“
Does she still love you?"
"I don't think so," Magnus said dryly. "She wasn't very pleasant the last time I saw her. Of course, that could be because I've got an eighteen year-old boyfriend with a stamina rune and she doesn't."
Alec sputtered. "As the person being objectified, I ... object to that description of me.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
“
The fact is that we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday become an evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it's a decent girl?"
"Wouldn't I know which one I was?"
"Good God, no. The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.
”
”
Derek Landy (Death Bringer (Skulduggery Pleasant, #6))
“
Mad Eye' Moody on the Avada Kedavra curse: "Not nice," he said calmly. "Not pleasant. And there's no counter curse. There's no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right in front of me.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4))
“
She had been a teenager once, and she knew that, despite the apparent contradictions, a person's teenage years lasted well into their fifties.
”
”
Derek Landy (Mortal Coil (Skulduggery Pleasant, #5))
“
If you want to have a more pleasant,cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, emphatic, consistent, loving parent.
”
”
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
“
Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle would be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.
”
”
Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate)
“
And in that moment, you realize how little control you have over your own destiny. From the time you're born, you have no control; you can't choose your parents, and, unless you're suicidal, you can't choose your death. The only thing you can do is choose the person you love, be kind to others, and make your brutally short stint on earth as pleasant as possible.
”
”
Renee Carlino (Before We Were Strangers)
“
You put in expired contacts?” He sounded personally offended
“Just a little expired.”
“What’s ‘a little’?”
“I don’t know. A few years?”
“What?” His consonants were sharp and precise. Crisp. Pleasant.
“Only a couple, I think.”
“Just a couple of years?”
“It’s okay. Expiration dates are for the weak.”
A sharp sound - some kind of snort. “Expiration dates are so I don’t find you weeping in the corner of my bathroom.”
Unless this dude was Mr. Stanford himself, he really needed to stop calling it his bathroom.
”
”
Ali Hazelwood (The Love Hypothesis)
“
Personally, I think knees should be kept for the eighth or ninth date, or the wedding day. As a nice surprise you know? 'oh, my darling, you have knees! I never would have thought
”
”
Derek Landy (Mortal Coil (Skulduggery Pleasant, #5))
“
Good. I would hate to have you eaten before we even started,” he purred, raking his claws across the wood. “You appear to have the same recklessness as your sister, always rushing into things without thinking them through.”
“Don’t compare me to Meghan,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “I’m not like her.”
“Indeed. She, at least, had a pleasant personality.
”
”
Julie Kagawa (The Lost Prince (The Iron Fey: Call of the Forgotten, #1))
“
Many Introverts are also "highly sensitive," which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you're more apt than the average person to feel pleasantly overwhelmed by Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" or a well-turned phrase or an act of extraordinary kindness. You may be quicker than others to feel sickened by violence and ugliness, and you likely have a very strong conscience.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is what is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or person who explained it to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening . . . Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.
”
”
Alice Walker (Living by the Word: Essays)
“
It turned out that if you saw the same person with some degree of regularity, then the conversation was immediately pleasant and comfortable -- you could pick up where you left off, as it were, rather than having to start afresh each time.
”
”
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
“
Optimist" is a word which here refers to a person, such as Phil, who thinks hopeful and pleasant thoughts about nearly everything. For instance, if an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well, this isn't too bad. I don't have my left arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed," but most of us would say something more along the lines of "Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!
”
”
Lemony Snicket (The Miserable Mill (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #4))
“
Valkyrie Cain got out of the passenger side. She zipped up
her black jacket against the cold, and joined Skulduggery as he
walked up to the front door. She glanced at him, and saw that he was smiling.
"Stop doing that,” she sighed.
“Stop doing what?” Skulduggery responded in that gloriously velvet voice of his.
“Stop smiling. The person we want to talk to lives in the only dark house on a bright street. That’s not a good sign.”
“I didn’t realise I was smiling,” he said.
They stopped at the door, and Skulduggery made a concerted effort to shift his features. His mouth twitched
downwards. “Am I smiling now?”
“No.”
“Excellent,” he said, and the smile immediately sprang back up.
”
”
Derek Landy (Mortal Coil (Skulduggery Pleasant, #5))
“
Annis had never been a people person, unless ‘people person’ was defined as a person who ate people.
”
”
Derek Landy (The Maleficent Seven (Skulduggery Pleasant, #7.5))
“
He crouched at the care window and looked in. "What a lovely family you have. What a charming family. They're all lovely. Except for that one." His finger jabbed the glass. "That one's a bit ugly."
The American stepped towards him. "What? What did you say?"
"Oh, don't worry. I'm sure his personality makes up for his face.
”
”
Derek Landy (Death Bringer (Skulduggery Pleasant, #6))
“
While my insides may be rotten, I still like a good reason to kill someone. It has to be either business, personal, or out of sheer boredom.
”
”
Derek Landy (The Maleficent Seven (Skulduggery Pleasant, #7.5))
“
I don't think so," Magnus said dryly. "She wasn't very pleasant the last time I saw her.Of course that could be because I've got an eighteen-year-old boyfriend with a stamina rune and she doesn't."
Alec sputtered. "As the person being objectified, I ... object to that description of me.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
“
If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA's state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts [...] That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on [...] That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused [...] That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer [...] That loneliness is not a function of solitude [...] That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt [...] That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness [...] That the effects of too many cups of coffee are in no way pleasant or intoxicating [...] That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it's almost its own form of intoxicating buzz.
That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused [...]
That it is permissible to want [...]
That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
I understand perfectly. Darquesse isn't a separate entity. She isn't another person. She's you. If you make the wrong choices, if you stop loving the people who love you, if you allow the world to twist and turn and change you, then yes, the future we've seen will come to pass. But if you fight, and if you kick, and struggle, and refuse to give in to the apathy, or the anger, or the hopelessness, then you'll change the future, and you'll walk your own path. And I'll be right there beside you, Valkyrie. I'll always be beside you.
”
”
Derek Landy (Mortal Coil (Skulduggery Pleasant, #5))
“
4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ.
...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost...
[Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]
”
”
Thomas Jefferson (Letters of Thomas Jefferson)
“
It sounded old. Deserve. Old and tired and beaten to death. Deserve. Now it seemed to him that he was always saying or thinking that he didn't deserve some bad luck, or some bad treatment from others. He'd told Guitar that he didn't "deserve" his family's dependence, hatred, or whatever. That he didn't even "deserve" to hear all the misery and mutual accusations his parents unloaded on him. Nor did he "deserve" Hagar's vengeance. But why shouldn't his parents tell him their personal problems? If not him, then who? And if a stranger could try to kill him, surely Hagar, who knew him and whom he'd thrown away like a wad of chewing gum after the flavor was gone––she had a right to try to kill him too.
Apparently he though he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be...what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness.
”
”
Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon)
“
You’re seventeen. You’re supposed to be dealing with school and hormones and dim-witted parents. You’re supposed to be finding out who you are as a person.”
“But I already know who I am,” Valkyrie said. “I’m a world-breaker.
”
”
Derek Landy (Kingdom of the Wicked (Skulduggery Pleasant, #7))
“
I am perfectly satisfied that my Father and my god is a cheerful, pleasant, lively, and good-natured Being. Why? Because I am cheerful, pleasant, lively and good-natured when I have His Spirit…. That arises from the perfection of His attributes; He is a jovial, lively person, and a beautiful man.
”
”
Heber C. Kimball
“
Neville's a pleasant sort of standby when there's nothing more exciting on the go. A safe, attractive, reliable chap. He's respectful, never having tried to get her into bed which, if she was a better sort of person, she might appreciate.
”
”
Lesley Glaister (A Particular Man)
“
Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.
”
”
Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
“
Lucius shrugged. "Perhaps in time you will find it useful."
"Sure. I'll keep it on my shelf right next to The Idiot's Guide to Becoming a Mythical Creature.''
Lucius actually laughed. "Very funny. I didn't know you made jokes."
"I'm a funny person," I defended myself. "And by the way—I don't snore."
"You do snore. And you mumble, too."
My blood froze. The dream . . . "What? What did you hear?"
"Nothing too intelligible. But it must have been a rather pleasant dream. You sounded ecstatic.
”
”
Beth Fantaskey (Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side (Jessica, #1))
“
Skulduggery."
"Fletcher."
Fletcher stuck out his hand. Skulduggery observed it for a moment.
"I'm sorry, what are we doing now?"
"Shaking hands," Fletcher said. "Like adults. I just want you to know that this past year has changed me. I've grown, as a person. I'm not the same Fletcher you used to know.
"You look a lot like him."
"Well, yeah, but-"
"And you have the same ridiculous hair."
"Can we just shake hands?"
"Of course we can," Skulduggery said, and they shook. "Now what?"
"I, uh...I don't really know. What do adults usually do after they shake hands?"
"Generally, the first thing they do is let go."
"Oh, right," Fletcher said, and Skulduggery took his hand back. "So, Skulduggery, how have you been? You're looking well. That's a really nice tie.
"It's blue."
"And such a nice shade."
Skulduggery looked at Valkyrie. "You promised me he wouldn't be annoying.
”
”
Derek Landy (Kingdom of the Wicked (Skulduggery Pleasant, #7))
“
When we hear a little good and no harm of a person, it is easy and pleasant to imagine more.
”
”
Anne Brontë (Agnes Grey)
“
We seem to feel that a person like Helen Keller can be an inspiration only so long as she remains uncontroversial, one-dimensional. We don't want complicated icons. "People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions," Helen Keller pointed out. "Conclusions are not always pleasant.
”
”
James W. Loewen
“
To have a film where there's an evil figure and a good person fights against the evil figure and everything becomes a happy ending, that's one way to make a film. But then that means you have to draw, as an animator, the evil figure. And it's not very pleasant to draw evil figures
”
”
Hayao Miyazaki
“
From the time you’re born, you have no control; you can’t choose your parents, and, unless you’re suicidal, you can’t choose your death. The only thing you can do is choose the person you love, be kind to others, and make your brutally short stint on earth as pleasant as possible.
”
”
Renee Carlino (Before We Were Strangers)
“
In my opinion, if 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal. If each person were given one quarter-acre, that is 1 1/4 acres to a family of five, that would be more than enough land to support the family for the whole year. If natural farming were practiced, a farmer would also have plenty of time for leisure and social activities within the village community. I think this is the most direct path toward making this country a happy, pleasant land.
”
”
Masanobu Fukuoka (The One-Straw Revolution)
“
but when a person’s so stuck in their own hole of darkness — it hurts like hell when someone shines a light on them. Your eyes have to adjust, and let’s just say it isn’t a pleasant experience; it’s why people stay there.
”
”
Rachel Van Dyken (Toxic (Ruin, #2))
“
He said, “I know somebody you could kiss.”
“Who?” She realized his eyes were amused. “Oh, wait.”
He shrugged. He was maybe the only person Blue knew who could preserve the integrity of a shrug while lying down. “It’s not like you’re going to kill me. I mean, if you were curious.”
She hadn’t thought she was curious. It hadn’t been an option, after all. Not being able to kiss someone was a lot like being poor. She tried not to dwell on the things she couldn’t have.
But now—
“Okay,” she said.
“What?”
“I said okay.”
He blushed. Or rather, because he was dead, he became normal colored. “Uh.” He propped himself on an elbow. “Well.” She unburied her face from the pillow. “Just, like—”
He leaned toward her. Blue felt a thrill for a half a second. No, more like a quarter second. Because after that she felt the too-firm pucker of his tense lips. His mouth mashed her lips until it met teeth. The entire thing was at once slimy and ticklish and hilarious.
They both gasped an embarrassed laugh. Noah said, “Bah!” Blue considered wiping her mouth, but felt that would be rude. It was all fairly underwhelming.
She said, “Well.”
“Wait,” Noah replied, “waitwaitwait.” He pulled one of Blue’s hairs out of his mouth. “I wasn’t ready.”
He shook out his hands as if Blue’s lips were a sporting event and cramping was a very real possibility.
“Go,” Blue said.
This time they only got within a breath of each other’s lips when they both began to laugh. She closed the distance and was rewarded with another kiss that felt a lot like kissing a dishwasher.
“I’m doing something wrong?” she suggested.
“Sometimes it’s better with tongue,” he replied dubiously.
They regarded each other.
Blue squinted, “Are you sure you’ve done this before?”
“Hey!” he protested. “It’s weird for me, ‘cause it’s you.”
“Well, it’s weird for me because it’s you.”
“We can stop.”
“Maybe we should.”
Noah pushed himself up farther on his elbow and gazed at the ceiling vaguely. Finally, he dropped his eyes back to her. “You’ve seen, like, movies. Of kisses, right? Your lips need to be, like, wanting to be kissed.”
Blue touched her mouth. “What are they doing now?”
“Like, bracing themselves.”
She pursed and unpursed her lips. She saw his point.
“So imagine one of those,” Noah suggested.
She sighed and sifted through her memories until she found one that would do. It wasn’t a movie kiss, however. It was the kiss the dreaming tree had showed her in Cabeswater. Her first and only kiss with Gansey, right before he died. She thought about his nice mouth when he smiled. About his pleasant eyes when he laughed. She closed her eyes.
Placing an elbow on the other side of her head, Noah leaned close and kissed her once more. This time, it was more of a thought than a feeling, a soft heat that began at her mouth and unfurled through the rest of her. One of his cold hands slid behind her neck and he kissed her again, lips parted. It was not just a touch, an action. It was a simplification of both of them: They were no longer Noah Czerny and Blue Sargent. They were now just him and her. Not even that. They were only the time that they held between them.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
“
This book is dedicated to you.
Whether you are a Minion or a Skuttlebug or just, you know, a normal person, it’s because of you that I get to do what I love and laughingly call it work.
I know some of you by name and some of you by sight (and some of you by smell, but let’s not get into that) but there are still countless others I have never met, and to all of you I say thank you for your support, your passion, and your lunacy.
”
”
Derek Landy (Last Stand of Dead Men (Skulduggery Pleasant, #8))
“
The machete was needed anytime you had to slash out your own trail. This necessity arose more often than a person who is not a kid with a machete might think.
”
”
Patrick F. McManus (A Fine and Pleasant Misery)
“
Consider the capacity of the human body for pleasure. Sometimes, it is pleasant to eat, to drink, to see, to touch, to smell, to hear, to make love. The mouth. The eyes. The fingertips, The nose. The ears. The genitals. Our voluptific faculties (if you will forgive me the coinage) are not exclusively concentrated here. The whole body is susceptible to pleasure, but in places there are wells from which it may be drawn up in greater quantity. But not inexhaustibly. How long is it possible to know pleasure? Rich Romans ate to satiety, and then purged their overburdened bellies and ate again. But they could not eat for ever. A rose is sweet, but the nose becomes habituated to its scent. And what of the most intense pleasures, the personality-annihilating ecstasies of sex? I am no longer a young man; even if I chose to discard my celibacy I would surely have lost my stamina, re-erecting in half-hours where once it was minutes. And yet if youth were restored to me fully, and I engaged again in what was once my greatest delight – to be fellated at stool by nymphet with mouth still blood-heavy from the necessary precautions – what then? What if my supply of anodontic premenstruals were never-ending, what then? Surely, in time, I should sicken of it.
