“
Humans are amphibians...half spirit and half animal...as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
Life is just a series of peaks and troughs. And you don't know whether you're in a trough until you're climbing out, or on a peak until you're coming down. And that's it you know, you never know what's round the corner. But it's all good. "If you want the rainbow, you've gotta put up with the rain." Do you know which "philosopher" said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she's just a big pair of tits.
”
”
Ricky Gervais (Office, the Scripts)
“
Life is just a series of peaks and troughs, and you don't whether you're in a trough until you're climbing out, or on a peak until you're coming down. And that's it, you know, you never know what's round the corner. But it's all good. "If you want the rainbow you've got to put up with the rain". Do you know which "philosopher" said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she's just a big pair of tits.
”
”
David Brent
“
If you ride the bucking peaks and troughs of celebrity long enough you become a national treasure. If you have the sense to die in mysterious circumstances you become a legend
”
”
Kate Lord Brown (The Beauty Chorus)
“
Only the backward look, the well-researched history could tell peaks and troughs from portals.
”
”
Ian McEwan (Lessons)
“
Now, it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, [God] relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else... It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be... He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper throughs than anyone else.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
It's aiming for the peaks,' I tell him, 'and swimming through the troughs so that there are moments where you can just float under the sun and see how far you've come.
”
”
Rebecca Lim (Tiger Daughter)
“
Only after I had learned those boundaries and generalities of my grief was I able to venture further into the mountains and valleys, the peaks and troughs of my despair. And as I traversed them-breathing a sigh of relief thinking that I'd conquered the worst of it-only then would I finally arrive at the truth about loss, the part no one ever warns you about: that grief is a city all of its own, built high on a hill and surrounded by stone walls. It is a fortress that you will inhabit for the rest of your life, walking its dead-end roads forever. The trick is to stop trying to escape and, instead, to make yourself at home.
”
”
Bianca Marais (Hum If You Don't Know the Words)
“
Marriage is never static. There are peaks and troughs, cycles. It is easy to forget that this shifting landscape is really only ever a reflection of the self. Our capacity for attachment determines the kind of mate we attract, and it is through this mate that we are forever transformed – marriage as alchemy, but also as a mirror.
”
”
Antonella Gambotto-Burke (Mama: Dispatches from the Frontline of Love)
“
I was over forty years old and I felt like I hadn’t been born yet. I had spent my whole life studying and reading literature, dissecting and analysing the emotions of others while feeling nothing myself. I was vulnerable, ripe, hanging low and alone, yearning with all my being to be picked for something special. I had lived my life in a steady, British drizzle. I wanted tornadoes, hurricanes, whirlwinds and earthquakes. I wanted disasters and triumphs, highs and lows, peaks and troughs; I wanted every extreme of every feeling I’d never known.
”
”
Steve Justice (The One: The Tale of a Lost Romantic in Seoul)
“
Feelings are up and down, they have peaks and troughs. Often, feelings generated by other causes get tangled up with a decision and color one’s vision. Nothing short of commandment living (often in spite of feelings) can keep life stable. The peaks and troughs grow larger as they are allowed to become the life motivating force;7 however, on the other hand, they tend to flatten out as life becomes commandment oriented.
”
”
Jay E. Adams (The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling (Jay Adams Library))
“
I have always found that the Trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly those of sex. This may surprise you, because, of course, there is more physical energy, and therefore more potential appetite, at the Peak periods; but you must remember that the powers of resistance are then also at their highest. The health and spirits which you... use in producing lust can also... be very easily used for work or play or thought or innocuous merriment. The attack has a much better chance of success when the man's whole inner world is drab and cold and empty. And it is also to be noted that the Trough sexuality is subtly different in quality from that of the Peak - much less likely to lead to... "being in love," much more easily drawn into perversions, much less... generous and imaginative and even spiritual... It is the same with other desires of the flesh. You are much more likely to make [a] man a sound drunkard by pressing drink on him as an anodyne when he is dull and weary... than... when he is happy...
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
The universe cannot slide into stasis. It must reach a climax and then begin again. The universe is orgasmic, not “happy”, not “tranquil”. Its job is to achieve peaks, not plateaus and flatlines. If you have peaks, you necessarily have troughs. This really is a rollercoaster ride. It’s inevitable. It’s built into reality. Existence is made of sinusoids, the archetypal rollercoasters, permanently cycling between peaks and troughs. If God is the ultimate peak (zero mental entropy), the Big Bang is the ultimate trough (maximum mental entropy). Do you have the courage and fortitude to be a God? Remember, it’s a rollercoaster ride. You must be ready for the troughs. There are as many snakes as ladders. Everyone’s trying to drag you down.
