it and hunted for nearby rocks. “I’m not being derogatory.” He sounded exasperated. “Your stature is absolutely perfect for my favorite activity. But you’re not built for hauling rocks. Blast it, Marks, you’re going to hurt yourself—” “Stay there,” Catherine said sharply, hearing him push some heavy object aside. “You’ll worsen your injury, and then it will be even more difficult to get you out. Let me do the work.” Finding a heap of ashlar blocks, she picked one up and lugged it up the pile, trying not to trip over her own skirts. “You’re not strong enough,” Leo said, sounding aggravated and out of breath. “What I lack in physical strength,” she replied, going for another block, “I make up for in determination.” “How inspiring. Could we set aside the heroic fortitude for one bloody moment and dredge up some common sense?” “I’m not going to argue with you, my lord. I need to save my breath for”—she paused to heft another block—“stacking rocks.” Somewhere amid the ordeal, Leo decided hazily that he would never underestimate Catherine Marks again. Ounce for ounce, she was the most insanely obstinate person he had ever known, dragging rocks and debris while half blind and hampered by long skirts, diligently crossing back and forth across his vision like an industrious mole. She had decided to build a mound upon which they could climb out, and nothing would stop her.
Lisa Kleypas (Married by Morning (The Hathaways, #4))
Ill at ease around most people, she had an unusually intense connection with animals—particularly cats, but also snails, which she bred at home. Highsmith was inspired to keep the gastropods as pets when she saw a pair at a fish market locked in a strange embrace. (She later told a radio interviewer that “they give me a sort of tranquility.”)
Mason Currey
Becoming the Admiral's Wife: A Dual Memoir of a Called Pair is an inspiring story of a woman who not only professes faith, but lives her faith. The book takes the reader on a lovely and tangled journey to her happy ending. The back cover copy not only tells the story, but the reason for its revealing––to encourage readers to trust the Lord's plan for their lives. Judge's Commentary 28th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards
Judge Number 42
She and the star The feeling was fair, It felt like a perfect pair, There appeared to be no room for any despair, As my imagination got caught in her beautiful eyes and her locks of hair, Well, the sun had finally risen, My heart too had eventually chosen, Her, and her beautiful eyes where I wished to awaken, Every morning and every day, because in them I did not feel forsaken, So I waited at the crossing of life where I had met her sometime ago, Where I just felt an existence without an ego, Yes, it was many years and many months ago, I am there at the same crossing now, wondering where to go, For it is uncertain which way she took, Whether she went towards the mountain tall or there where flows the brook, Or there, where the summer breezer a few leaves had tenderly shook, Or maybe there, from where she had left while offering me that strange parting look, But then I realise few things shine like stars, For those who believe in love without bars, And those who deal with emotional battles and feeling induced wars, To realise that in order to shine one must burn, and that is the fate of all stars, So I seek her in the sky instead, assuming she is the star I can see, From anywhere, from everywhere, or wherever I might be, And this has made me fall in love with the night, where it creates a world just for me, The starry world, where finally, in the stars those eyes and that smile I can see, And during the day I lie asleep because the sky means nothing, It just has the burning sun, the bright light and perhaps everything, But it is not the sky, that shines with that fairest thing, Those beautiful eyes, that subtle smile, and her shimmer that is so charming, And here I am witnessing another night, Looking at the star that is in the sight, Seeking from it a pseudo delight, Because what burns may not always create the beauty’s eternal light, But that is not the star’s fault nor the skies folly, For the munificent star burns for me willingly, So that I think of her lovingly, And that I accept silently, that my heart too loved what I loved with my mind finally!