“Even if I were a woman, and could string orgasm on orgasm like beads on a necklace, in time I should sicken of it. Do you think Messalina, in that competition of hers with a courtesan, knew pleasure as much on the first occasion as the last? Impossible.
“Yet consider.
“Consider pain.
“Give me a cubic centimeter of your flesh and I could give you pain that would swallow you as the ocean swallows a grain of salt. And you would always be ripe for it, from before the time of your birth to the moment of your death, we are always in season for the embrace of pain. To experience pain requires no intelligence, no maturity, no wisdom, no slow working of the hormones in the moist midnight of our innards. We are always ripe for it. All life is ripe for it. Always.
”
”
Jesus I. Aldapuerta (The Eyes: Emetic Fables from the Andalusian De Sade)
“
I believe that if a person wants to reach their full potential, he or she can’t avoid discomfort. Doing things that might not be entirely pleasant is key to achieving long-term objectives
”
”
Martin Meadows (365 Days With Self-Discipline (Simple Self-Discipline #5))
“
That dead-eyed anhedonia is but a remora on the ventral flank of the true predator, the Great White Shark of pain. Authorities term this condition clinical depression or involutional depression or unipolar dysphoria. Instead of just an incapacity for feeling, a deadening of soul, the predator-grade depression Kate Gompert always feels as she Withdraws from secret marijuana is itself a feeling. It goes by many names — anguish, despair, torment, or q.v. Burton's melancholia or Yevtuschenko's more authoritative psychotic depression — but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as It.
It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self's most elementary levels. It is a nausea of the cells and soul. It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its black folds and absorbs into Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every constituent of which means painful harm to the self. Its emotional character, the feeling Gompert describes It as, is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency — sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying — are not just unpleasant but literally horrible.
It is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed. There is no way Kate Gompert could ever even begin to make someone else understand what clinical depression feels like, not even another person who is herself clinically depressed, because a person in such a state is incapable of empathy with any other living thing. This anhedonic Inability To Identify is also an integral part of It. If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain, a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a hell for one.
The authoritative term psychotic depression makes Kate Gompert feel especially lonely. Specifically the psychotic part. Think of it this way. Two people are screaming in pain. One of them is being tortured with electric current. The other is not. The screamer who's being tortured with electric current is not psychotic: her screams are circumstantially appropriate. The screaming person who's not being tortured, however, is psychotic, since the outside parties making the diagnoses can see no electrodes or measurable amperage. One of the least pleasant things about being psychotically depressed on a ward full of psychotically depressed patients is coming to see that none of them is really psychotic, that their screams are entirely appropriate to certain circumstances part of whose special charm is that they are undetectable by any outside party. Thus the loneliness: it's a closed circuit: the current is both applied and received from within.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
Personally, I think knees should be kept for the eight or ninth date, or the wedding day. As a nice surprise, you know? 'Oh, my darling, you have knees! I never would have thought!
”
”
Derek Landy (Mortal Coil (Skulduggery Pleasant, #5))
“
Aurora sagged. "Why is it," she asked, "that every time I'm with you two we end up stealing something big?"
"We always return it," Donegan said, a little defensively. "Maybe not always in one piece or necessarily to the right person but return it we do, and so it is not stealing, it is merely borrowing."
Gracious looked at him. "It's a little bit stealing."
"Anyone who leaves a private jet just lying around deserves to have it stolen."
"It wasn't lying around," said Gracious. "It was locked up tight. It took us an hour to dismantle the security system and get inside."
Donegan looked at him. "You're not helping.
”
”
Derek Landy (The Maleficent Seven (Skulduggery Pleasant, #7.5))
“
Once I stopped expecting to like it, once I stopped demanding that losing weight be easy or pleasant, once I stopped waiting for the band to start playing, paying attention to what went into my mouth became tolerable. Because I wasn’t waiting for it to get better. It’s NEVER going to get better. It just . . . sucks.
”
”
Shonda Rhimes (Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person)
“
This memory was both happy and sad: happy because it was so pleasant, and sad because it made Penelope think about how much she missed Swanburne--the girls, the teachers, Miss Mortimer. Or perhaps it was her own much younger self, that pint-sized person whom she could never be again, whom she missed. It was hard to say.
”
”
Maryrose Wood (The Mysterious Howling (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, #1))
“
Much more than talent or a pleasant personality, perseverance and persistence will open doors for you, if you simply keep working toward your goal and refuse to give up.
”
”
Buzz Aldrin (No Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon)
“
Most people are pleasant when the world is going the way they want. But a person’s character can be seen most clearly when the brokenness of the world has invaded his or her peace, when the way he or she thinks things ought to be is interrupted, disrupted, and dismantled.
”
”
Matt Chandler (The Mingling of Souls: God's Design for Love, Marriage, Sex, and Redemption)
“
What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that men, consciously, that is fully understanding their real interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, wilfully, struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the darkness. So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were pleasanter to them than any advantage...
The fact is, gentlemen, it seems there must really exist something that is dearer to almost every man than his greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical) there is a most advantageous advantage (the very one omitted of which we spoke just now) which is more important and more advantageous than all other advantages, for the sake of which a man if necessary is ready to act in opposition to all laws; that is, in opposition to reason, honour, peace, prosperity -- in fact, in opposition to all those excellent and useful things if only he can attain that fundamental, most advantageous advantage which is dearer to him than all. "Yes, but it's advantage all the same," you will retort. But excuse me, I'll make the point clear, and it is not a case of playing upon words. What matters is, that this advantage is remarkable from the very fact that it breaks down all our classifications, and continually shatters every system constructed by lovers of mankind for the benefit of mankind. In fact, it upsets everything...
One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice, however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy -- is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice.
Of course, this very stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen, more advantageous for us than anything else on earth, especially in certain cases… for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most important -- that is, our personality, our individuality. Some, you see, maintain that this really is the most precious thing for mankind; choice can, of course, if it chooses, be in agreement with reason… It is profitable and sometimes even praiseworthy. But very often, and even most often, choice is utterly and stubbornly opposed to reason ... and ... and ... do you know that that, too, is profitable, sometimes even praiseworthy?
I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! …And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don't know?
You will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one is touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my will should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own normal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic. Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that!
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead)
“
To reach only for that which pleasantly enchants you is the least of imagination, if even imagination at all, by the obvious reality of remaining within your means. The greater of imagination is parallel to risk. It extends beyond your comfort zone or haven, or sense of beauty, or what you personally believe suits you in exploration of what may not.
”
”
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
“
Integrity is unity of the personality; it implies being brutally honest with ourselves about our intentionality. Since intentionality is inextricably bound up with the daimonic, this is never an easy, nor always pleasant pursuit. But being willing to admit our daimonic tendencies - to know them consciously and to wisely oversee them - brings with it the invaluable blessing of freedom, vigor, inner strength, and self-acceptance.
”
”
Stephen A. Diamond (Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil and Creativity (Suny Series in the Philosophy of Psychology))
“
Could it be that we don’t want to think badly of Woodrow Wilson? We seem to feel that a person like Helen Keller can be an inspiration only so long as she remains uncontroversial, one-dimensional. We don’t want complicated icons. “People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions,” Helen Keller pointed out. “Conclusions are not always pleasant.”41 Most of us automatically shy away from conflict, and understandably so. We particularly seek to avoid conflict in the classroom.
”
”
James W. Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong)
“
Ah...Dectective, this is a very private and personal moment for them both. I'm sure you can understand their need for-"
A man stumbled out clutching a sheet round his waist and Valkyrie's eyes widened. "Whoa," she said as he hummed into a table. He was tall and sandy-haired and his physique was jaw-dropping lay amazing. "No way," she said. "Scapegrace?"
The man looked at her, and shook his head. The a woman came charging out of the back room, slammed into the man and they both went rolling across the floor.
"Give it to me!" The woman screamed. "Give it to me!"
Nye scuttled over. "Mr Scapegrace, you know the procedure cannot be repeated, your brains are in far too deteriorated a condition."
"You! Gave! Me! The! Wrong! Body!
”
”
Derek Landy (Kingdom of the Wicked (Skulduggery Pleasant, #7))
“
When you gossip about another person, listeners unconsciously associate you with the characteristics you are describing, ultimately leading to those characteristics’ being “transferred” to you. So, say positive and pleasant things about friends and colleagues, and you are seen as a nice person. In contrast, constantly complain about their failings, and people will unconsciously apply the negative traits and incompetence to you.
”
”
Richard Wiseman (59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot)
“
only it's easier for me to risk my life for a person than to be pleasant to him when I don't feel like it.
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women / Stage 3)
“
Fast rather than slow, more rather than less--this flashy "development" is linked directly to society's impending collapse. It has only served to separate man from nature. Humanity must stop indulging the desire for material possessions and personal gain and move instead toward spiritual awareness.
Agriculture must change from large mechanical operations to small farms attached only to life itself. Material life and diet should be given a simple place. If this is done, work becomes pleasant, and spiritual breathing space becomes plentiful.
”
”
Masanobu Fukuoka (The One-Straw Revolution)
“
It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance that knows what you know. I see so many of these new folks nowadays, that seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation's got to have some root in the past, or else you've got to explain every remark you make, an' it wears a person out.
”
”
Sarah Orne Jewett (The Country of the Pointed Firs)
“
As I sit today, I am a genuine, often pleasant person. I am able to imitate a human being for long spurts of time, do solid work for a reputable organization, and have, over the breadth of time, proven to be an attentive father and husband. So how to reconcile my past with my current circumstances? Drugs, it seems to me, do not conjure demons, they access them. Was I faking it then, or am I faking it now? Which, you might ask, of my two selves did I make up?
”
”
David Carr (The Night of the Gun)
“
Immediately when you arrive in Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air, as if the quiet were a conscious force which, resenting the intrusion of sound, minimizes and disperses sound straightaway. Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem fainthearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape. At sunset, the precise, curved shadow of the earth rises into it swiftly from the horizon, cutting into light section and dark section. When all daylight is gone, and the space is thick with stars, it is still of an intense and burning blue, darkest directly overhead and paling toward the earth, so that the night never really goes dark.
You leave the gate of the fort or town behind, pass the camels lying outside, go up into the dunes, or out onto the hard, stony plain and stand awhile alone. Presently, you will either shiver and hurry back inside the walls, or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you, something that everyone who lives there has undergone and which the French call 'le bapteme de solitude.' It is a unique sensation, and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears...A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintergration begins inside you, and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it take its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came.
...Perhaps the logical question to ask at this point is: Why go? The answer is that when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude he can't help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast luminous, silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, no other surroundings can provide the supremely satisfying sensation of existing in the midst of something that is absolute. He will go back, whatever the cost in time or money, for the absolute has no price.
”
”
Paul Bowles (Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blue: Scenes from the Non-Christian World)
“
It might be pleasant just to give up, live in the present, enjoying existential personal experiences, living like lotus-eaters from our amazing productive system, without personal responsibility, self-discipline, or thought about the future. But this is impossible, because the productive system could itself collapse, and our external enemies would soon destroy us.
”
”
Carroll Quigley (Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time)
“
There were some people, it seemed, who were incapable of being pleasant about anything. Of course, the cars that such people drove tended to be difficult as well. Nice cars have nice drivers; bad cars have bad drivers. A person's gearbox revealed everything that you could want to know about that person, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #8))
“
It was the usual noontime university scene, but as I sat watching it with renewed attention, I became aware of a certain fact. In his or her own way, each person I saw before me looked happy. Whether they really were happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon at the end of September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness that was new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
“
I'm a peasant
I'm the muzhik
A pest you're destined to play the music
And yes it's pleasant to say it's beauty I'm
Indebted to rest respecting it truly
”
”
Criss Jami (Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality)
“
The most pleasant and useful persons are those who leave some of the problems of the universe for God to worry about.
”
”
Don Marquis
“
When we hear a little good and no harm of a person, it is easy and pleasant to imagine more:
”
”
Anne Brontë (Agnes Grey)
“
It was not pleasant sitting on the porch after Tony had gone; a spot where two people have been talking, however briefly, is not after that a spot for one person to sit alone.
”
”
Shirley Jackson (Hangsaman)
“
Because I am not a touchy-feely person, I always feel this light shock, this surprise, really, when my skin comes into contact with another person’s skin. Sometimes that shock is pleasant, like Oh, here is my body in the world. Sometimes, it is not. I never know which it will be.
”
”
Roxane Gay (Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body)
“
Third places are those needed spaces, neither home nor work, where we are known by our names and valued for being whatever we decide to be -- the clown, the intellectual, the quiet person. Being part of a family is a wonderful thing, and I'm all for team-building at work, but having a place where you don't have to be anything to anyone makes a pleasant breather.
”
”
Wendy Welch (The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: A Memoir of Friendship, Community, and the Uncommon Pleasure of a Good Book)
“
Anys was so skilled with plants and balms that she knew how to extract their fragrant oils, and these she wore on her person so that a light, pleasant scent, like summer fruits and flowers, always preceded her.
”
”
Geraldine Brooks (Year of Wonders)
“
Obviously it won’t do to love somebody and enjoy that person’s company but then, when things between you get difficult, to abandon the person. No, it is clear that as pleasant as love is, it must also be unpleasant, because people are sometimes unpleasant or go through unpleasant things, and if we abandon them at those times and run away from them because they or their situation has become unpleasant, we would have to conclude that there wasn’t much to our loving in the first place.
”
”
Norman Fischer (Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong)
“
Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information.
I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.
Good Heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?
I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
“
This particular argument was pleasanter than most, because the person setting me straight was a pretty seventeen-year-old girl, a college sophomore, and it was no strain to smile at her with good humor as she went about her work.
”
”
Herman Wouk (This is My God: A Guidebook to Judaism)
“
At the end of the party, each person will have selected certain players he would like to see more of, while others he will discard, regardless of how skillfully or pleasantly they each engaged in the pastime. The ones he selects are those who seem the most likely candidates for more complex relationships—that is, games. This sorting system, however well rationalized, is actually largely unconscious and intuitive.
”
”
Eric Berne (Games People Play)
“
Leave a person alone who had a unpleasant past if you cant make his future a pleasant, you would do worse
”
”
Abayasinha
“
Remember that every person only lives for a short time, and you have to make that time pleasant for him.
”
”
David Grossman (A Horse Walks into a Bar)
“
I love jewelry because, no matter how much weight I gain or lose, it always fits.
Sorry I'm not notable person, but this quote got a lot of "Likes" on Facebook.
”
”
Ellen Pleasants
“
Should we change our name?" Saracen asked. "The Dead People, perhaps?"