”
”
Thomas Stark (The Stairway to Consciousness: The Birth of Self-Awareness from Unconscious Archetypes (The Truth Series Book 12))
“
He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during those trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best... He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
In moments of helplessness, I always seem to travel north. I have a kind of boreal wanderlust, an urge towards the top of the world where the ice intrudes. In the cold, I find I can think straight; the air feels clean and uncluttered. I have faith in the practicality of the north, its ability to prepare and endure, the peaks and troughs of its seasons.
”
”
Katherine May (Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times)
“
He relies on troughs even more than on peaks; some of His special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
Life is made of peaks & troughs. If you don’t like going up and down then you must live your life standing in one spot.
”
”
Alex Zar
“
...in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
I say is someone in there?’ The voice is the young post-New formalist from
Pittsburgh who affects Continental and wears an ascot that won’t stay tight, with that
hesitant knocking of when you know perfectly well someone’s in there, the
bathroom door composed of thirty-six that’s three times a lengthwise twelve
recessed two-bevelled squares in a warped rectangle of steam-softened wood, not
quite white, the bottom outside corner right here raw wood and mangled from
hitting the cabinets’ bottom drawer’s wicked metal knob, through the door and
offset ‘Red’ and glowering actors and calendar and very crowded scene and pubic
spirals of pale blue smoke from the elephant-colored rubble of ash and little
blackened chunks in the foil funnel’s cone, the smoke’s baby-blanket blue that’s sent
her sliding down along the wall past knotted washcloth, towel rack, blood-flower
wallpaper and intricately grimed electrical outlet, the light sharp bitter tint of a heated
sky’s blue that’s left her uprightly fetal with chin on knees in yet another North
American bathroom, deveiled, too pretty for words, maybe the Prettiest Girl Of All
Time (Prettiest G.O.A.T.), knees to chest, slew-footed by the radiant chill of the
claw-footed tub’s porcelain, Molly’s had somebody lacquer the tub in blue, lacquer,
she’s holding the bottle, recalling vividly its slogan for the past generation was The
Choice of a Nude Generation, when she was of back-pocket height and prettier by
far than any of the peach-colored titans they’d gazed up at, his hand in her lap her
hand in the box and rooting down past candy for the Prize, more fun way too much
fun inside her veil on the counter above her, the stuff in the funnel exhausted though
it’s still smoking thinly, its graph reaching its highest spiked prick, peak, the arrow’s
best descent, so good she can’t stand it and reaches out for the cold tub’s rim’s cold
edge to pull herself up as the white- party-noise reaches, for her, the sort of
stereophonic precipice of volume to teeter on just before the speaker’s blow, people
barely twitching and conversations strettoing against a ghastly old pre-Carter thing
saying ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ Joelle’s limbs have been removed to a distance
where their acknowledgement of her commands seems like magic, both clogs simply
gone, nowhere in sight, and socks oddly wet, pulls her face up to face the unclean
medicine-cabinet mirror, twin roses of flame still hanging in the glass’s corner, hair
of the flame she’s eaten now trailing like the legs of wasps through the air of the
glass she uses to locate the de-faced veil and what’s inside it, loading up the cone
again, the ashes from the last load make the world's best filter: this is a fact. Breathes
in and out like a savvy diver…
–and is knelt vomiting over the lip of the cool blue tub, gouges on the tub’s
lip revealing sandy white gritty stuff below the lacquer and porcelain, vomiting
muddy juice and blue smoke and dots of mercuric red into the claw-footed trough,
and can hear again and seems to see, against the fire of her closed lids’ blood, bladed
vessels aloft in the night to monitor flow, searchlit helicopters, fat fingers of blue
light from one sky, searching.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
Citing C. S. Lewis, Rachael Givens writes, “God allows spiritual peaks to subside into (often extensive) troughs in order [to have] ‘servants who can finally become Sons,’ ‘stand[ing] up on [their] own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish . . . growing into the sort of creature He wants [them] to be.’ ” [12]
”
”
Terryl L. Givens (Letter to a Doubter (Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture Book 4))
“
There are certain words that have such a pleasing consistency, texture, taste, colour, odour, network, milieu, stance, poise, arch, crane, comfort, peak, trough; limpid, tepid, torpid, torqued, liquid, lacquered, honeyed, latched, thatched, throstle-sunged, spangled words. The normal pH of these words is between 3.8 and 4.5, so there is some bite to them.