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
She and the star The feeling was fair, It felt like a perfect pair, There appeared to be no room for any despair, As my imagination got caught in her beautiful eyes and her long hair, Well, the sun had finally risen, My heart too had eventually chosen, Her, and her beautiful eyes where I wished to awaken, Every morning and every day, because in them I did not feel forsaken, So I waited at the crossing of life where I had met her sometime ago, Where I just felt an existence without an ego, Yes, it was many years and many months ago, I am there at the same crossing now, wondering where to go, For it is uncertain which way she took, Whether she went towards the mountain tall or there where flows the brook, Or there, where the summer breeze, a few leaves had tenderly shook, Or maybe there, from where she had left while offering me that strange parting look, But then it is true too, few things shine like stars, For those who believe in love without bars, And those who deal with emotional battles and feeling induced wars, Realise that in order to shine one must burn, and that is the fate of all stars, So I seek her in the sky instead, assuming she is the star I can see, From anywhere, from everywhere, or wherever I might be, And this has made me fall in love with the night, where it creates a world just for me, The starry world, where finally, in the stars those eyes and that smile, I can see, And during the day I lie asleep because the sky means nothing, It just has the burning sun, the bright light and perhaps everything, But it is not the sky that shines with that fairest thing, Those beautiful eyes, that subtle smile, and her shimmer that is so charming, And here I am witnessing another night, Looking at the star that is in the sight, Seeking from it a pseudo delight, Because what burns may not always create the beauty’s eternal light, But that is not the star’s fault nor the skies folly, For the munificent star burns for me willingly, So that I think of her lovingly, And that I accept silently, that my heart too loved what I loved with my mind finally!
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
I believe that we shocked each other by how swiftly we went from being the people who knew each other best in the world to being a pair of the most mutually incomprehensible strangers who ever lived. But it was vital to my survival to have a one bedroom of my own i saw the aprtment almost as a sanatorium a hospice clinci for my own recovery I painted the walls in the warmest colors i could find and bought myself flowers every week as if i were visiting myself in the hospital is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty why are you studying Italian so that just in case Italy ever invades Ethiopia again and is actually successful this time? ciao comes from if you must know it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval venetians as an intimate salutation Sono il Suo Schiavo meaning i am your slave. om Naamah Shivaya meaning I honor the divinity that resides whin me. I wanted to experience both , I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence the dual glories of a human life I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos the singular balance of the good and he beautiful I'd been missing both during these last hard years because both pleasure and devotion require a stress free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety , As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion. four feet on the ground a head full of foliage looking at the world through the heart. it was more than I wanted to toughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well. same guatemalan musicians are always playing id rather be a sparrow than a snail on their bamboo windpipes oh how i want italian to open itself up to me i havent felt so starved for comprehension since then dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontanana dolce sitl nuovo Dante wrote his divine comedy in terza rima triple rhyme a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating here times every five lines. lamor che move il sole e laltre stelle we are the masters of bel far niente larte darrangiarsi The reply in italy to you deserve a break today would probably be yeah no duh that's why I'm planning on taking a break at noon to go over to your house and sleep with your wife, I walked home to my apartment and soft-boiled a pair of fresh brown eggs for my lunch i peeled the eggs and arranged them on a plate beside the seven stalks of the asparagus (which were so slim and snappy they didn't need to be cooked at all,)I put some olives on the plate too and the four knobs of goat cheese I'd picked up yesterday from the fromagerie down the street tend two slices of pink oily salmon for dessert a lovely peach which the woman at the market had given to me for free and which was still warm form the roman sunlight for the longest time I couldn't even touch this food because it was such a masterpiece of lunch a true expression of the art of making something out of nothing finally when i had fully absorbed the prettiness of my meal i went and sat in apatch of sunbeam on my clean wooden floor and ate every bit of it with my fingers while reading my daily newspaper article in Italian happiness inhabited my every molecule. I am inspired by the regal self assurance of this town so grounded and rounded so amused and monumental knowing that she is held securely in the palm of history i would like to be like rome when i am an old lady. I linger over my food and wine for many hours because nobody in
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
There was Tim, strutting into the party in his flamboyant gay uniform, contrary to his belief that he had dressed the part of a straight man. His shirt was so tight it was screaming for mercy, the buttons straining to hold in the sheer power of his pecs. His pants, a pair of skintight masterpieces, clung to his thighs like a stage-5 clinger on a second date. -Kim Lee ‘The Big Apple Took a Bite Off Me’ Now on Amazon Books and Kindle
Kim Lee
The next pair is inspired by my hometown of San Francisco, where I often searched for rare spices and teas in Chinatown. My Chinese tea collection begins with a dark chocolate truffle infused with Lapsang Souchong tea. Cultivated in the Wuyi mountain region in China, the tea leaves are dried over pinewood fires, which give the leaves a smoky, aromatic flavor." Finding Lauro in the crowd, Celina echoed his description. With a smile tugging at her lips, she added, "You might find it reminiscent of the rich earth around Vesuvius, moist with morning dew." Bringing his hand to his lips, Lauro sent her a happy kiss across the crowd. "Also from the Wuyi Mountains of northern Fujian comes oolong tea, which can be fruity, green, or sweet. This oolong is a sweet, roasted woody version.