"The Dead Non-Gender-Specific Persons?" Vex suggested.
"Dead Men and a Girl? Dead Men and a Little Lady?
”
”
Derek Landy (Last Stand of Dead Men (Skulduggery Pleasant, #8))
“
Without curiosity and passion, the world will seem to lack possibility and everything in life will appear pre-ordained. It is important for a person to spend the majority of the day pursuing their passionate interests and enlisting their innate inquisitiveness. Life is so much sweeter when we contemplate pleasant as opposed to distasteful thoughts. We feel most alive when we create an apt channel for our creative impulses, and engage in thoughtful discourse relating to our concordant values.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
As he lay there, fragments of past states of emotion, fugitive felicities of thought and sensation, rose and floated on the surface of his thoughts. It was one of those moments when the accumulated impressions of life converge on heart and brain, elucidating, enlacing each other, in a mysterious confusion of beauty. He had had glimpses of such a state before, of such mergings of the personal with the general life that one felt one's self a mere wave on the wild stream of being, yet thrilled with a sharper sense of individuality than can be known within the mere bounds of the actual. But now he knew the sensation in its fulness, and with it came the releasing power of language. Words were flashing like brilliant birds through the boughs overhead; he had but to wave his magic wand to have them flutter down to him. Only they were so beautiful up there, weaving their fantastic flights against the blue, that it was pleasanter, for the moment, to watch them and let the wand lie.
”
”
Edith Wharton (The Custom of the Country)
“
I hated making small talk and avoided people in the grocery store and other places just so that i wouldn't have to think of things to say. I liked people, i cared about them, and i wanted to be a good person, but don't make me chat idly on the telephone or make pleasant conversation just for the sake of being polite.- Josie Jo Jensen
”
”
Amy Harmon (Running Barefoot)
“
Through applying intention as well as attention to an experience, a person is able to shift the meaning of an experience from a painful or intolerable context to one that is tolerable or pleasant. Over
”
”
Yongey Mingyur (The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness)
“
I know now that a writer cannot afford to give in to feelings of rage, disgust, or contempt. Did you answer someone in a temper? If so, you didn't hear him out and lost track of his system of opinions. You avoided someone out of disgust—and a completely unknown personality slipped out of your ken—precisely the type you would have needed someday. But, however tardily, I nonetheless caught myself and realized I had always devoted my time and attention to people who fascinated me and were pleasant, who engaged my sympathy, and that as a result I was seeing society like the Moon, always from one side.
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV)
“
I'm a crotchety old thing, and always shall be, but I'm willing to own that you are right, only it's easier for me to risk my life for a person than to be pleasant to him when I don't feel like it. It's a great misfortune to have such strong likes and dislikes, isn't it?
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Little Women, #1))
“
This is where I find myself now on the journey that God and I have been on, at the station called hope, the one that comes right after gratitude and somewhere not far from journey's end. It has been "God and I" the whole way. Not so much because he has always been pleasant company. Not because I could always feel his presence when I got up in the morning or when I was afraid to sleep at night. It was because he did not trust me to travel alone. Personally I liked the last miles of the journey better than the first. But, since I could not have the ending without first having the beginning, I thank God for getting me going and bringing me home. And sticking with me all the way.
”
”
Lewis B. Smedes (My God and I: A Spiritual Memoir)
“
I knew my voice was getting testy, and I tried to keep it calm. If you react, the person you're talking to reacts back. First rule of social engineering: stay pleasant and others are much more likely to do the same.
”
”
Ruth Ware (Zero Days)
“
We're authors, too," Donegan said, "and we've been trying to get into the picture-book market. We have this idea for a Where's Wally type thing, except in ours, you'd have to find the one living person hiding in among all the dismembered corpses while the chainsaw-wielding killer hunts him down. You know, for kids."
"We're going to call is Save the Survivor," Gracious said.
”
”
Derek Landy (Last Stand of Dead Men (Skulduggery Pleasant, #8))
“
Pleasantly full as she was, Rika felt like crying. She might dine with someone, but at the end of the meal they would go their separate ways. She couldn’t stay with that person forever. Even with her stomach full of warmth and the taste of delicious food lingering on her tongue, she remained alone. It didn’t matter who she had for company. She was beginning to understand that the more delicious the time she spent with others, the more alone she felt.
”
”
Asako Yuzuki (Butter)
“
The neighbors... hadn't, thankfully, done the usual by saying that Losley was a pleasant neighbor who'd kept herself to herself. (Always delivered in a tone of voice that suggested that, since keeping oneself to oneself was the single greatest thing one English person could do for another, the suspect ought to be excused whatever psychopathic shit they'd visited on other people.)
”
”
Paul Cornell (London Falling (Shadow Police, #1))
“
The highest and most fruitful form of human freedom is found in accepting, even more than in dominating. We show the greatness of our freedom when we transform reality, but still more when we accept it trustingly as it is given to us day after day.
It is natural and easy to go along with pleasant situations that arise without our choosing them. It becomes a problem, obviously, when things are unpleasant, go against us, or make us suffer. But it is precisely then that, in order to become truly free, we are often called to choose to accept what we did not want, and even what we would not have wanted at any price. There is a paradoxical law of human life here: one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free!
To achieve true interior freedom we must train ourselves to accept, peacefully and willingly, plenty of things that seem to contradict our freedom. This means consenting to our personal limitations, our weaknesses, our powerlessness, this or that situation that life imposes on us, and so on. We find it difficult to do this, because we feel a natural revulsion for situations we cannot control. But the fact is that the situations that really make us grow are precisely those we do not control.
”
”
Jacques Philippe (Interior Freedom)
“
The Nightside CSI is only one man, pleasant enough, calm and easy going, and very professional. It probably helps that he has multiple personality disorder with a sub-personality for every speciality and discipline in his profession. One to handle fingerprints, another to examine blood splatter or look for magical residues...He's really quite good at his job though he does tend to argue with himself.
Between himself he knows everything he needs to know. Each sub-personality has a different voice. Some of them are women. I've never asked.
”
”
Simon R. Green (A Hard Day's Knight (Nightside, #11))
“
I'm going to photograph every single person to enter and leave this tattoo parlour."
Finbar rolled his eyes. "And they'll hate that, because people who get dragons drawn on their backs are normally so shy about other people noticing them.
”
”
Derek Landy (Death Bringer (Skulduggery Pleasant, #6))
“
★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.
Peace (upeksha), tranquility or discrimination. There is no distinction between a loved one and a loved one in true love. Your pain is my pain. My happiness is your happiness. Loved ones and loved ones are one body.
There is an element of self-disposal in true love. Happiness is no longer personal. Pain is no longer personal. There is no distinction between us.
“In true love
The distinction between loved ones and loved ones
does not exist.
Your pain is my pain.
러쉬파퍼-가격, 러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입, 러쉬파퍼-불법, 러쉬파퍼-용량, 러쉬파퍼-파는곳, 러쉬파퍼-팝니다, 러쉬파퍼-효과, 러쉬파퍼구입, 러쉬파퍼판매
My happiness is your happiness.
Loved ones and loved ones are one body”
러쉬파퍼-가격,★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입
”
”
랏슈러쉬파퍼정품구입후기 환각제파퍼판매△★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 파퍼 팝니다 파퍼삽니다 파퍼구입
“
★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.
Peace (upeksha), tranquility or discrimination. There is no distinction between a loved one and a loved one in true love. Your pain is my pain. My happiness is your happiness. Loved ones and loved ones are one body.
There is an element of self-disposal in true love. Happiness is no longer personal. Pain is no longer personal. There is no distinction between us.
”
”
물뽕팝니다 클럽파티전용 정품ghb판매 △★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★△ 물뽕구입 물뽕약효 물뽕구입방법!
“
러쉬파퍼 구입 환각제 파퍼 판매 ★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 파퍼 팝니다 파퍼 삽니다 파퍼 구입
“There must be joy (mudita) in love. If love brings only sorrow, what will you love for? If you know how to please yourself, you will know how to please the other person as well as the whole world.
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.
Peace (upeksha), tranquility or discrimination. There is no distinction between a loved one and a loved one in true love. Your pain is my pain. My happiness is your happiness. Loved ones and loved ones are one body.
There is an element of self-disposal in true love. Happiness is no longer personal. Pain is no longer personal. There is no distinction between us.
”
”
랏슈러쉬파퍼구입가격 환각제파퍼판매△★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 파퍼 팝니다 파퍼삽니다 파퍼구입
“
She thoroughly felt the pitch and roll of the ship as it traveled southerly across the ocean. It was a pleasant feeling, an ancient one that every person who had ever loved the sea had felt and cherished--to be rocked to sleep, as if in a mother's arms or in a cradle.
”
”
Victoria Kahler (Seven on the Blue)
“
★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.
Peace (upeksha), tranquility or discrimination. There is no distinction between a loved one and a loved one in true love. Your pain is my pain. My happiness is your happiness. Loved ones and loved ones are one body.
There is an element of self-disposal in true love. Happiness is no longer personal. Pain is no longer personal. There is no distinction between us.
“In true love
The distinction between loved ones and loved ones
does not exist.
Your pain is my pain.
러쉬파퍼-가격, 러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입, 러쉬파퍼-불법, 러쉬파퍼-용량, 러쉬파퍼-파는곳, 러쉬파퍼-팝니다, 러쉬파퍼-효과, 러쉬파퍼구입, 러쉬파퍼판매
My happiness is your happiness.
Loved ones and loved ones are one body”
러쉬파퍼-가격,★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입
”
”
랏슈러쉬파퍼구입후기 환각제파퍼판매△★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 파퍼 팝니다 파퍼삽니다 파퍼구입
“
In Asia, when people kiss each other they use the nose more than the mouth. Using the nose, we can recognize the person; it’s so pleasant.
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh (The Mindfulness Survival Kit: Five Essential Practices)
“
it's easier for me to risk my life for a person than to be pleasant to him when I don't feel like it. It's
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Little Women #1))
“
And when we return next season, what personal gift may I bring you from the city of London?’ ‘Nothing – nothing at all. I want nothing. A watch of gold is a pleasant thing to have.
”
”
Agatha Christie (Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir)
“
As for my personal opinion, to love only prosperity is even somehow unseemly. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, smashing something is occasionally very pleasant too.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead)
“
There must be joy (mudita) in love. If love brings only sorrow, what will you love for? If you know how to please yourself, you will know how to please the other person as well as the whole world.
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.
Peace (upeksha), tranquility or discrimination. There is no distinction between a loved one and a loved one in true love. Your pain is my pain. My happiness is your happiness. Loved ones and loved ones are one body.
There is an element of self-disposal in true love. Happiness is no longer personal. Pain is no longer personal. There is no distinction between us.
“In true love
The distinction between loved ones and loved ones
does not exist.
Your pain is my pain.
러쉬파퍼-가격, 러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입, 러쉬파퍼-불법, 러쉬파퍼-용량, 러쉬파퍼-파는곳, 러쉬파퍼-팝니다, 러쉬파퍼-효과, 러쉬파퍼구입, 러쉬파퍼판매
My happiness is your happiness.
Loved ones and loved ones are one body
”
”
정품러쉬파퍼-가격,★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입
“
This will not be pleasant, this lunch, and you will both feel terrible afterward–it will not at all provide the closure either of you had hoped for–but if there's a silver lining here (and you're not sure there is one), it's the assurance that what you had, whatever it was, had weight. It made an impact. You can put to rest the fear that you were a blip in this other person's life, a footnote. What you did was important. You hurt somebody, and somebody hurt you.
”
”
Raphael Bob-Waksberg (Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory)
“
러쉬파퍼 구입 환각제 파퍼 판매 ★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 파퍼 팝니다 파퍼 삽니다 파퍼 구입
“There must be joy (mudita) in love. If love brings only sorrow, what will you love for? If you know how to please yourself, you will know how to please the other person as well as the whole world.
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.
Peace (upeksha), tranquility or discrimination. There is no distinction between a loved one and a loved one in true love. Your pain is my pain. My happiness is your happiness. Loved ones and loved ones are one body.
There is an element of self-disposal in true love. Happiness is no longer personal. Pain is no longer personal. There is no distinction between us.
”
”
랏슈러쉬파퍼정품구입가격 환각제파퍼판매△★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 파퍼 팝니다 파퍼삽니다 파퍼구입
“
Six has never been a morning person, and from the looks of it, she’s not an afternoon person, either. In all honesty, she’s also not a night person. If I had to guess when her most pleasant time of day occurs, it’s probably while she sleeps, which may be why she hates to wake up so much.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Hopeless (Hopeless, #1))
“
The first time someone young and vibrant dies - someone you look up to, someone you relate to - it blows you back, right off your feet. Oh *#ck, we're all gonna die, nobody knows when, nobody knows how, you think. And in that moment, you realize how little control you have over your own destiny. From the time you're born, you have no control; you can't choose your parents, and, unless you're suicidal, you can't choose you're death. The only thing you can do is choose the person you love, be kind to others, and make your brutally short stint on earth as pleasant as possible.
”
”
Renee Carlino (Before We Were Strangers)
“
There must be joy (mudita) in love. If love brings only sorrow, what will you love for? If you know how to please yourself, you will know how to please the other person as well as the whole world.
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.
Peace (upeksha), tranquility or discrimination. There is no distinction between a loved one and a loved one in true love. Your pain is my pain. My happiness is your happiness. Loved ones and loved ones are one body.
There is an element of self-disposal in true love. Happiness is no longer personal. Pain is no longer personal. There is no distinction between us.
“In true love
The distinction between loved ones and loved ones
does not exist.
Your pain is my pain.
러쉬파퍼-가격, 러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입, 러쉬파퍼-불법, 러쉬파퍼-용량, 러쉬파퍼-파는곳, 러쉬파퍼-팝니다, 러쉬파퍼-효과, 러쉬파퍼구입, 러쉬파퍼판매
My happiness is your happiness.
Loved ones and loved ones are one body
”
”
러쉬파퍼-가격,★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입
“
Both the Gypsies of the 19th century and the Bohemian scribblers and court jester types share similar personality traits. Both groups were known as drifters, dancers, minstrels and troubadours. And for their cheerful and pleasant approach to poverty. They were also known for stalking members of the opposite sex. Alcohol, words and the hue and glow of the artist’s easel were what they lived for
”
”
Karl Wiggins (Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe)
“
The people of New Zealand are generally terribly nice. Everybody we had met so far had been terribly nice to us. Terribly nice and eager to please. I realised now that all this relentless niceness and geniality to which we had been subjected had got to me rather badly. New Zealand niceness is not merely disarming, it’s decapitating as well, and I had come to feel that if Just one more person was pleasant and genial at me I’d hit him.
”
”
Douglas Adams (Last Chance To See)
“
believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
“
Mr. Bingley was good-looking and gentlemanlike; he had a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion. His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.