”
”
Eley Williams
“
As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life--his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down. As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
“
C. S. Lewis wrote that “sooner or later [God] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs. . . . It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.” This is because “He wants servants who can finally become sons [and daughters].”22 That may simply be, unavoidably, a wrenching process of spiritual abandonment such as Eve and Adam felt in their expulsion from God’s presence, or we all must have felt upon leaving of our premortal estate. Perhaps this feeling of desolation was entailed in Joseph’s remark that in our quest for understanding, we “must search into and contemplate the darkest abyss.”23 Perhaps many of us will never find God by calling out His name at the entrance to the cave; we must enter its depths.
”
”
Terryl L. Givens (The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith)
“
You know when they get really against women? When all the scholars start studying philosophy.” The misogyny running through fiqh, said the Sheikh, was a matter not merely of scholars’ medieval mores, but of the influence of the Greek philosophers on them. Aristotle, a man who held that the subjugation of women was both “natural” and a “social necessity,” influenced key Muslim thinkers who shaped medieval fiqh, argued Akram. Before Aristotle became a core text, and before the medieval scholars enshrined their views on gender roles in Islamic law, men and women were accorded far more equal freedoms in Islam, he explained. He sketched peaks and troughs in the air, as if plotting the rise and fall of sexism through history. “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” was reaching its crescendo above us. “So why do people get obsessed with following the schools of law?” I asked. “Why not just go back to the Quran?” A wide, bright smile. “People can
”
”
Carla Power (If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran)
“
During those early days, I could merely circle around it, tracing its contours as I tried to familiarize myself with its heft. I learned that just as a map of the world only contains rough outlines of countries—their borders and major cities, as well as the rivers and oceans that dissect and separate them—so too would the cartography of my loss at first be laid out as a broad, abstract concept for me to come to terms with. Only after I had learned those boundaries and generalities of my grief was I able to venture further into the mountains and valleys, the peaks and troughs of my despair. And as I traversed them—breathing a sigh of relief thinking that I’d conquered the worst of it—only then would I finally arrive at the truth about loss, the part that no one ever warns you about: that grief is a city all of its own, built high on a hill and surrounded by stone walls. It is a fortress that you will inhabit for the rest of your life, walking its dead-end roads forever. The trick is to stop trying to escape and, instead, to make yourself at home.
”
”
Bianca Marais (Hum If You Don't Know the Words)
“
For the Hebrew slaves of the Exodus story, a cyclical cosmos implied a repeating pattern of “good and evil” in which one side never ultimately triumphed over the other. The Egyptian cosmos could not account for slaves that escaped the “cosmic” system. But to completely break out of the cyclical conception of the cosmos in the cause of life over death was to posit an end goal of history. The Exodus paradigm of evil slavery followed by the good of freedom in God would be writ large. A directional conception of history would culminate in the ultimate, messianic triumph of good over evil. Instead of the eternal recurrence of repression, the theory went, the ultimate pattern of human history would begin from the trough of Egyptian slavery and peak with the coming of the messianic era. In this idea, alien to the ancient Greeks but central for seventeenth century Puritans, one can discern the seed of the modern idea of progress.
”
”
Mitchell Heisman (Suicide Note)
“
To this day when I inhale a light scent of Wrangler—its sweet sharpness—or the stronger, darker scent of Musk, I return to those hours and it ceases to be just cologne that I take in but the very scent of age, of youth at its most beautiful peak. It bears the memory of possibility, of unknown forests, unchartered territories, and a heart light and skipping, hell-bent as the captain of any of the three ships, determined at all costs to prevail to the new world. Turning back was no option. Whatever the gales, whatever the emaciation, whatever the casualty to self, onward I kept my course. My heart felt the magnetism of its own compass guiding me on—its direction constant and sure. There was no other way through. I feel it again as once it had been, before it was broken-in; its strength and resolute ardency. The years of solitude were nothing compared to what lay ahead. In sailing for the horizon that part of my life had been sealed up, a gentle eddy, a trough of gentle waves diminishing further, receding away. Whatever loneliness and
pain went with the years between the ages of 14 and 20, was closed, irretrievable—I was already cast in form and direction in a certain course.