Jan Moran (The Chocolatier)
My mind is confused, I shudder in panic. My night of pleasure has turned into terror. Setting the table to let the watchmen watch, eating and drinking, “Arise, officers, anoint the shield.” For thus said my Lord to me: Go, station the lookout, and let him tell what he sees. He will see a pair of horsemen...and he will call out like a lion. My lord, I stand on the lookout constantly during the day, and I am stationed at my post all the nights. Behold, it is coming: a chariot with a man, a pair of horsemen. Each says loudly, “It has fallen! Babylonia has fallen!
Seth Rogovoy (Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet)
The second main argument to support the idea that simple living enhances our capacity for pleasure is that it encourages us to attend to and appreciate the inexhaustible wealth of interesting, beautiful, marvelous, and thought-provoking phenomena continually presented to us by the everyday world that is close at hand. As Emerson says: “Things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. . . . This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries.”47 Here, as elsewhere, Emerson elegantly articulates the theory, but it is his friend Thoreau who really puts it into practice. Walden is, among other things, a celebration of the unexotic and a demonstration that the overlooked wonders of the commonplace can be a source of profound pleasure readily available to all. This idea is hardly unique to Emerson and Thoreau, of course, and, like most of the ideas we are considering, it goes back to ancient times. Marcus Aurelius reflects that “anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure,” from the jaws of animals to the “distinct beauty of old age in men and women.”48 “Even Nature’s inadvertence has its own charms, its own attractiveness,” he observes, citing as an example the way loaves split open on top when baking.49 With respect to the natural world, celebrating the ordinary has been a staple of literature and art at least since the advent of Romanticism in the late eighteenth century. Wordsworth wrote three separate poems in praise of the lesser celandine, a common wildflower; painters like van Gogh discover whole worlds of beauty and significance in a pair of peasant boots; many of the finest poems crafted by poets like Thomas Hardy, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, and Seamus Heaney take as their subject the most mundane objects, activities, or events and find in these something worth lingering over and commemorating in verse: a singing thrush, a snowy woods, a fish, some chilled plums, a patch of mint. Of course, artists have also celebrated the extraordinary, the exotic, and the magnificent. Homer gushes over the splendors of Menelaus’s palace; Gauguin left his home country to seek inspiration in the more exotic environment of Tahiti; Handel composed pieces to accompany momentous ceremonial occasions. Yet it is striking that a humble activity like picking blackberries—the subject of well-known poems by, among others, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Richard Wilbur—appears to be more inspirational to modern poets, more charged with interest and significance, than, say, the construction of the world’s tallest building, the Oscar ceremonies, the space program, or the discovery of DNA’s molecular structure. One might even say that it has now become an established function of art to help us discover the remarkable in the commonplace
Emrys Westacott (The Wisdom of Frugality: Why Less Is More - More or Less)
As long as growth and learning remains a prime goal, days of calm and comfort are bound to be paired with periods of overwhelming feelings.
Jay D'Cee
Crossing the finish line is paired with a sense of emptiness, having toiled over many months (if not years) and nothing remains for a fulfilled dream. Treasure the journey.
Jay D'Cee
Suffering persists when we resist accepting the complementary polarities of emotions like grief and joy. Every conflict contains the seeds of its resolution. As the Hindu sage Patanjali stated in one of his Yoga Sutras, 'By experiencing the pairs of opposites, suffering ceases. When distress arises, ride opposing thoughts back into nondual awareness. By reversing instability into stability, from refusing into non-refusing, suffering is relinquished. Through disidentification, the pairs of opposites cease their noxious effect. By reversing the pairs of opposites stability and the release of suffering are quickly achieved.