”
”
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
“
High performers whom exhibit tremendous self-control tend to be burden by their own competence. Studies indicate that being extraordinary competent can place a person under an unusual amount of stress because it raises other people’s expectation of them. The more task that an exemplary employee produces with a ‘go-getting personality’ while maintaining high quality relationships with peers and clients, the more an organization tends to underestimates their actual effort and the more it expects of them. Other people do not comprehend how difficult it is for a high performer to complete multifaceted tasks. They also tend to underestimate how much effort an enterprising person exerts who maintains a positive and pleasant attitude while completing difficult assignments.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it's been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week - a miracle, people say, as if they've been educated from greeting cards. I'm sorry, but nope. Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word. Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It's true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying order and climbing up out of the grave - now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of the earth. My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear mirales because they fear being changed - though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here's what I saw. Here's how it went. Make of it what you will.
”
”
Leif Enger
“
I feel conscious that I should find no reason to regret abandoning so pleasant a manner of life and such valuable privileges to become a wife of anyone. Beside, marriag is not in my opinion, so exceedingly desirable as some persons think. A woman's career is over when she marries. Once married, all is fixed - certainty takes the place of all her pleasant dreams. For her, no more hopes, no more doubts, no more suspense, no more possibility of anything better. She knows what she is and will be until death. For my part, I like to give free scope to my thoughts.
”
”
Klementyna Tańska-Hoffmanowa (The Journal of Countess Françoise Krasinska)
“
Why do we view the boundaries people create for themselves as challenges? Why do we see someone setting a limit and then try to push? Once, I was at a restaurant with a large group of people and the waitress kept touching me. It was really fucking annoying because I don't want to be touched like that unless we are in a sexual relationship. Every time she passed by, she would rub my shoulders or run her hand down my arm and I kept getting more and more irritated but I said nothing. I never do. Do my boundaries exist if I don't voice them? Can people not see my body, the mass of it, as one very big boundary? Do they not know how much effort went into this?
Because I am not a touchy-feely person, I always feel this light shock, this surprise, really, when my skin comes into contact with another person's skin. Sometimes that shock is pleasant, like Oh, here is my body in the world. Sometimes, it is not. I never know which it will be.
”
”
Roxane Gay (Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body)
“
Angus had been hurt deeply by what John Peter had done, that he might have lost a friend in such a horrible way. I could see that. But even aside from the stupid thing John Peter had done, Angus was hurting for me, feeling my pain, taking it with him as he rode off. He might not have understood all of what I was feeling but he had embraced it. He didn't get it after Millie died, but now he knew what loss could do to a person. Empathy just might save the world one day.
”
”
Vera Jane Cook (Pleasant Day)
“
Good decorating is a story, Pleasant. It's a story of taste. It's a story of personality, of character. Look at any good decorated room and I defy you to tell me it doesn't have a story to tell. When I see a well painted room I want to meet the storyteller behind the color chosen. I truly do. Show me a man with taste and I'll show you a man with characte
”
”
Vera Jane Cook (Pleasant Day)
“
I don't know what most people mean when they use the word love. If they haven't contorted their lives around a hope sharp enough to bleed them empty, then I think they're just kidding. A hope undoes what tiny pride you have, and makes you thankful for the undoing, so long as it promises another hour with the person who is now the world. Maybe people mean attractiveness, or affection, or pleasantness, or security. Like the nonbelievers in church who enjoy the hymns or go for the sens of community, but avert their eyes from the cross. I feel sorry for them. They are dead before their time.
”
”
Adam Haslett (Imagine Me Gone)
“
I took all the criticism to heart, and I was really really sad for about two full years of my life. I felt like I sucked at the thing I most wanted to do in the world, and that is not a pleasant feeling. I also started feeling like I was a bad person because some people viscerally hated me so much, which is such a dumb, irrational mindset, but I couldn’t help it. I actually thought about quitting many times. I thought, “Shit, I’m trying my best, and people really don’t like me. Maybe I should just quit so that everyone on earth can celebrate.” Then I got angry and thought, “Fuck you, dickheads. You didn’t work all your life to achieve this, I did. And I’m gonna do it, and do it my way, until someone pulls me off this desk.
”
”
Colin Jost (A Very Punchable Face)
“
It’s all right if this part of your journey is not pleasant. Part of your repatterning is learning to be with unpleasantness in a healthy way. The mature and sober person knows that on some days things simply feel rotten, and that is okay. You are learning to move through distress by simply being with it, without the need to overeat or to act out in any other way.
”
”
Marianne Williamson (A Course In Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever)
“
You make someone into a object of – not so much of pity as of weakness, sickness, stupidity, inefectiveness, do you see what I mean? You hit them for their stupidity and their inability to respond, and when you’ve hurt them, marked them, they’re even more sick and ugly, aren’t they? And they’re afraid and cringing too. Oh, I know this isn’t very pleasant, but you did ask.”
“Go on” he said.
“So you’ve got a frightened, stupid, even disabled person, silenced, made ugly, and what can you do with someone like that, someone who’s unworthy of being treated well? You treat them badly because that’s what they deserve. One thinks of poor little kids that no one love because they’re dirty, sovered in snot and shit, and always screaming. So you beat them because they’re hateful, they’re low, they’re sub-human. That’s all they’re good for, being hit, being reduced even further.
”
”
Ruth Rendell (Simisola (Inspector Wexford, #16))
“
Without knowing it he drew a very pleasant picture of an affectionate, happy family who lived unpretentiously in circumstances of moderate affluence at peace with themselves and the world and undisturbed by any fear that anything might happen to affect their security. The life he described lacked neither grace nor dignity; it was healthy and normal, and through its intellectual interests not entirely material; the persons who led it were simple and honest, neither ambitious nor envious, prepared to do their duty by the state and by their neighbors according to their lights; and there was in them neither harm nor malice. If Lydia saw how much of their good nature, their kindliness, their unpleasing self-complacency depended on the long-established and well-ordered prosperity of the country that had given them birth; if she had an inkling that, like children building castles on the sea sand, they might at any moment be swept away by a tidal wave, she allowed no sign of it to appear on her face.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (Christmas Holiday)
“
In this part of the world, the more you are pleased to see a person, the less is he pleased to see you; whereas if you are disagreeable, he will grow pleasant visibly, his countenance expanding into wider amiability the more your own is stiff and sour.
”
”
Elizabeth von Arnim (Elizabeth and Her German Garden (Elizabeth))
“
If there is something, though, if there is...well, I believe in the things I love...the feel of a good horse under me, the blue along those mountains over yonder, the firm, confident feel of a good gunbutt in my hand, the way the red gold of your hair looks against your throat.
The creak of a saddle in the hot sun and the long riding, the way you feel when you come to the top of a ridge and look down across miles and miles of land you have never seen, or maybe no man has ever seen. I believe in the pleasant sound of running water, the way the leaves turn red in the fall. I believe in the smell of autumn leaves burning, and the crackle of a burning log. Sort of sounds like it was chuckling over the memories of a time when it was a tree.
I like the sound of rain on a roof, and the look of a fire in a fireplace, and the embers of a campfire and coffee in the morning. I believe in the solid, hearty, healthy feel of a of a fist landing, the feel of a girl in my arms, warm and close. Those are the things that matter.
”
”
Louis L'Amour (Westward the Tide)
“
★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.
Peace (upeksha), tranquility or discrimination. There is no distinction between a loved one and a loved one in true love. Your pain is my pain. My happiness is your happiness. Loved ones and loved ones are one body.
There is an element of self-disposal in true love. Happiness is no longer personal. Pain is no longer personal. There is no distinction between us.
“In true love
The distinction between loved ones and loved ones
does not exist.
Your pain is my pain.
러쉬파퍼-가격, 러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입, 러쉬파퍼-불법, 러쉬파퍼-용량, 러쉬파퍼-파는곳, 러쉬파퍼-팝니다, 러쉬파퍼-효과, 러쉬파퍼구입, 러쉬파퍼판매
My happiness is your happiness.
Loved ones and loved ones are one body”
러쉬파퍼-가격,★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입
”
”
정품엑스터시구매후기 "코리아탑" 엑스터시구입방법,△★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★△엑스터시정품판매,엑스터시판매,정품몰리구입방법,
“
This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality. Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch—not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
“
True, most of the people he had known personally were pleasant people who were far from short either of money or good will -- people who would not hesitate to help someone in trouble if they could, or thought they could. By the same token, most of the fiction he had read had been about fantastically selfish, unwashed people without a grain of human kindness even toward themselves, who seemed to be distracted from prolonged acts of suicide only to strike out at the people around them. Between the two, he struck a rough sort of balance.
”
”
James Blish (Welcome to Mars)
“
You are not really dying,” he said, the oddest tone to his voice, “are you?”Jem nodded. “So they tell me.”“I am sorry,” Will said.“No,” Jem said softly. He drew his jacket aside and took a knife from the belt at his waist.“Don’t be ordinary like that. Don’t say you’re sorry. Say you’ll train with me.”
He held out the knife to Will, hilt rst. Charlotte held her breath, afraid to move. She feltas if she were watching something very important happen, though she could not have saidwhat.Will reached out and took the knife, his eyes never leaving Jem’s face. His fingers brushedthe other boy’s as he took the weapon from him. It was the rst time, Charlotte thought,that she had ever seen him touch any other person willingly.“I’ll train with you,” he said.
Jem, Will’s parabatai, treated her with the distant sweet kindness reserved for the littlesisters of one’s friends, but he would always side with Will. Kindly, but rmly, he put Willabove everything else in the world.Well, nearly everything. She had been most struck by Jem when she rst came to theInstitute—he had an unearthly, unusual beauty, with his silvery hair and eyes and delicate features. He looked like a prince in a fairy-tale book, and she might have considered developing an attachment to him, were it not so absolutely clear that he was entirely inlove with Tessa Gray. His eyes followed her where she went, and his voice changed when hespoke to her. Cecily had once heard her mother say in amusement that one of theirneighbors’ boys looked at a girl as if she were “the only star in the sky” and that was theway Jem looked at Tessa.Cecily didn’t resent it: Tessa was pleasant and kind to her, if a little shy, and with herface always stuck in a book, like Will. If that was the sort of girl Jem wanted, she and henever would have suited—and the longer she remained at the Institute, the more sherealized how awkward it would have made things with Will. He was ferociously protectiveof Jem, and he would have watched her constantly in case she ever distressed or hurt him inany way. No—she was far better out of the whole thing.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
“
It is a rare beast that gets such a funeral,” Father remarked, sweating and leaning on his spade. “Lucky cat.”
Personally I think the cat would have been luckier had it lived. Then again, life for a stray, unwanted thing is not always pleasant, so perhaps Father was right after all.
”
”
Maryrose Wood (The Poison Diaries (The Poison Diaries, #1))
“
Nearly all samurai practice Zen - it is the Way of Enlightenment."
"Possibly the light of Zen is so strong that it has blinded me to its virtue." Yoshitoki smiled.
"It is very good discipline for the mind, as the martial arts are for the body." Kenmotsu looked very smug as he said this. "I do Zazen twice a week."
"I think it will do no-one any harm, though personally I find it more pleasant to think than to empty my mind of thought.
”
”
Erik Christian Haugaard (The Samurai's Tale)
“
Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that? Lane. I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person. Algernon.
”
”
Oscar Wilde
“
Although routinely criticized, a pessimist attitude enables a person never to be disappointed with the vagrancies of life or frustrated by the outcome of any event. A pessimist prepares for reality by considering every possible contingency. Having reckoned with the worst possible circumstances, and game planned what to do in the event of the most drastic outcome, a pessimist is pleasantly surprised when they achieve a better than expected result.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
러쉬파퍼 구입 환각제 파퍼 판매 ★카톡:dsk499★텔레그램:dssk49★ 파퍼 팝니다 파퍼 삽니다 파퍼 구입
“There must be joy (mudita) in love. If love brings only sorrow, what will you love for? If you know how to please yourself, you will know how to please the other person as well as the whole world.
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
★카톡:dsk499★텔레그램:dssk49★
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.
”
”
"코리아탑"★카톡:dsk499★텔레그램:dssk49★엑스터시구입방법,엑스터시정품판매,엑스터시판매,정품몰리구입방법
“
My first bit of advice is to not personalize a job loss. The cause for the dismissal was a business calculation. This is difficult for many to grasp; it’s difficult to accept that events just occur. Come to see this as an experience. Obviously not the most pleasant experience, but it is one that you’ll overcome.
”
”
($) (For the (soon) unemployed: You Against Them)
“
As for my own personal opinion. I find it somehow unseemly to love only well-being. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, smashing things is also sometimes very pleasant. I am not standing up for suffering, or for well-being either. I am standing up for my own caprices and for having them guaranteed when necessary.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“
Besides, those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians. As consolation can come to them only from the person who is the cause of their grief, and as their grief is an emanation from that person, it is there, in their grief itself, that they must in the end find a remedy: which it will disclose to them at a given moment, for as long as they turn it over in their minds this grief will continue to show them fresh aspects of the loved, the regretted creature, at one moment so intensely hateful that one has no longer the slightest desire to see her, since before finding enjoyment in her company one would have first to make her suffer, at another so pleasant that the pleasantness in which one has invested her one adds to her own stock of good qualities and finds in it a fresh reason for hope.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
“
Step 17: Get used to giving more than you get.
A natural transition, as we go from being kids to adults, is to go from being self-oriented to other-oriented. When we're little, all this love flows to us, and none is expected back. That ratio has now changed, and if you don't acknowledge it, you will not be a pleasant person to be around.
”
”
Kelly Williams Brown (Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps)
“
...those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you may be sure, from the barbarous pleasure of making others as guilty and unhappy as they are. They are blind and would like everyone to be the same, they are mistaken, and would like everyone else to be mistaken; but if you could see into the depths of their hearts you would find only sorrow and repentance; all these apostles of crime are only evil and desperate people; you would not find a sincere person among them who would not admit, if he were truthful, that their poisonous words or dangerous writings had not been guided only by their passions. And what man in fact can say in cold blood that the bases of morality can be shaken without risk? What being would dare maintain that doing good and desiring good are not essentially the aim of mankind? And how can a man who will do only evil expect to be happy in a society whose strongest concern is the perpetual increase of good? But will not this apologist of crime not shudder himself when he had uprooted from all hearts the only thing which could lead to his conversion? What will stop his servants ruining him, if they have ceased to be virtuous?
”
”
Marquis de Sade (Gothic Tales of the Marquis de Sade)
“
Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and author of 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, says, ‘When you gossip about another person, listeners unconsciously associate you with the characteristics you are describing, ultimately leading to those characteristics being transferred: to you. So, say positive and pleasant things about friends and colleagues, and you are seen as a nice person. In contrast, constantly complain about their failings, and people will unconsciously apply the negative traits and incompetence to you.