When I open the little bottle of eau de toilette five hundred different days unfold within me, conversations so strained, breaking slowly, so painstakingly, to a comfortable place. A place so warm and inviting after the years of silence and introspect, of hiding.
A place in the sun that would burn me alive before I let it cast a shadow on me. Until that time I had not known, I had not been conscious of my loneliness. Yes, I had been taciturn in school, alone, I had set myself apart when others tried to engage. But though I was alone, I had not felt the pangs of loneliness. It had not burdened or tormented as such when I first felt the clear tang of its opposite in the form of another’s company. Of Regn’s company. We came, each in our own way, in our own need—listening, wanting, tentatively, as though we came upon each other from the side in spite of having seen each other head on for two years. It was a gradual advance, much again like a vessel waiting for its sails to catch wind, grasping hold of the ropes and learning much too quickly, all at once, how to move in a certain direction. There was no practicing. It was everything and all—for the first and last time. Everything had to be right, whether it was or not. The waters were beautiful, the work harder than anything in my life, but the very glimpse of any tempest of defeat was never in my line of vision. I’d never failed at anything. And though this may sound quite an exaggeration, I tell you earnestly, it is true. Everything to this point I’d ever set my mind to, I’d achieved. But this wasn’t about conquering some land, nor had any of my other desires ever been about proving something. It just had to be—I could not break, could not turn or retract once I’d committed myself to my course. You cannot force a clock to run backwards when it is made to persevere always, and ever, forward. Had I not been so young I’d never have had the courage to love her.
”
”
Wheston Chancellor Grove (Who Has Known Heights)
“
As a nine-year-old, the circadian rhythm would have the child asleep by around nine p.m., driven in part by the rising tide of melatonin at this time in children. By the time that same individual has reached sixteen years of age, their circadian rhythm has undergone a dramatic shift forward in its cycling phase. The rising tide of melatonin, and the instruction of darkness and sleep, is many hours away. As a consequence, the sixteen-year-old will usually have no interest in sleeping at nine p.m. Instead, peak wakefulness is usually still in play at that hour. By the time the parents are getting tired, as their circadian rhythms take a downturn and melatonin release instructs sleep—perhaps around ten or eleven p.m., their teenager can still be wide awake. A few more hours must pass before the circadian rhythm of a teenage brain begins to shut down alertness and allow for easy, sound sleep to begin. This, of course, leads to much angst and frustration for all parties involved on the back end of sleep. Parents want their teenager to be awake at a “reasonable” hour of the morning. Teenagers, on the other hand, having only been capable of initiating sleep some hours after their parents, can still be in their trough of the circadian downswing. Like an animal prematurely wrenched out of hibernation too early, the adolescent brain still needs more sleep and more time to complete the circadian cycle before it can operate efficiently, without grogginess. If this remains perplexing to parents, a different way to frame and perhaps appreciate the mismatch is this: asking your teenage son or daughter to go to bed and fall asleep at ten p.m. is the circadian equivalent of asking you, their parent, to go to sleep at seven or eight p.m. No matter how loud you enunciate the order, no matter how much that teenager truly wishes to obey your instruction, and no matter what amount of willed effort is applied by either of the two parties, the circadian rhythm of a teenager will not be miraculously coaxed into a change. Furthermore, asking that same teenager to wake up at seven the next morning and function with intellect, grace, and good mood is the equivalent of asking you, their parent, to do the same at four or five a.m. Sadly, neither society nor our parental attitudes are well designed to appreciate or accept that teenagers need more sleep than adults, and that they are biologically wired to obtain that sleep at a different time from their parents. It’s very understandable for parents to feel frustrated in this way, since they believe that their teenager’s sleep patterns reflect a conscious choice and not a biological edict. But non-volitional, non-negotiable, and strongly biological they are. We parents would be wise to accept this fact, and to embrace it, encourage it, and praise it, lest we wish our own children to suffer developmental brain abnormalities or force a raised risk of mental illness upon them.
”
”
Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
“
Its February 1, 2018, earnings call was almost exclusively dedicated to highlighting its service revenue, which was $31.15 billion in 2017 and could constitute a Fortune 100 company itself. That revenue is growing at 27 percent a year and represents more than half of Apple’s growth. And while its hardware business is seasonal and subject to wide peaks and troughs, its service business shows consistent, predictable growth quarter over quarter. But guess what? Some people still don’t get it! The Q&A session of that last earnings call was dominated by analyst questions around iPhone supply and demand. It’s enough to make you slam your forehead on your desk.