Laura Patryas (Awaken To Love: Reclaiming Wholeness through Embodied Nonduality with Jungian Wisdom, Psychosynthesis & Internal Family Systems)
The heist of feelings Everything appeared older than it was, Time seemed to end sooner than it should have ended, A moment that was here just now, I wondered, now where it was, It felt like a desire, that before a wish could find it, always ended, A feeling of strangeness where every sense failed to feel anything, Because time ended sooner than before, And you only felt a feeling that was made of everything but you could not feel anything, Because it led to incomplete sensations that felt, only partially, like before, They bore no true shades of complete feelings, Because before the heart could feel them time ended their reign, And being caught in this ever flowing stream of incomplete feelings, Made you a victim of this strange reign, Where time no more ruled, but something that controlled it now manifested itself, Time rushed with an unknown pace, witnessing the premature death of its every moment, It was as if time was fleeing from its own interlooping moments, and confounding itself, And a sensation that visited the heart, left before it could be felt in that climactic moment, And in this trench of strangeness everything vanished, finally to be lost forever, Every incomplete feeling struggled to witness its completion, Before it was destroyed and lost forever, And moments of time too appeared desperate to realise their own completion, But every moment of time was dissected into two halves, One that felt a feeling and the other that carried its unfelt parts, And thus every feeling, every sensation was cut into halves, One that belonged to the mind and the one that only bore heart’s parts, For a feeling that enters the heart through the mind is incomplete unless it reaches the heart, And this force somehow stole the moments of time that entered the mind, Ending them before they could meet their waiting part in the heart, And as the moment left alone in the heart ended without feeling the sensation of the mind, The trench was filled with moments of heart and moments of mind, never together, And finally time realised it could undo this continuous heist of feelings and sensations, And keep its separated moments together, It dived into this trench with infinity and retrieved all feelings and sensations, While this strange force is now riding ripples of infinity, Time has rearranged sensations and feelings and paired them with their respective moments, While the evil force is caught in the loops of infinity, Time now flows as it always used to, in the form of complete moments, Where a feeling beginning in the mind grows as a sensation in the heart, And my love Irma, that is what time should be doing forever now, Letting the thoughts of mind sink into the sensations of my heart, To be our infinity of known feelings and sensations, always as fresh as now, always like now!
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
What you haven’t been addressing, you’ve been allowing. Having company values written on an office wall that you don’t actively Revisit doesn’t activate accountability. We can only productively hold people accountable for contributing to a specific result with a previously asked and agreed upon expectation paired with active Revisiting.
Elaina Noell (Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results)
There are some things in our lives we just spend too much time on. It’s time to let it go. I don’t care what it is. If you’re stressing over it, then you probably need to be still for a pair of seconds or maybe even part ways with it. You’ve been praying and worrying all at the same time, and that doesn’t make much sense, does it? You’ve spent enough time on a situation that probably won’t matter in the long run, alright? Very good. And here’s the thing about time: It will not wait for you. You only have 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and 365 days in a year. All the time you spent worrying about something you have no control over could have been spent working toward your dream. If the situation is not serving you, honey, let it go. Whatever they said, they can’t take it back and you can’t erase it. Don’t waste your time on things that aren’t serving you.
Tabitha Brown (Feeding the Soul (Because It's My Business): Finding Our Way to Joy, Love and Freedom—A Vegan Cookbook and Inspirational Guide by Tabitha Brown (A Feeding the Soul Book))
Nike’s policy of yanking best-selling shoes from the shelves every ten months has inspired some truly operatic bursts of profanity on running message boards. The Nike Pegasus, for instance, debuted in 1981, achieved its sleek, waffled apotheosis in ’83, and then—despite being the most popular running shoe of all time—was suddenly discontinued in ’98, only to reappear as a whole new beast in 2000. Why so much surgery? Not to improve the shoe, as a former Nike shoe designer who worked on the original Pegasus told me, but to improve revenue; Nike’s aim is to triple sales by enticing runners to buy two, three, five pairs at a time, stockpiling in case they never see their favorites again.
Christopher McDougall (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen)
In a flash it came to me - might not people who were forced to spend their working hours between walls like to hear about what went on in a hill-top croft, of how it was possible to get an immense amount of fun and satisfaction out of lifting loads of mud into a cart, even though your boots were leaking and you knew there was not enough in the kitty to buy another pair? Would they like to know about the way light could stream down a blue hillside on a spring noon, how a lark could suddenly leap into a pale, washed skye after a night of storm and make the air ring with song, of how it was possible to get by every sort of difficulty as long as there was this knowledge that you were all in it together, this solidarity with rock and sun and bird? I believed they would.
Katharine Stewart (A Croft in the Hills)