”
”
Catherine Gray (The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober)
“
in English and Arabic. Clearly, even personal shoppers had him pegged as a complete geek. The shopper also managed to find some supplies for our magic bags—blocks of wax, twine, even some papyrus and ink—though I doubt Bes explained to her what they were for. After she left, Bes, Carter and I ordered more food from room service. We sat on the deck and watched the afternoon go by. The breeze from the Mediterranean was cool and pleasant. Modern Alexandria stretched out to our left—an odd mix of gleaming high-rises, shabby, crumbling buildings, and ancient ruins. The shoreline highway was dotted with palm trees and crowded with every sort of vehicle from BMWs to donkeys. From our penthouse suite, it all seemed a bit unreal—the raw energy of the city, the bustle and congestion below —while we sat on our veranda in the sky eating fresh fruit and the last melting bits of Lenin’s head.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Throne of Fire (Kane Chronicles, #2))
“
Press conference [on the movie Carrington] yielded the usual crop of daftness. I've been asked if I related personally to Carrington's tortured relationship with sex and replied that no, not really, I'd had a very pleasant time since I was fifteen. This elicited very disapproving copy from the Brits ... No wonder people think we don't have sex in England.
”
”
Emma Thompson (The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film)
“
It’s my contacts. They expired some time ago, and they were never that great to begin with. They messed up my eyes. I’ve taken them off, but . . .” She shrugged. Hopefully in his direction. “It takes a while, before they get better.” “You put in expired contacts?” He sounded personally offended. “Just a little expired.” “What’s ‘a little’?” “I don’t know. A few years?” “What?” His consonants were sharp and precise. Crisp. Pleasant. “Only just a couple, I think.” “Just a couple of years?” “It’s okay. Expiration dates are for the weak.
”
”
Ali Hazelwood (The Love Hypothesis)
“
Deception is the natural defence of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors; to-day it must be prepared to see its black proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against itself. And how natural this is! The death of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defence. Political defence is becoming less and less available, and economic defence is still only partially effective. But there is a patent defence at hand,—the defence of deception and flattery, of cajoling and lying. It is the same defence which peasants of the Middle Age used and which left its stamp on their character for centuries. To-day the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent and wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying. His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers; he must not criticise, he must not complain. Patience, humility, and adroitness must, in these growing black youth, replace impulse, manliness, and courage. With this sacrifice there is an economic opening, and perhaps peace and some prosperity. Without this there is riot, migration, or crime. Nor is this situation peculiar to the Southern United States, is it not rather the only method by which undeveloped races have gained the right to share modern culture? The price of culture is a Lie.
”
”
W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk)
“
WE ALL create the person we become by our choices as we go through life. In a very real sense, by the time we are adult, we are the sum total of the choices we have made. This is not pleasant hearing for the person who wishes to place the responsibility for what he has become on someone else or on that blanket alibi, circumstances beyond his control. To such a person the circumstances always seem to be beyond his control. But I believe most firmly that in the long run every single one of us must be responsible for himself and for his actions.
”
”
Eleanor Roosevelt (You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life)
“
The Christian up to his eyes in trouble can take comfort from the knowledge that in God’s kindly plan it all has a positive purpose, to further his sanctification. In this world, royal children have to undergo extra training and discipline which other children escape, in order to fit them for their high destiny. It is the same with the children of the King of kings. The clue to understanding all his dealings with them is to remember that throughout their lives he is training them for what awaits them, and chiseling them into the image of Christ. Sometimes the chiseling process is painful and the discipline irksome, but then the Scripture reminds us: “The Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons . . . No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Heb 12:6-7,11). Only the person who has grasped this can make sense of Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to them that love God” (KJV); equally, only he can maintain his assurance of sonship against satanic assault as things go wrong. But he who has mastered the truth of adoption both retains assurance and receives blessing in the day of trouble: this is one aspect of faith’s victory over the world. Meanwhile, however, the point stands that the Christian’s primary motive for holy living is not negative, the hope (vain!) that hereby he may avoid chastening, but positive, the impulse to show his love and gratitude to his adopting God by identifying himself with the Father’s will for him.
”
”
J.I. Packer (Knowing God)
“
And then suddenly I realized that I was feeling- well, that I was actually feeling. My old personality was, after months of pills and pleasant nothingness, returning. Just the littlest bit- for I had only stopped taking my little yellow pills the day before- but my essence was already asserting itself, however weakly at this point. I felt a lump in my throat, and I spent the rest of the day walking around this strange and beautiful city, remembering myself, what it used to feel like to be me, before I switched myself off, before I stopped listening to my inner voices.
”
”
Douglas Coupland
“
I'll be right here. Good luck, or break a leg, or something.”
As Jay and Gregory turned and headed into the crowd, my traitorous eyes returned to the corner and found another pair or eyes staring darkly back.
I dropped my gaze for three full seconds, and then lifted my eyes again, hesitant. The drummer was still staring at me, oblivious to the three girls trying to win back his attention. He put up one finger at the girls and said something that looked like, “Excuse me.”
Oh, my goodness. Was he...? Oh, no. Yes, he was walking this way.
My nerves shot into high alert. I looked around, but nobody else was near. When I looked back up, there he was, standing right in front of me. Good gracious, he was sexy-a word that had not existed in my personal vocabulary until that moment. This guy was sexy like it was his job or something.
He looked straight into my eyes, which threw me off guard, because nobody ever looked me in the eye like that. Maybe Patti and Jay, but they didn't hold my stare like he was doing now. He didn't look away, and I found that I couldn't take my gaze off those blue eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked in a blunt, almost confrontational way.
I blinked. It was the strangest greeting I'd ever received.
“I'm...Anna.”
“Right. Anna. How very nice.” I tried to focus on his words and not his luxuriously accented voice, which made everything sound lovely. He leaned in closer. “But who are you?”
What did that mean? Did I need to have some sort of title or social standing to enter his presence?
“I just came with my friend Jay?” Oh, I hated when I got nervous and started talking in questions. I pointed in the general direction of the guys, but he didn't take his eyes off me. I began rambling. “They just wrote some songs. Jay and Gregory. That they wanted you to hear. Your band, I mean. They're really...good?”
His eyes roamed all around my body, stopping to evaluate my sad, meager chest. I crossed my arms. When his gaze landed on that stupid freckle above my lip, I was hit by the scent of oranges and limes and something earthy, like the forest floor. It was pleasant in a masculine way.
“Uh-huh.” He was closer to my face now, growling in that deep voice, but looking into my eyes again. “Very cute. And where is your angel?”
My what? Was that some kind of British slang for boyfriend? I didn't know how to answer without continuing to sound pitiful. He lifted his dark eyebrows, waiting.
“If you mean Jay, he's over there talking to some man in a suit. But he's not my boyfriend or my angel or whatever.”
My face flushed with heat and I tightened my arms over my chest. I'd never met anyone with an accent like his, and I was ashamed of the effect it had on me. He was obviously rude, and yet I wanted him to keep talking to me. It didn't make any sense.
His stance softened and he took a step back, seeming confused, although I still couldn't read his emotions. Why didn't he show any colors? He didn't seem drunk or high. And that red thing...what was that? It was hard not to stare at it.
He finally looked over at Jay, who was deep in conversation with the manager-type man.
“Not your boyfriend, eh?” He was smirking at me now. I looked away, refusing to answer.
“Are you certain he doesn't fancy you?” Kaidan asked. I looked at him again. His smirk was now a naughty smile.
“Yes,” I assured him with confidence. “I am.”
“How do you know?”
I couldn't very well tell him that the only time Jay's color had shown mild attraction to me was when I accidentally flashed him one day as I was taking off my sweatshirt, and my undershirt got pulled up too high. And even then it lasted only a few seconds before our embarrassment set in.
”
”
Wendy Higgins (Sweet Evil (Sweet, #1))
“
It might be pleasant just to give up, live in the present, enjoying existential personal experiences, living like lotus-eaters from our amazing productive system, without personal responsibility, self-discipline, or thought about the future. But this is impossible, because the productive system could itself collapse, and our external enemies would soon destroy us.
Tragedy & Hope p. 1275
”
”
Carroll Quigley
“
Why look'e, young gentleman," said Toby, "when a man keeps himself so very ex-clusive as I have done, and by that means has a snug house over his head with nobody a-prying and smelling about it, it's rather a starling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman (however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with at conweniency) circumstanced as you are.
”
”
Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist)
“
Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things—either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again.
”
”
Socrates (Apology, Crito And Phaedo Of Socrates.)
“
The plant and animal kingdoms (excluding humans) offered some pleasant surprises. Organisms from these realms are much simpler to figure out. Their behaviours are not muddied by personality factors or flawed belief systems. If an insect smells like a fart, you can be sure that the stench has a genetic basis. It is neither trying to make a lofty point, nor is it suffering from an inferiority complex.
”
”
Taona Dumisani Chiveneko (Sprout of Disruption (The Hangman's Replacement # 1))
“
It was strange to be conscious of another person’s existence, to feel it as a close, urgent necessity; a necessity without qualifications, neither pleasant nor painful, merely final like an ultimatum. It was important to know that she existed in the world; it was important to think of her, of how she had awakened this morning, of how she moved, with her body still his, now his forever, of what she thought.
”
”
Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)
“
Society doesn't officially recognize friendship as an institution in the way it recognizes sexual relationships, so there's no real protocol for ending one. If you've been going out, dating, or just sleeping with someone for even a month or two an you want to stop seeing him, you're expected to have a conversation with him letting him know it and giving him some bogus explanation. This conversation is seldom pleasant, and it ranges in tone from brittle adult adult discussions in coffee shops to armed standoffs in day care centers, but once it's over, you at least know your status.
Because there's no formal etiquette for ending a friendship, most people do it in the laziest, most passive and painless way possible, by unilaterally dropping any effort to sustain it and letting the other person figure it out for themselves.
”
”
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
“
러쉬파퍼 구입 환각제 파퍼 판매 ★카톡:dsk499★텔레그램:dssk49★ 파퍼 팝니다 파퍼 삽니다 파퍼 구입
“There must be joy (mudita) in love. If love brings only sorrow, what will you love for? If you know how to please yourself, you will know how to please the other person as well as the whole world.
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
★카톡:dsk499★텔레그램:dssk49★
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.”
― "코리아탑"★카톡:dsk499★텔레그램:dssk49★엑스터시구입방법,엑스터시정품판매,엑스터시판매,정품몰리구입방법
”
”
여성흥분제 추천 1위제품 요힘빈 효과★카톡:dsk499★텔레그램:dssk49★여성흥분제구입방법,요힘빈판매
“
In the dream of the planet it is normal for humans to suffer, to live in fear, and to create emotional dramas. The outside dream is not a pleasant dream; it is a dream of violence, a dream of fear, a dream of war, a dream of injustice. The personal dream of humans will vary, but globally it is mostly a nightmare. If we look at human society we see a place so difficult to live in because it is ruled by fear. Throughout the world we see human suffering, anger, revenge, addictions, violence in the street, and tremendous injustice. It may exist at different levels in different countries around the world, but fear is controlling the outside dream.
”
”
Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
“
Her character was like a country which on first acquaintance seems grand, but inhospitable; but in which presently you discover smiling little villages among fruit trees in the folds of the majestic mountains, and pleasant ambling rivers that flow kindly through lush meadows. But these comfortable scenes, though they surprise and even reassure you, are not enough to make you feel at home in the land of tawny heights and windswept spaces.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham
“
This was really something to experience: free restaurant menu of our choice, smiling and caring assistants who looked like Hollywood stars, warm blankets to cover our feet during the journey, personal video screens, lovely presents… every little thing was taken into account for our personal convenience. Any celebrity would be pleased with this type of service! It was an unforgettable flight—another shock during this holiday, and this time a pleasant one.
”
”
Sahara Sanders (MALDIVES... THE PARADISE (ALL AROUND THE WORLD: A Series of Travel Guides))
“
Do we say that one must never willingly do wrong, or does it depend upon the circumstances? Is it true, as we have often agreed before, that there is no sense in which wrongdoing is good or honourable? Or have we jettisoned all our former convictions in these last few days? Can you and I at our age, Crito, have spent all these years in serious discussions without realizing that we were no better than a pair of children? Surely the truth is just what we have always said. Whatever the popular view is, and whether the alternative in pleasanter than the present one or even harder to bear, the fact remains that to do wrong is in every sense bad and dishonourable for the person who does it.
”
”
Socrates (Apology, Crito And Phaedo Of Socrates.)
“
Who are they for?
Friends. Not necessarily neighbor friends: indeed, the larger share is intended for persons we've met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People who've struck our fancy. Like President Roosevelt. Like the Reverend and Mrs. J. C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo who lectured here last winter. Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year. Or Abner Packer, the driver of the six o'clock bus from Mobile, who exchanges waves with us every day as he passes in a dust-cloud whoosh. Or the young Wistons, a California couple whose car one afternoon broke down outside the house and who spent a pleasant hour chatting with us on the porch (young Mr. Wiston snapped our picture, the only one we've ever had taken). Is it because my friend is shy with everyone except strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us our truest friends? I think yes. Also, the scrapbooks we keep of thank-you's on White House stationery, time-to-time communications from California and Borneo, the knife grinder's penny post cards, make us feel connected to eventful worlds beyond the kitchen with its view of a sky that stops.
”
”
Truman Capote (A Christmas Memory)
“
Truth to tell, it was a bit difficult for him at first to get used to such limitations, but later it somehow became a habit and went better; he even accustomed himself to going entirely without food in the evenings; but instead he was nourished spiritually, bearing in his thoughts the eternal idea of the future overcoat. From then on it was as if his very existence became somehow fuller, as if he were married, as if some other person were there with him, as if he were not alone but some pleasant life's companion had agreed to walk down the path of life with him––and this companion was none other than that same overcoat with its cotton-wool quilting, with its sturdy lining that knew no wear.
”
”
Nikolai Gogol (The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol)
“
Think about the progression of a young relationship. Two people meet for the first time in person. Talk, drink, get to know each other. Next, if there is a next, is the apartments. The unfamiliar number on the door, a brass handle where yours is steel. The strange but pleasant smell of another person’s sheets. Shampoos in the shower, used, but new to you. Loganberry: Okay, why not? Back at your place next time, she opens the fridge, and it’s just … mustards. Sorry.
”
”
Christian Rudder (Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves)
“
Optimist” is a word which here refers to a person, such as Phil, who thinks hopeful and pleasant thoughts about nearly everything. For instance, if an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, “Well, this isn’t too bad. I don’t have my left arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed,” but most of us would say something more along the lines of “Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!