”
”
Tien Tzuo (Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It)
“
From peak to trough (June 1998 through March 2000), Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway fell 51% in value! During this time, I estimated that Buffett's net worth fell by more than $10 billion. How much Berkshire did Buffett sell? How much Cisco did he buy? Zero point zero. Not tempted by tech stocks, Buffett remained committed to value investing, and it paid off.1 One of the keys to successfully managing your money is to accept, like Buffett did, that there will be times when your style is out of favor or when your portfolio hits a rough patch. It's when you start to reach for opportunities that you can do serious damage to your financial well‐being.
”
”
Michael Batnick (Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments (Bloomberg))
“
In an 1872 essay on poetry that both Vincent and Zola read, the philosopher Hippolyte Taine had described with astonishing prescience the imagery at the end of Vincent’s tortuous journey: Less a style, indeed, than a system of notation, superlatively bold, sincere and faithful, created from instant to instant, out of anything and everything in such a fashion that one never thinks of the words but seems to be in direct touch with the gush of vital thought, with all its palpitations and starts, with its suddenly checked flights and the mighty beating of its wings.… It is queer language, yet true even in its least details, and the only one capable of conveying the peaks and troughs of the inner life, the flow and tumult of inspiration, the sudden concentration of ideas, too crowded to find vent, the unexpected explosion into imagery and those almost limitless blazes of enlightenment which, like the northern lights, burst out and flame in a lyrical mind… Trust the spirit, as sovereign nature does, to make the form; for otherwise we only imprison spirit, and not embody. Inward evermore to outward—so in life, and so in art, which still is life … Poetry, thus conceived, has only one protagonist, the soul and mind of the poet; and only one style—a suffering and triumphant cry from the heart.
”
”
Steven Naifeh (Van Gogh: The Life)
“
Who else is like me? An INTJ? Fuck your type. I am a CUNT through and through. Give me mud and guts. Blood and cuts. Occam's Razor to reasons jugular. You say your point flows from peak to trough, but your highs I only know as lows. The trench is my home. The machine gun is my welcome mat. I may die on paper, but I am no forgotten soldier.
”
”
Lil Low-Cu$$'t (The Swarm)
“
It occurred to me that life was like this. Waves. Peaks and troughs. Highs and lows. The rhythm of life wasn’t a steady line of upward momentum—we’d blaze out if it were.
”
”
Lauren Martin (The Book of Moods: How I Turned My Worst Emotions Into My Best Life)
“
I savoured every heartbeat, every rise and fall of your chest under my hand, not allowing myself to drift off in case I missed even a moment of this night, which I knew would be our last. I stared at you, your profile vaguely backlit by the pale glow of a waxing moon outside, and I tried to memorise the topography of your face: tired eyes tracing your chin, your nose, your forehead, the peaks and troughs of this terrain I’ve come to know as home.
”
”
Hazel Hayes (Better by Far)
“
Many, many rules had begun to bend at the hand of nanotechnology, gene therapy, robotics, artificial intelligence. This produced a lot of good, and a lot of bad. This trade-off has always plagued us. When you make waves, you produce peaks and troughs.
”
”
Matt Spire (Caligatha)
“
audience looks on somberly, the woman, Chai Jing, displays a graph of brown-red peaks with occasional troughs. “This was the PM 2.5 curve for Beijing in January 2013, when there were 25 days of smog in that one month,” explains Ms. Chai, a former Chinese television reporter,
”
”
Anonymous
“
blouse walking on to a stage dimly lit in blue. As an audience looks on somberly, the woman, Chai Jing, displays a graph of brown-red peaks with occasional troughs. “This was the PM
”
”
Anonymous
“
My friend, Flick once said to me that there’s no such thing as a happy ending. Life just goes on and there’s always another episode to the story. All we get is peaks and troughs. Let’s just enjoy this shining peak, shall we?
”
”
Storm Constantine (The Ghosts of Blood and Innocence (Wraeththu Histories, #3))
“
He grins, stretching his arms over his head, looking every bit the self-made man who’s found success in embracing life’s peaks and troughs. Also, looking like a man with the perfect body that just wants to be licked.
”
”
Kendall Hale (The Ex-cavenger Hunt (Happily Ever Mishaps, #1))
“
It turns out that when people assess your skills, they put more weight on your peaks18 than on your troughs. Even if you happened to see Serena Williams repeatedly double-fault on her serve, you’d recognize her excellence if you witnessed just one of her aces. When Steve Jobs flopped with the Apple Lisa, people still deemed him a visionary for his feats with the Mac. And we judge Shakespeare’s genius by his masterpieces (think Hamlet and King Lear), forgiving his forgettable plays (I’m looking at you, Timon of Athens and The Merry Wives of Windsor). People judge your potential from your best moments, not your worst. What if you gave yourself the same grace?
”
”
Adam M. Grant (Hidden Potential)
“
You shiver in the cold night air; you know you should stop and pull an extra layer of clothing from your pack but you cannot summon the will to do it. You have tunnel vision, unable to see anything other than the path ahead. At the same time, another part of your mind is screaming at you to stop this insanity, and reminding you that this is entirely voluntary. You can just quit! Go back to the aid station and hand in your number. Who’s going to care if you do? So how do you keep going when you are so desperate to stop? A big part of it is having been there before. Exposing yourself to a long difficult experience is like sailing along a series of waves. You go up then down then up again, over and over. But the series of waves is not steady and regular. The difference between the peaks and the troughs gets larger and larger as time goes on. In the early stages of a race, the waves are mere ripples, their dips and rises inconsequential – you perhaps notice that the running feels slightly harder for a while and then, some time later, it feels easier again. But as the event continues to unfold, the peaks start to get higher and the troughs lower. After twenty hours of running, the low points see you collapsed in a shrub gazing into an existential void and the highs feel like you’ve been injecting mega-heroin. Once you’ve ridden that roller coaster a few times, you gain enough experience to trust the process. When the bad times start to come... it’s fine, because you were expecting them. Hello, Pain, you think. I was wondering when you’d show up.
”
”
Ian Walker (Endless Perfect Circles: Lessons from the little-known world of ultradistance cycling)
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I never get to step back and take the contented nothingness that exists between people and animals. Most of my interactions that place during emotional peaks and troughs: tearful hellos and good-byes, the sudden impact of stiches and incisions, bandages and casts, drains and catheters, trauma and cancer, three legs and not four. I miss everything in between, everything that counts, all the wonderful convivial silence, the accumulative fundamental background noise that motivates and drives these extremes.
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Nick Trout (Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing, and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon)
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Vlk was beginning to slip off the Peak of Volubility and was heading for either the Trough of Insensibility or the Weepy Place of Sentimentality,
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Graham Brack (Laid In Earth (Josef Slonský Investigations #6))
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For some people, their peak of wakefulness arrives early in the day, and their sleepiness trough arrives early at night. These are “morning types,” and make up about 40 percent of the populace. They prefer to wake at or around dawn, are happy to do so, and function optimally at this time of day. Others are “evening types,” and account for approximately 30 percent of the population. They naturally prefer going to bed late and subsequently wake up late the following morning, or even in the afternoon. The remaining 30 percent of people lie somewhere in between morning and evening types, with a slight leaning toward eveningness, like myself.
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Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
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Identifying Market Direction Market direction, popularly known as “trend” in trading, is one of the most important concepts that you must follow for you to succeed in this industry. Just like you should sell at resistance zones and buy at support areas, you should always trade along the main market direction. You cannot be trying to sell when the majority of traders and the big players are pushing the market up. There is a common phrase that you will hear traders throwing around; that the trend is your best friend. Many traders hear about this concept, but they fail since they do not understand how to identify the main trend. Luckily for you, this guide will show you the best way to do it. Now, in the market, there are things known as peaks and troughs. The peaks are the highest points that you can see the market reaching before turning back. Troughs are the lowest points that the market reaches before going back up. Both of these are minor support and resistance points. If you connect the points using straight lines, you will end up with a zigzag formation. Peaks and troughs Uptrend When the peaks are formed in higher succession, we say the market is in an uptrend. If a new peak is formed higher than the previous one, we call it a higher-high. During an uptrend, the troughs are also formed in higher succession. In short, each new trough is positioned higher than the previous one. When this happens, we say a higher-low has been formed. Collectively, when a market is forming higher Highs and higher Lows concurrently, then an uptrend is formed. During this time, you should only look for buy trades. Downtrend A downtrend happens when the market starts making lower peaks and lower troughs in succession. In short, when a trough is formed lower than the previous one, we have a descending zigzag direction that we call a downtrend. During a downtrend market direction, lower Highs and lower Lows are formed. In a downtrend, you should only be looking for sell trades.