”
”
Lemony Snicket (The Miserable Mill (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #4))
“
In the early months of World War II, San Francisco's Fill-more district, or the Western Addition, experienced a visible revolution. On the surface it appeared to be totally peaceful and almost a refutation of the term “revolution.” The Yakamoto Sea Food Market quietly became Sammy's Shoe Shine Parlor and Smoke Shop. Yashigira's Hardware metamorphosed into La Salon de Beauté owned by Miss Clorinda Jackson. The Japanese shops which sold products to Nisei customers were taken over by enterprising Negro businessmen, and in less than a year became permanent homes away from home for the newly arrived Southern Blacks. Where the odors of tempura, raw fish and cha had dominated, the aroma of chitlings, greens and ham hocks now prevailed. The Asian population dwindled before my eyes. I was unable to tell the Japanese from the Chinese and as yet found no real difference in the national origin of such sounds as Ching and Chan or Moto and Kano. As the Japanese disappeared, soundlessly and without protest, the Negroes entered with their loud jukeboxes, their just-released animosities and the relief of escape from Southern bonds. The Japanese area became San Francisco's Harlem in a matter of months. A person unaware of all the factors that make up oppression might have expected sympathy or even support from the Negro newcomers for the dislodged Japanese. Especially in view of the fact that they (the Blacks) had themselves undergone concentration-camp living for centuries in slavery's plantations and later in sharecroppers' cabins. But the sensations of common relationship were missing. The Black newcomer had been recruited on the desiccated farm lands of Georgia and Mississippi by war-plant labor scouts. The chance to live in two-or three-story apartment buildings (which became instant slums), and to earn two-and even three-figured weekly checks, was blinding. For the first time he could think of himself as a Boss, a Spender. He was able to pay other people to work for him, i.e. the dry cleaners, taxi drivers, waitresses, etc. The shipyards and ammunition plants brought to booming life by the war let him know that he was needed and even appreciated. A completely alien yet very pleasant position for him to experience. Who could expect this man to share his new and dizzying importance with concern for a race that he had never known to exist? Another reason for his indifference to the Japanese removal was more subtle but was more profoundly felt. The Japanese were not whitefolks. Their eyes, language and customs belied the white skin and proved to their dark successors that since they didn't have to be feared, neither did they have to be considered. All this was decided unconsciously.
”
”
Maya Angelou (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1))
“
She was running out the clock on Florence, on the person she currently was. It was a pleasant thought. She was sick to death of herself. That was one of the problems of always being stuck in your own head; the outside world isn’t loud enough to drown out the constant monologue on the inside. The same shit, day after day. Does she like me? Do I look okay? Will I ever be happy? Will I ever be successful? It was like listening to the same song over and over every day for years. Didn’t they torture people that way?
”
”
Alexandra Andrews (Who Is Maud Dixon?)
“
Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or the government.
Hope does not mean we will reform Wall Street swindlers and speculators.
Hope does not mean that the nation’s ministers and rabbis, who know the words of the great Hebrew prophets, will leave their houses of worship to practice the religious beliefs they preach. Most clerics like fine, abstract words about justice and full collection plates, but know little of real hope.
Hope knows that unless we physically defy government control we are complicit in the violence of the state. All who resist keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become enemies of hope.
Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. Hope does not come with the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something.
Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope does not believe in force. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all.
Hope sees in our enemy our own face.
Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state, which saturates our airwaves with lies, seeks to obliterate. Hope is what our corporate overlords are determined to crush. Be afraid, they tell us. Surrender your liberties to us so we can make the world safe from terror. Don’t resist. Embrace the alienation of our cheerful conformity. Buy our products. Without them you are worthless. Become our brands. Do not look up from your electronic hallucinations to think. No. Above all do not think. Obey.
The powerful do not understand hope. Hope is not part of their vocabulary. They speak in the cold, dead words of national security, global markets, electoral strategy, staying on message, image and money.
Those addicted to power, blinded by self-exaltation, cannot decipher the words of hope any more than most of us can decipher hieroglyphics. Hope to Wall Street bankers and politicians, to the masters of war and commerce, is not practical. It is gibberish. It means nothing.
I cannot promise you fine weather or an easy time. I cannot pretend that being handcuffed is pleasant. If we resist and carry out acts, no matter how small, of open defiance, hope will not be extinguished.
Any act of rebellion, any physical defiance of those who make war, of those who perpetuate corporate greed and are responsible for state crimes, anything that seeks to draw the good to the good, nourishes our souls and holds out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others. Hope affirms that which we must affirm. And every act that imparts hope is a victory in itself.
”
”
Chris Hedges
“
What can we do when we have hurt people and nowthey consider us to be their enemy?
Thereare few things to do. The first thing is to take the time to say, “I am sorry, I hurt you out of my ignorance, out of my lack of mindfulness, out of my lack of skillfulness. I will try my best to change myself. I don’t
dare to say anything more to you.” Sometimes, we do not have the intention to hurt, but because we are not mindful or skillful enough, we hurt someone. Being mindful in our daily life is important, speaking in a way that will not hurt anyone.
The second thing to do is to try to bring out the best part in ourselves, to transform ourselves. That is the only way to demonstrate what you have just said. When you have become fresh and pleasant, the other person will notice very soon. Then when there is a chance to approach that person, you can come to her as a flower and she will notice immediately that you are quite different. You may not have to say anything. Just seeing you like that, she will accept you and forgive you. That is called “speaking with your life and not just with words.”
When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight. When you see in yourself the wish that the other person stop suffering,that is a sign of real love. But be careful. Sometimes you may think that you are stronger than you actually are.
To test your real strength, try going to the other person to listen and talk to him or her, and you will discover right away whether your loving compassion is real. You need the other person in order to test. If you just meditate on some abstract principle such as understanding or love, it may be just your imagination and not real understanding or real love. Reconciliation opposes all forms
of ambition, without taking sides.
Most of us want to take sides in each encounter or conflict. We distinguish right from wrong based on partial evidence or hearsay. We need indignation in order to act, but even righteous,
legitimate indignation is not enough. Our world does not lack people willing to throw themselves into action. What we need are people who are capable of loving, of
not taking sides so that they can embrace the whole of reality.
”
”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“
Clarence Hervey might have been more than a pleasant young man, if he had not been smitten with the desire of being thought superior in every thing, and of being the most admired person in all companies. He had been early flattered with the idea that he was a man of genius; and he imagined that, as such, he was entitled to be imprudent, wild, and eccentric. He affected singularity, in order to establish his claims to genius. He had considerable literary talents, by which he was distinguished at Oxford; but he was so dreadfully afraid of passing for a pedant, that when he came into the company of the idle and the ignorant, he pretended to disdain every species of knowledge. His chameleon character seemed to vary in different lights, and according to the different situations in which he happened to be placed. He could be all things to all men—and to all women.
”
”
Maria Edgeworth (Belinda)
“
Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: for God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you. I mean, I walk down the street with friends. I ask, “Did you see him, that person who just walked by?” No, they didn't notice him. I had a very pleasant time on the train coming out here. I haven't traveled on trains in years. I found there were no drawing rooms. I got a bedroom so I could set up my typewriter and look out the window. I was taking photos, too. I also noticed all the signs and what I was thinking at the time, you see. And I got some extraordinary juxtapositions. For example, a friend of mine has a loft apartment in New York. He said, “Every time we go out of the house and come back, if we leave the bathroom door open, there's a rat in the house.” I look out the window, there's Able Pest Control.
”
”
William S. Burroughs
“
I don't know what most people mean when they use the word love. If they haven't contorted their lives around a hope sharp enough to bleed them empty, then I think they're just kidding. A hope that undoes what tiny pride you have, and makes you thankful for the undoing, so long as it promises another hour with the person who is now the world. Maybe people mean attractiveness, or affection, or pleasantness, or security. Like the nonbelievers in church who enjoy the hymns or go for the sense of community, but avert their eyes from the cross. I feel sorry for them. They are dead before their time.
”
”
Adam Haslett (Imagine Me Gone)
“
I've come to the conclusion that buying a house is a lot like courting a woman. You think you know what you are looking for, but you never really can be sure what you are going to end up with, what you are getting yourself into, how long is it going to take or how much its going to cost you. Outer appearances can be deceiving.
There's bound to be surprises- both pleasant ones and the unpleasant. When you see them in person they usually don't look the same as they do in their pictures. You can find them with big backyards and with big front yards, but if you are set on having both, its definitely going to cost you.
”
”
José N. Harris
“
Many introverts are also “highly sensitive,” which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you’re more apt than the average person to feel pleasantly overwhelmed by Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” or a well-turned phrase or an act of extraordinary kindness. You may be quicker than others to feel sickened by violence and ugliness, and you likely have a very strong conscience. When you were a child you were probably called “shy,” and to this day feel nervous when you’re being evaluated, for example when giving a speech or on a first date. Later we’ll examine why this seemingly unrelated
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
One interesting thing is the idea that people have of a kind of science of Aesthetics. I would almost like to talk of what could be meant by Aesthetics.
You might think Aesthetics is a science telling us what's beautiful - almost too ridiculous for words. I suppose it ought to include also what sort of coffee tastes well.
I see roughly this - there is a realm of utterance of delight, when you taste pleasant food or smell a pleasant smell, etc., then there is a realm of Art which is quite different, though often you may make the same face when you hear a piece of music as when you taste good food. (Though you may cry at something you like very much.)
Supposing you meet someone in the street and he tells you he has lost his greatest friend, in a voice extremely expressive of his emotion. You might say: 'It was extraordinarily beautiful, the way he expressed himself.' Supposing you then asked: 'What similarity has my admiring this person with my eating vanilla ice and like it?' To compare them seems almost disgusting. (But you can connect them by intermediate cases.) Suppose someone says 'But this is a quite different kind of delight.' But did you learn two meanings of 'delight'? You use the same word on both occasions. There is some connection between these delights. Although in the first case the emotion of delight would in our judgement hardly count.
”
”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief)
“
I would say that if you’re going to slander a lady’s reputation,” Simon said in a dangerously pleasant tone, “you had better have some hard proof of what you’re saying.”
“Egads, gossip doesn’t require proof,” the young man replied with a wink. “And time will soon reveal the lady’s true character. Hodgeham doesn’t have the means to keep a prime beauty like that—before long she’ll want more than he can deliver. I predict that at the season’s end, she’ll sail off to the fellow with the deepest pockets.”
“Which would be mine,” Simon said softly.
Burdick blinked in surprise, his smile fading as he wondered if he had heard correctly. “Wha—”
“I’ve watched as you and the pack of idiots you run with have sniffed at her heels for two years,” Simon said, his eyes narrowing. “Now you’ve lost your chance at her.”
“Lost my… what do you mean by that?” Burdick asked indignantly.
“I mean that I will afflict the most acute kind of pain, mental, physical, and financial, on the first man who dares to trespass on my territory. And the next person who repeats any unsubstantiated rumors about Miss Peyton in my hearing will find it shoved right back in his throat—along with my fist.” Simon’s smile contained a tigerish menace as he beheld Burdick’s stunned face. “Tell that to anyone who may find it of interest,” he advised, and strode away from the pompous, gape-jawed little runt.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Secrets of a Summer Night (Wallflowers, #1))
“
In the course of working on ourselves, we learn in time that when we stay on the surface of ourselves, which is to say when we are identified with and operating from our outer shell—our personality—we suffer. The more asleep we are to the reality beneath our shells, the less we feel that life is fulfilling, meaningful, and pleasurable. Or, in the language of the enneagram, the more fixated we are, the less we partake of the loving nature of reality, for we have lost our connection with Holy Love. Our suffering is not the result of being alone or of being in the wrong relationship, is not because we don’t have enough money or because we have too much of it, or because of anything of the sort.
Nor is it because our outer surface doesn’t look as pretty as we think it should or because our personality isn’t as pleasant as we think it might be. We suffer because we are living at a distance from our depths—it’s as simple as that. The more our souls are infused with Being, the better we feel and the better life seems to us, no matter what our outer circumstances happen to be.
”
”
Sandra Maitri (The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul)
“
When an upright man is in the greatest distress, which he might have avoided if he could only have disregarded duty, is he not sustained by the consciousness that he has maintained humanity in its proper dignity in his own person and honoured it, that he has no reason to be ashamed of himself in his own sight, or to dread the inward glance of self-examination? This consolation is not happiness, it is not even the smallest part of it, for no one would wish to have occasion for it, or would, perhaps, even desire a life in such circumstances. But he lives, and he cannot endure that he should be in his own eyes unworthy of life. This inward peace is therefore merely negative as regards what can make life pleasant; it is, in fact, only the escaping the danger of sinking in personal worth, after everything else that is valuable has been lost. It is the effect of a respect for something quite different from life, something in comparison and contrast with which life with all its enjoyment has no value. He still lives only because it is his duty, not because he finds anything pleasant in life.
”
”
Immanuel Kant (The Critique of Pure Reason/A Commentary to Kant's Critique)
“
The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentleman, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered lanes; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
“
If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and cannot pay—if we are to be peering into everybody's private life, speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve of their expenditure—why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would be! Every man's hand would be against his neighbor in this case, my dear sir, and the benefits of civilization would be done away with. We should be quarreling, abusing, avoiding one another. Our houses would become caverns, and we should go in rags because we cared for nobody. Rents would go down. Parties wouldn't be given any more. All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt. Wine, wax-lights, comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs, Louis-Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and splendid high-stepping carriage horses—all the delights of life, I say,—would go to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles and avoid those whom they dislike and abuse.
Whereas, by a little charity and mutual forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly enough: we may abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the greatest rascal unhanged—but do we wish to hang him therefore? No. We shake hands when we meet. If his cook is good we forgive him and go and dine with him, and we expect he will do the same by us. Thus trade flourishes—civilization advances; peace is kept; new dresses are wanted for new assemblies every week; and the last year's vintage of Lafitte will remunerate the honest proprietor who reared it.
”
”
William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair)
“
So how, you might ask, do I exclude generously? This issue comes up a lot when I’m organizing large, complicated meetings for clients. These are some of the questions I ask them:
Who not only fits but also helps fulfill the gathering’s purpose?
Who threatens the purpose?
Who, despite being irrelevant to the purpose, do you feel obliged to
invite?
When my clients answer the first two questions, they begin to grasp their gathering’s true purpose. Obviously people who fit and fulfill your gathering’s purpose need to be there. And, though this one is harder, people who manifestly threaten the purpose are easy to justify excluding. (That doesn’t mean they always end up being excluded. Politeness and habit often defeat the facilitator. But the hosts still know deep down who shouldn’t be there.)
It is the third question where purpose begins to be tested. Someone threatens a gathering’s purpose? You can see why to keep him out. But what’s wrong with someone who’s irrelevant to the purpose? What’s wrong with inviting Bob? Every gathering has its Bobs. Bob in marketing. Bob your friend’s girlfriend’s brother. Bob your visiting aunt. Bob is perfectly pleasant and doesn’t actively sabotage your gathering. Most Bobs are grateful to be included. They sometimes bring extra effort or an extra bottle of wine. You’ve probably been a Bob. I certainly have. The crux of excluding thoughtfully and intentionally is mustering the courage to keep away your Bobs. It is to shift your perception so that you understand that people who aren’t fulfilling the purpose of your gathering are detracting from it, even if they do nothing to detract from it. This is because once they are actually in your presence, you (and other considerate guests) will want to welcome and include them, which takes time and attention away from what (and who) you’re actually there for. Particularly in smaller gatherings, every single person affects the dynamics of a group. Excluding well and purposefully is reframing who and what you are being generous to—your guests and your purpose.