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Mark Swing (Trading Strategies: Day Trading + Swing Trading. A Beginner's Guide to Trading with Easy and Replicable Strategies to Maximize Your Profit. How to Use Tools, Techniques, Risk Management, and Mindset)
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I have a kind of boreal wanderlust, an urge towards the top of the world where the ice intrudes. In the cold, I find I can think straight; the air feels clean and uncluttered. I have faith in the practicality of the north, its ability to prepare and endure, the peaks and troughs of its seasons. The warm weather destinations of the south seem unreal to me, its calendar too unchanging. I love the revolutions that winter brings.
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Katherine May (Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times)
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Time disproves the lies depression tells. Time showed me that the things depression imagined for me were fallacies, not prophecies.
That doesn’t mean time dissolves all mental health issues. But it does mean our attitudes and approaches to our own mind change and often improve via sticking around long enough to gain the perspective despair and fear refuse to give.
People talk of peaks and troughs in relation to mental health. Hills and valleys. You can definitely feel the steep descents and uphill struggles in life. But it is important to remember the bottom of the valley never has the clearest view. And that sometimes all you need in order to rise up again is to keep moving forward.
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Matt Haig (The Comfort Book)
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all of us experience the day in three stages—a peak, a trough, and a rebound. And about three-quarters of us (larks and third birds) experience it in that order. But about one in four people, those whose genes or age make them night owls, experience the day in something closer to the reverse order—recovery, trough, peak.
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Daniel H. Pink (When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing)
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Ray revealed a simple system of what to invest in and in what percentages and amounts. And when we looked back in history, we found that by using his strategy, you would have made money 85% of the time over the last 30 years (1984 through 2013)! That’s only four losing years in the last 30 years (1984 through 2013)—with a maximum loss of 3.93% in a year (and an average negative year of just 1.9%). And one of those four down years was just 0.03%, which most would chalk up to a breakeven. In 2008 you would have been down just 3.93% when the rest of the market lost 51% (from peak to trough)—all by just doing what Ray has shared with us. The plan he shared here has averaged a return of just under 10% per year (net of fees), and it’s an investment plan that you can easily set up for yourself!
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Anthony Robbins (MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (Tony Robbins Financial Freedom))
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The Manifesto for Agile Software Development was put together by a group of developers at a ski resort in Utah in 2001. It contains four simple but powerful value comparisons: individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan. You can apply these principles to any kind of subscription service. Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s the result of iterating a concept over a period of time. Big “boom or bust” product launches can actually be a recipe for burnout: they result in unhealthy peaks and troughs of productivity and inspiration. The idea is to create an environment that supports sustainable development—the team should be able to maintain a constant pace of innovation indefinitely. That’s the only way to stay responsive, to stay agile.
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Tien Tzuo (Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It)
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Although every human being displays an unyielding twenty-four-hour pattern, the respective peak and trough points are strikingly different from one individual to the next. For some people, their peak of wakefulness arrives early in the day, and their sleepiness trough arrives early at night. These are “morning types,” and make up about 40 percent of the populace. They prefer to wake at or around dawn, are happy to do so, and function optimally at this time of day. Others are “evening types,” and account for approximately 30 percent of the population. They naturally prefer going to bed late and subsequently wake up late the following morning, or even in the afternoon.
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Matthew Walker (Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams)
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In November 2013, Credit Suisse published research confirming this, saying that “US net business investment has rebounded – but, at around 1.5% of GDP, still only stands at the trough levels seen during the past two recessions”.[46] It showed that since the early 1980s, the peaks reached by net business investment as a share of GDP have been declining in each economic recovery. As John Smith writes in Imperialism In The Twenty First Century: “A notable effect of the investment strike is that the age of the capital stock in the US has been on a long-term rising trend since 1980 and started climbing rapidly after the turn of the millennium, reaching record levels several years before the crisis.”[47] Smith points out that in the UK the biggest counterpart to the government’s fiscal deficit (the difference between total revenue and total expenditure) of 8.8% of GDP in 2011 was “a corporate surplus of 5.5% of GDP, unspent cash that sucked huge demand out of the UK economy”.[48] The problem is even worse in Japan, where huge corporate surpluses and low rates of investment have been the norm since the economy entered deflation in the early 1990s. According to Martin Wolf in the FT, “the sum of depreciation and retained earnings of corporate Japan was a staggering 29.5% of GDP in 2011, against just [sic] 16% in the US, which is itself struggling with a corporate financial surplus”.[49]
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Ted Reese (Socialism or Extinction: Climate, Automation and War in the Final Capitalist Breakdown)
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The 'hype cycle' has five phases: the technology trigger, the peak of inflated expectations, the trough of disappointment, the slope of enlightenment and the plateau of productivity.
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Dominic Frisby (Bitcoin: the Future of Money?)
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Every cycle has four phases: expansion, peak, contraction, and trough.
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Michele Cagan (Real Estate Investing 101: From Finding Properties and Securing Mortgage Terms to REITs and Flipping Houses, an Essential Primer on How to Make Money with Real Estate (Adams 101 Series))
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That’s the thing with data; if you pull any graph out far enough, the peaks and troughs flatten out. Live long enough and life averages out.
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Abbi Waxman (I Was Told It Would Get Easier)
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Play with emotions. Make them laugh. Make them cry. Cultivate emotional resonance. Embarrassment and awkwardness must be maximized. Explore maximal emotional landscape, with maximum contours, the most beautiful peaks and troughs. Delve as deep as possible. Seek lurid stories. Seek melodrama. It must be a rollercoaster ride like no other.
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Joe Dixon (Why God Should Go to Hell: How God Is Outside the Moral Order)
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Jon had served in uniform from Reagan to Obama, loyally riding the peaks and troughs of the sinusoidal wave of policy fluctuations with seemingly little common ground.
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Mike Bennett (Las Vegas on Twelve Dollars a Day)
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Across continents and time zones, as predictable as the ocean tides, was the same daily oscillation—a peak, a trough, and a rebound. Beneath the surface of our everyday life is a hidden pattern: crucial, unexpected, and revealing.
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Daniel H. Pink (When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing)
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As I travel around the financial services industry today, the most interesting trend I see is the one toward relationship consolidation. Now that Glass-Steagall has been repealed, and all financial services providers can provide just about all financial services, there's a tendency - particularly as people get older - to want to tie everything up... to develop a plan, which implies having a planner. A planner, not a whole bunch of 'em... You've got basically two options. One is that you can sit here and wait for a major investment firm, which handles your client's investment portfolio while you handle the insurance, to bring their developing financial and estate planning capabilities to your client's door. And to take over the whole relationship. In this case, you have chosen to be the Consolidatee. A better option is for you to be the Consolidator. That is, you go out and consolidate the clients' financial lives pursuant to a really great plan - the kind you pride yourselves on. And of course that would involve your taking over management of the investment portfolio.
Let's start with the classic Ibbotson data [Stocks, Bonds, Bills and Inflation Yearbook, Ibbotson Associates]. In the only terms that matter to the long-term investor - the real rate of return - he [the stockholder] got paid more like three times what the bondholder did. Why would an efficient market, over more than three quarters of a centry, pay the holders of one asset class anything like three times what it paid the holders of the other major asset class? Most people would say: risk. Is it really risk that's driving the premium returns, or is it volatility? It's volatility.... I invite you to look carefully at these dirty dozen disasters: the twelve bear markets of roughly 20% or more in the S&P 500 since the end of WWII. For the record, the average decline took about thirteen months from peak to trough, and carried the index down just about 30%. And since there've been twelve of these "disasters" in the roughly sixty years since war's end, we can fairly say that, on average, the stock market in this country has gone down about 30% about one year in five.... So while the market was going up nearly forty times - not counting dividends, remember - what do we feel was the major risk to the long-term investor? Panic. 'The secret to making money in stocks is not getting scared out of them' Peter Lynch.
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Nick Murray (The Value Added Wholesaler in the Twenty-First Century)
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Life’s curve is like a progressive wave: if the peak is the success, the trough is the failure, and the axis is the blurry neutral field of joy and sorrow.
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Chandan Dey (Light and Pain: A Thorn-Laden Journey to Explore Life)
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Rumors about how Olivia’s bones had broken and reknit themselves in bizarre configurations, how her flesh had run in rivulets across her wasted muscles, then solidified again in peaks and troughs, scales and horns.
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Alex Grecian (Red Rabbit)