”
”
Priya Parker (The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters)
“
I know that it was around this time that I started having a recurring dream. In it, I find myself on the streets of some unnamed city, a neighborhood with trees, storefronts, light traffic. The day is pleasant and warm, with a soft breeze, and people are out shopping or walking their dogs or coming home from work. In one version I'm riding a bike, but most often I'm on foot, and I'm strolling along, without any thoughts in particular, when suddenly I realize that no one recognizes me. My security detail is gone. there's nowhere I have to be. My choices have no consequence. I wander into a corner store and buy a bottle of water or iced tea, making small talk with the person behind the counter. I settle down on a nearby bench, pop open the cap on my drink, take a sip, and just watch the world passing by.
I feel like I've won the lottery.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
The difference could be grouped into categories of mature and immature love. Preferable in almost every way, the philosophy of mature love is marked by an active awareness of the good and bad within each person, it is full of temperance, it resists idealization, it is free of jealousy, masochism, or obsession, it is a form of friendship with a sexual dimension, it is pleasant, peaceful, and reciprocated (and perhaps explains why most people who have known the wilder shores of desire would refuse its painlessness the title of love). Immature love on the other hand (though it has little to do with age) is a story of chaotic lurching between idealization and disappointment, an unstable state where feelings of ecstasy and beatitude combine with impressions of drowning and fatal nausea, where the sense that one has finally found the answer comes together with the feeling that one has never been so lost. The logical climax of immature (because absolute) love comes in death, symbolic or real. The climax of mature love comes in marriage, and the attempt to avoid death via routine (the Sunday papers, trouser presses, remote-controlled appliances). For immature love accepts no compromise, and once we refuse compromise, we are on the road to some kind of cataclysm. 6.
”
”
Alain de Botton (Essays In Love)
“
…95 percent of political commentary, whether spoken or written, is now polluted by the very politics it’s supposed to be about. Meaning it’s become totally ideological and reductive: The writer/speaker has certain political convictions or affiliations, and proceeds to filter all reality and spin all assertion according to those convictions and loyalties. Everybody’s pissed off and exasperated and impervious to argument from any other side. Opposing viewpoints are not just incorrect but contemptible, corrupt, evil […] Political discourse is now a formulaic matter of preaching to one’s own choir and demonizing the opposition. Everything’s relentlessly black-and-whitened…. Since the truth is way, way more gray and complicated than any one ideology can capture, the whole thing seems to me not just stupid but stupefying… How can any of this possibly help me, the average citizen, deliberate about whom to choose to decide my country’s macroeconomic policy, or how even to conceive for myself what that policy’s outlines should be, or how to minimize the chances of North Korea nuking the DMZ and pulling us into a ghastly foreign war, or how to balance domestic security concerns with civil liberties? Questions like these are all massively complicated, and much of the complication is not sexy, and well over 90 percent of political commentary now simply abets the uncomplicatedly sexy delusion that one side is Right and Just and the other Wrong and Dangerous. Which is of course a pleasant delusion, in a way—as is the belief that every last person you’re in conflict with is an asshole—but it’s childish, and totally unconducive to hard thought, give and take, compromise, or the ability of grown-ups to function as any kind of community.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (David Foster Wallace: The Interview)
“
There must be joy (mudita) in love. If love brings only sorrow, what will you love for? If you know how to please yourself, you will know how to please the other person as well as the whole world.
믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다.
카톡【AKR331】라인【SPR331】위커【SPR705】텔레【GEM705】
아로마향 러시아산 러쉬파퍼 정품으로만 판매하고있습니다
구매전에 제품도 제품이지만 무엇보다 안전이 기본입니다
저희도 안전을 기본으로 경영하고있는 건강하고 깔끔한업체입니다
고객님의 주문은 사랑입니다
오늘도 이뻐지시구요 기쁜하루 되세요~ㅎㅎ
Joy is not only for others, but also for yourself. Joy is just joy. If you are truly enjoying joy and healthy joy, it is good for others. But it is not good for others, unless it is pleasant, refreshing, and smiling. If you always have joy and joy, you can be a good person to those around you without doing anything.
Peace (upeksha), tranquility or discrimination. There is no distinction between a loved one and a loved one in true love. Your pain is my pain. My happiness is your happiness. Loved ones and loved ones are one body.
There is an element of self-disposal in true love. Happiness is no longer personal. Pain is no longer personal. There is no distinction between us.
“In true love
The distinction between loved ones and loved ones
does not exist.
Your pain is my pain.
러쉬파퍼-가격, 러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입, 러쉬파퍼-불법, 러쉬파퍼-용량, 러쉬파퍼-파는곳, 러쉬파퍼-팝니다, 러쉬파퍼-효과, 러쉬파퍼구입, 러쉬파퍼판매
My happiness is your happiness.
Loved ones and loved ones are one body
”
”
러쉬파퍼-가격,카톡【AKR331】라인【SPR331】러쉬파퍼-구매, 러쉬파퍼-구입
“
Many introverts are also “highly sensitive,” which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you’re more apt than the average person to feel pleasantly overwhelmed by Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” or a well-turned phrase or an act of extraordinary kindness. You may be quicker than others to feel sickened by violence and ugliness, and you likely have a very strong conscience. When you were a child you were probably called “shy,” and to this day feel nervous when you’re being evaluated, for example when giving a speech or on a first date. Later we’ll examine why this seemingly unrelated collection of attributes tends to belong to the same person and why this person is often introverted. (No one knows exactly how many introverts are highly sensitive, but we know that 70 percent of sensitives are introverts, and the other 30 percent tend to report needing a lot of “down time.”)
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Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
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She said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, words, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off those explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.
If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold, and defenseless, is capable of providing that food.
That's why it's important to keep your distance from people who have frigid breath. Just their presence can put out the most intense fire, with results we're familiar with. If we stay a good distance away from those people, it's easier to protect ourselves from being extinguished.
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Laura Esquivel
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ultimately, most of us would choose a rich and meaningful life over an empty, happy one, if such a thing is even possible. “Misery serves a purpose,” says psychologist David Myers. He’s right. Misery alerts us to dangers. It’s what spurs our imagination. As Iceland proves, misery has its own tasty appeal. A headline on the BBC’s website caught my eye the other day. It read: “Dirt Exposure Boosts Happiness.” Researchers at Bristol University in Britain treated lung-cancer patients with “friendly” bacteria found in soil, otherwise known as dirt. The patients reported feeling happier and had an improved quality of life. The research, while far from conclusive, points to an essential truth: We thrive on messiness. “The good life . . . cannot be mere indulgence. It must contain a measure of grit and truth,” observed geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. Tuan is the great unheralded geographer of our time and a man whose writing has accompanied me throughout my journeys. He called one chapter of his autobiography “Salvation by Geography.” The title is tongue-in-cheek, but only slightly, for geography can be our salvation. We are shaped by our environment and, if you take this Taoist belief one step further, you might say we are our environment. Out there. In here. No difference. Viewed that way, life seems a lot less lonely. The word “utopia” has two meanings. It means both “good place” and “nowhere.” That’s the way it should be. The happiest places, I think, are the ones that reside just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with; likewise, we wouldn’t want to live in the perfect place, either. “A lifetime of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on Earth,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, in his play Man and Superman. Ruut Veenhoven, keeper of the database, got it right when he said: “Happiness requires livable conditions, but not paradise.” We humans are imminently adaptable. We survived an Ice Age. We can survive anything. We find happiness in a variety of places and, as the residents of frumpy Slough demonstrated, places can change. Any atlas of bliss must be etched in pencil. My passport is tucked into my desk drawer again. I am relearning the pleasures of home. The simple joys of waking up in the same bed each morning. The pleasant realization that familiarity breeds contentment and not only contempt. Every now and then, though, my travels resurface and in unexpected ways. My iPod crashed the other day. I lost my entire music collection, nearly two thousand songs. In the past, I would have gone through the roof with rage. This time, though, my anger dissipated like a summer thunderstorm and, to my surprise, I found the Thai words mai pen lai on my lips. Never mind. Let it go. I am more aware of the corrosive nature of envy and try my best to squelch it before it grows. I don’t take my failures quite so hard anymore. I see beauty in a dark winter sky. I can recognize a genuine smile from twenty yards. I have a newfound appreciation for fresh fruits and vegetables. Of all the places I visited, of all the people I met, one keeps coming back to me again and again: Karma Ura,
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Eric Weiner (The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World)
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I find sleeping very odd,” Pattern said. “I know that all beings in the Physical Realm engage in it. Do you find it pleasant? You fear nonexistence, but is not unconsciousness the same thing?” “With sleep, it’s only temporary.” “Ah. It is all right, because in the morning, you each return to sentience.” “Well, that depends on the person,” Shallan said absently. “For many of them, ‘sentience’ might be too generous a term. . . .” Pattern hummed, trying to sort through to the meaning of what she said. Finally, he buzzed an approximation of a laugh. Shallan cocked an eyebrow at him. “I have guessed that what you said is humorous,” Pattern said. “Though I do not know why. It was not a joke. I know of jokes. A soldier came running into camp after going to see the prostitutes. He was white in the face. His friends asked if he had found a good time. He said that he had not. They asked why. He said that when he’d asked how much the woman charged, she’d said one mark plus the tip. He told his friends that he hadn’t realized they were charging body parts now.
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Brandon Sanderson (Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2))
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Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things—either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?
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Plato (Apology)
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Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friends—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.
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Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
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Gautama found that there was a way to exit this vicious circle. If, when the mind experiences something pleasant or unpleasant, it simply understands things as they are, then there is no suffering. If you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away, you continue to feel sadness but you do not suffer from it. There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind. But how do you get the mind to accept things as they are, without craving? To accept sadness as sadness, joy as joy, pain as pain? Gautama developed a set of meditation techniques that train the mind to experience reality as it is, without craving. These practices train the mind to focus all its attention on the question, ‘What am I experiencing now?’ rather than on ‘What would I rather be experiencing?’ It is difficult to achieve this state of mind, but not impossible. Gautama grounded these meditation techniques in a set of ethical rules meant to make it easier for people to focus on actual experience and to avoid falling into cravings and fantasies. He instructed his followers to avoid killing, promiscuous sex and theft, since such acts necessarily stoke the fire of craving (for power, for sensual pleasure, or for wealth). When the flames are completely extinguished, craving is replaced by a state of perfect contentment and serenity, known as nirvana (the literal meaning of which is ‘extinguishing the fire’). Those who have attained nirvana are fully liberated from all suffering. They experience reality with the utmost clarity, free of fantasies and delusions. While they will most likely still encounter unpleasantness and pain, such experiences cause them no misery. A person who does not crave cannot suffer.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
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Hypothetically, then, you may be picking up in someone a certain very strange type of sadness that appears as a kind of disassociation from itself, maybe, Love-o.’
‘I don’t know disassociation.’
‘Well, love, but you know the idiom “not yourself” — “He’s not himself today,” for example,’ crooking and uncrooking fingers to form quotes on either side of what she says, which Mario adores. ‘There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them.’
‘Engulf means obliterate.’
‘I am saying that such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as persons. As existing at all. This interpretation is “existential,” Mario, which means vague and slightly flaky. But I think it may hold true in certain cases. My own father told stories of his own father, whose potato farm had been in St. Pamphile and very much larger than my father’s. My grandfather had had a marvelous harvest one season, and he wanted to invest money. This was in the early 1920s, when there was a great deal of money to be made on upstart companies and new American products. He apparently narrowed the field to two choices — Delaware-brand Punch, or an obscure sweet fizzy coffee substitute that sold out of pharmacy soda fountains and was rumored to contain smidgeons of cocaine, which was the subject of much controversy in those days. My father’s father chose Delaware Punch, which apparently tasted like rancid cranberry juice, and the manufacturer of which folded. And then his next two potato harvests were decimated by blight, resulting in the forced sale of his farm. Coca-Cola is now Coca-Cola. My father said his father showed very little emotion or anger or sadness about this, though. That he somehow couldn’t. My father said his father was frozen, and could feel emotion only when he was drunk. He would apparently get drunk four times a year, weep about his life, throw my father through the living room window, and disappear for several days, roaming the countryside of L’Islet Province, drunk and enraged.’
She’s not been looking at Mario this whole time, though Mario’s been looking at her.
She smiled. ‘My father, of course, could himself tell this story only when he was drunk. He never threw anyone through any windows. He simply sat in his chair, drinking ale and reading the newspaper, for hours, until he fell out of the chair. And then one day he fell out of the chair and didn’t get up again, and that was how your maternal grandfather passed away. I’d never have gotten to go to University had he not died when I was a girl. He believed education was a waste for girls. It was a function of his era; it wasn’t his fault. His inheritance to Charles and me paid for university.’
She’s been smiling pleasantly this whole time, emptying the butt from the ashtray into the wastebasket, wiping the bowl’s inside with a Kleenex, straightening straight piles of folders on her desk.
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David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
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She was a luxuriously made woman, with her velvety skin and curly auburn hair, and her decidedly voluptuous figure... and he was a man who appreciated quality when he saw it. Her features were pleasant, if not precisely beautiful, but the eyes... well, they were extraordinary. Penetrating gray... the light gray of April rain... intelligent, expressive eyes.
Something about her made him want to smile. He wanted to kiss her spinster-stiff mouth until it was soft and warm with passion. He wanted to charm and tease her. Most of all, he wanted to know the person who had written a novel filled with characters whose proper facades concealed such raw emotions. It was a novel that should have been written by a woman of the world, not by a country-bred spinster.
Her written words had haunted him long before he met her. Now, after their tantalizing encounter in her home, he wanted more of her. He liked the challenge of her, the surprises of her, the fact that she had done extremely well for herself. They were alike in that way.
Yet she possessed a gentility that he lacked and very much admired. Just how she could manage to be so natural and simultaneously so ladylike, two qualities that had always before struck him as being completely opposed, was an intriguing mystery.
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Lisa Kleypas (Suddenly You)
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Nobody is ever made happy by winning the lottery, buying a house, getting a promotion or even finding true love. People are made happy by one thing and one thing only – pleasant sensations in their bodies. A person who just won the lottery or found new love and jumps from joy is not really reacting to the money or the lover. She is reacting to various hormones coursing through her bloodstream and to the storm of electric signals flashing between different parts of her brain.
Unfortunately for all hopes of creating heaven on earth, our internal biochemical system seems to be programmed to keep happiness levels relatively constant. There's no natural selection for happiness as such - a happy hermit's genetic line will go extinct as the genes of a pair of anxious parents get carried on to the next generation. Happiness and misery play a role in evolution only to the extent that they encourage or discourage survival and reproduction. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that evolution has moulded us to be neither too miserable nor too happy. It enables us to enjoy a momentary rush of pleasant sensations, but these never last for ever. Sooner of later they subside and give place to unpleasant sensations. (...)
Some scholars compare human biochemistry to an air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature constant, come heatwave or snowstorm. Events might momentarily change the temperature, but the air-conditioning system always returns the temperature to the same set point.
Some air-conditioning systems are set at twenty-five degrees Celsius. Others are set at twenty degrees. Human happiness conditioning systems also differ from person to person. On a scale from one to ten, some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system that allows their mood to swing between levels six and ten, stabilising with time at eight. Such a person is quite happy even if she lives in an alienating big city, loses all her money in a stock-exchange crash and is diagnosed with diabetes. Other people are cursed with a gloomy biochemistry that swings between three and seven and stabilises at five. Such an unhappy person remains depressed even if she enjoys the support of a tight-knit community, wins millions in the lottery and is as healthy as an Olympic athlete (...) incapable of experiencing anything beyond level seven happiness. Her brain is simply not built for exhilaration, come what may. (...) Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can startle it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to the set point.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
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I remember a personal experience. Almost in tears from pain (I had terrible sores on my feet from wearing torn shoes), I limped a few kilometers with our long column of men from the camp to our work site. Very cold, bitter winds struck us. I kept thinking of the endless little problems of our miserable life. What would there be to eat tonight? If a piece of sausage came as extra ration, should I exchange it for a piece of bread? Should I trade my last cigarette, which was left from a bonus I received a fortnight ago, for a bowl of soup? How could I get a piece of wire to replace the fragment which served as one of my shoelaces? Would I get to our work site in time to join my usual working party or would I have to join another, which might have a brutal foreman? What could I do to get on good terms with the Capo, who could help me to obtain work in camp instead of undertaking this horribly long daily march? I became disgusted with the state of affairs which compelled me, daily and hourly, to think of only such trivial things. I forced my thoughts to turn to another subject. Suddenly I saw myself standing on the platform of a well-lit, warm and pleasant lecture room. In front of me sat an attentive audience on comfortable upholstered seats. I was giving a lecture on the psychology of the concentration camp! All that oppressed me at that moment became objective, seen and described from the remote viewpoint of science. By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past. Both I and my troubles became the object of an interesting psychoscientific study undertaken by myself. What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? —“Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
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Viktor E. Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)
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PHYSIOLOGY 1. Sex 2. Age 3. Height and weight 4. Color of hair, eyes, skin 5. Posture 6. Appearance: good-looking, over- or underweight, clean, neat, pleasant, untidy. Shape of head, face, limbs. 7. Defects: deformities, abnormalities, birthmarks. Diseases. 8. Heredity SOCIOLOGY 1. Class: lower, middle, upper. 2. Occupation: type of work, hours of work, income, condition of work, union or nonunion, attitude toward organization, suitability for work. 3. Education: amount, kind of schools, marks, favorite subjects, poorest subjects, aptitudes. 4. Home life: parents living, earning power, orphan, parents separated or divorced, parents’ habits, parents’ mental development, parents’ vices, neglect. Character’s marital status. 5. Religion 6. Race, nationality 7. Place in community: leader among friends, clubs, sports. 8. Political affiliations 9. Amusements, hobbies: books, newspapers, magazines he reads. PSYCHOLOGY 1. Sex life, moral standards 2. Personal premise, ambition 3. Frustrations, chief disappointments 4. Temperament: choleric, easygoing, pessimistic, optimistic. 5. Attitude toward life: resigned, militant, defeatist. 6. Complexes: obsessions, inhibitions, superstitions, phobias. 7. Extrovert, introvert, ambivert 8. Abilities: languages, talents. 9. Qualities: imagination, judgment, taste, poise. 10. I.Q.
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Lajos Egri (The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives)
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Exaggerated Emotional Coherence (Halo Effect) If you like the president’s politics, you probably like his voice and his appearance as well. The tendency to like (or dislike) everything about a person—including things you have not observed—is known as the halo effect. The term has been in use in psychology for a century, but it has not come into wide use in everyday language. This is a pity, because the halo effect is a good name for a common bias that plays a large role in shaping our view of people and situations. It is one of the ways the representation of the world that System 1 generates is simpler and more coherent than the real thing. You meet a woman named Joan at a party and find her personable and easy to talk to. Now her name comes up as someone who could be asked to contribute to a charity. What do you know about Joan’s generosity? The correct answer is that you know virtually nothing, because there is little reason to believe that people who are agreeable in social situations are also generous contributors to charities. But you like Joan and you will retrieve the feeling of liking her when you think of her. You also like generosity and generous people. By association, you are now predisposed to believe that Joan is generous. And now that you believe she is generous, you probably like Joan even better than you did earlier, because you have added generosity to her pleasant attributes.
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Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
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Feminist “theory,” as it is grandiloquently called, is simply whatever the women in the movement come up with in post facto justification of their attitudes and emotions. A heavy focus on feminist doctrine seems to me symptomatic of the rationalist fallacy: the assumption that people are motivated primarily by beliefs. If they were, the best way to combat an armed doctrine would indeed be to demonstrate that its beliefs are false. (…) A feminist in the strict and proper sense may be defined as a woman who envies the male role.
By the male role I mean, in the first place, providing, protecting, and guiding rather than nurturing and assisting. This in turn envolves relative independence, action, and competition in the larger impersonal society outside the family, the use of language for communication and analysis (rather than expressiveness or emotional manipulation), and deliberate behavior aiming at objective achievement (rather than the attainment of pleasant subjective states) and guided by practical reasoning (rather than emotional impulse).
Both feminist and nonfeminist women sense that these characteristically male attributes have a natural primacy over their own. I prefer to speak of“primacy” rather than superiority in this context since both sets of traits are necessary to propagate the race. One sign of male primacy is that envy of the female role by men is virtually nonexistent — even, so far as I know, among homosexuals. Normal women are attracted to male traits and wish to partner with a man who possesses them. (…) The feminists’ response to the primacy of male traits, on the other hand, is a feeling of inadequacy in regard to men—a feeling ill-disguised by defensive assertions of her “equality.”She desires to possess masculinity directly, in her own person, rather than partnering with a man. That is what leads her into the spiritual cul de sac of envy. And perhaps even more than she envies the male role itself, the feminist covets the external rewards attached to its successful performance: social status, recognition, power, wealth, and the chance to control wealth directly (rather than be supported).
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F. Roger Devlin (Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization)
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If you could step inside my world, here is what you would see......
A lifeless soul who is in constant search of not only someone to love but for someone to please show me how to love myself. Someone whose deepest wish is to feel what it is like to truly be loved for who I am.
You would see a desperate being in a constant battle with her emotions. Praying no person could see the obvious envy that consumes her soul as she longingly observes the happiness and the joy that accompanies family and true friendships. A gathering of those who most certainly care about each other, to create cherished memories that will be forever etched in their hearts. Memories they have created to fondly look back on in the years to come.
You would see the forced insincere smile that must be worn when in the public eye because being pleasant is a requirement amongst your peers, even though you are completely dying inside.
You would see how i wake up every morning alone in the barely inhabitable box i reside in that hides me from having to share my pain and sadness with the world. And when the night skies appear, you would see me grateful that it is once again time for me to be reunited with the lonely, yet welcoming call of my bed in that same inhabitable box.
You would see me, most eager to surrender to the sleep that would soon follow, for that is when my pain ceases to exist.
My world....when most of you fantasize and anxiously anticipate what adventures lie before you when the sun comes up, i struggle hour by hour, wishing I could fast forward time, so the pain will cease to exist when the sun goes down.
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Robin Romero
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According to Shaivism, anupaya may also be reached by entering into the infinite blissfulness of the Self through the powerful experiences of sensual pleasures. This practice is designed to help the practitioner reach the highest levels by accelerating their progress through the sakta and sambhava upayas. These carefully guarded doctrines of Tantric sadhana are the basis for certain practices, like the use of the five makaras (hrdaya) mentioned earlier. The experience of a powerful sensual pleasure quickly removes a person’s dullness or indifference. It awakens in them the hidden nature and source of blissfulness and starts its inner vibration. Abhinavagupta says that only those people who are awakened to their own inner vitality can truly be said to have a heart (hrdaya). They are known as sahrdaya (connoisseurs). Those uninfluenced by this type of experiences are said to be heartless. In his words:
“It is explained thus—The heart of a person, shedding of its attitude of indifference while listening to the sweet sounds of a song or while feeling the delightful touch of something like sandalpaste, immediately starts a wonderful vibratory movement. (This) is called ananda-sakti and because of its presence the person concerned is considered to have a heart (in their body) (Tantraloka, III.209-10).
People who do not become one (with such blissful experiences), and who do not feel their physical body being merged into it, are said to be heartless because their consciousness itself remains immersed (in the gross body) (ibid., III.24).”
The philosopher Jayaratha addresses this topic as well when he quotes a verse from a work by an author named Parasastabhutipada:
“The worship to be performed by advanced aspirants consists of strengthening their position in the basic state of (infinite and blissful pure consciousness), on the occasions of the experiences of all such delightful objects which are to be seen here as having sweet and beautiful forms (Tantraloka, II.219).”
These authors are pointing out that if people participate in pleasurable experiences with that special sharp alertness known as avadhana, they will become oblivious to the limitations of their usual body-consciousness and their pure consciousness will be fully illumined. According to Vijnanabhairava:
“A Shiva yogin, having directed his attention to the inner bliss which arises on the occasion of some immense joy, or on seeing a close relative after a long time, should immerse his mind in that bliss and become one with it (Vijnanabhairava, 71).
A yogin should fix his mind on each phenomenon which brings satisfaction (because) his own state of infinite bliss arises therein (ibid., 74).”
In summary, Kashmir Shaivism is a philosophy that embraces life in its totality. Unlike puritanical systems it does not shy away from the pleasant and aesthetically pleasing aspects of life as somehow being unspiritual or contaminated. On the contrary, great importance has been placed on the aesthetic quality of spiritual practice in Kashmir Shaivism. In fact, recognizing and celebrating the aesthetic aspect of the Absolute is one of the central principles of this philosophy.
— B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. 124–125.
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Balajinnatha Pandita (Specific Principles of Kashmir Saivism [Hardcover] [Apr 01, 1998] Paṇḍita, BalajinnaÌ"tha)
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That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do.
That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it.
That no matter how smart you thought you were, you are actually way less smart than that.
That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.
That it is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person.
That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee, it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee.
That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt.
That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.
That it is simply more pleasant to be happy than to be pissed off.
That the people to be most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened.
That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.
That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.
That the cliché ‘I don’t know who I am’ unfortunately turns out to be more than a cliché.
That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear.
That ‘acceptance’ is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it.
That pretty much everybody masturbates.
That having sex with someone you do not care for feels lonelier than not having sex in the first place.
That it is permissible to want.
That everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.
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David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
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Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses").
The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. Music ranges from strictly organized compositions (and their recreation in performance), through improvisational music to aleatoric forms. Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to personal interpretation, and occasionally controversial. Within the arts, music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art, and auditory art. It may also be divided among art music and folk music. There is also a strong connection between music and mathematics. Music may be played and heard live, may be part of a dramatic work or film, or may be recorded.
To many people in many cultures, music is an important part of their way of life. Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as "the harmony of the spheres" and "it is music to my ears" point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, "There is no noise, only sound. Musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez summarizes the relativist, post-modern viewpoint: "The border between music and noise is always culturally defined—which implies that, even within a single society, this border does not always pass through the same place; in short, there is rarely a consensus ... By all accounts there is no single and intercultural universal concept defining what music might be.
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Music (Sing for Joy Songbook)
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The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined. And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities? It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions. What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus. But the further inference from the nerve stimulus to a cause outside of us is already the result of a false and unjustifiable application of the principle of sufficient reason. If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say "the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation! We separate
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Friedrich Nietzsche (Ultimate Collection)
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...he [Perry Hildebrandt] broached the subject of goodness and its relation to intelligence. He'd come to the reception for selfless reasons, but he now saw that he might get not only a free buzz but free advise from, as it were, two professionals.
'I suppose what I'm asking,' he said, 'is whether goodness can ever truly be its own reward, or whether, consciously or not, it always serves some personal instrumentality.'
Reverend Walsh [Trinity Lutheran] and the rabbi [Meyer] exchanged glances in which Perry detected pleasant surprise. It gratified him to upset their expectations of a fifteen-year-old.
'Adam may have a different answer,' the rabbi said, but in the Jewish faith there is really only one measure of righteousness: Do you celebrate God and obey His commandments?'
'That would suggest,' Perry said, 'that goodness and God are essentially synonymous.'
'That's the idea,' the rabbi said. 'In biblical times, when God manifested Himself more directly. He could seem like quite the hard-ass--striking people blind for trivial offenses, telling Abraham to kill his son. But the essence of the Jewish faith is that God does what He does, and we obey Him.'
'So, in other words, it doesn't matter what a righteous person's private thoughts are, so long as he obeys the letter of God's commandments?'
'And worships Him, yes. Of course, at the level of folk wisdom, a man can be righteous without being a -mensch.- I'm sure you see this, too, Adam--the pious man who makes everyone around him miserable. That might be what Perry is asking about.'
'My question,' Perry said, 'is whether we can ever escape our selfishness. Even if you bring in God, and make him the measure of goodness, the person who worships and obeys Him still wants something for himself. He enjoys the feeling of being righteous, or he wants eternal life, or what have you. If you're smart enough to think about it, there's always some selfish angle.'
The rabbi smiled. 'There may be no way around it, when you put it like that. But we "bring in God," as you say--for the believer, of course, it's God who brought -us- in--to establish a moral order in which your question becomes irrelevant. When obedience is the defining principle, we don't need to police every little private thought we might have.'
'I think there's more to Perry's question, though,' Reverend Walsh said. 'I think he is pointing to sinfulness, which is our fundamental condition. In Christian faith, only one man has ever exemplified perfect goodness, and he was the Son of God. The rest of us can only hope for glimmers of what it's like to be truly good. When we perform an act of charity, or forgive an enemy, we feel the goodness of Christ in our hearts. We all have an innate capability to recognize true goodness, but we're also full of sin, and those two parts of us are constantly at war.'
'Exactly,' Perry said. 'How do I know if I'm really being good or if I'm just pursuing a sinful advantage?'
'The answer, I would say, is by listening to your heart. Only your heart can tell you what your true motive is--whether it partakes of Christ. I think my position is similar to Rabbi Meyer's. The reason we need faith--in our case, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ--is that it gives us a rock-solid basis for evaluating our actions. Only through faith in the perfection of our Savior, only by comparing our actions to his example, only by experiencing his living presence in our hearts, can we hope to be forgiven for the more selfish thoughts we might have. Only faith in Christ redeems us. Without him, we're lost in a sea of second-guessing our motives.
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Jonathan Franzen (Crossroads)