Promotional Gift Quotes

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Claire Waverley has started a successful new venture, Waverley’s Candies. Though her handcrafted confections—rose to recall lost love, lavender to promote happiness and lemon verbena to soothe throats and minds—are singularly effective, the business of selling them is costing her the everyday joys of her family, and her belief in her own precious gifts.
Sarah Addison Allen (First Frost (Waverley Family, #2))
Be a light unto the world, and hurt it not. Seek to build not destroy. Bring My people home. How? By your shining example. Seek only Godliness. Speak only in truthfulness. Act only in love. Live the Law of Love now and forever more. Give everything require nothing. Avoid the mundane. Do not accept the unacceptable. Teach all who seek to learn of Me. Make every moment of your life an outpouring of love. Use every moment to think the highest thought, say the highest word, do the highest deed. In this, glorify your Holy Self, and thus too, glorify Me. Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch. Be peace. Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing. Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man’s shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person’s truth, adore every person’s God, protect every person’s rights, preserve every person’s dignity, promote every person’s interests, provide every person’s needs, presume every person’s holiness, present every person’s greatest gifts, produce every person’s blessing, pronounce every person’s future secure in the assured love of God. Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you. Speak humbly of yourself, lest someone mistake your Highest Truth for boast. Speak softly, lest someone think you are merely calling for attention. Speak gently, that all might know of Love. Speak openly, lest someone think you have something to hide. Speak candidly, so you cannot be mistaken. Speak often, so that your word may truly go forth. Speak respectfully, that no one be dishonored. Speak lovingly, that every syllable may heal. Speak of Me with every utterance. Make of your life a gift. Remember always, you are the gift! Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another’s life if you cannot be a gift. (You can always be a gift, because you always are the gift—yet sometimes you don’t let yourself know that.) When someone enters your life unexpectedly, look for the gift that person has come to receive from you…I HAVE SENT YOU NOTHING BUT ANGELS.
Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 2)
Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies. The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic systems. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.
Chuck Palahniuk (Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey)
Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal (...). There is a tendency (...) for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious-because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe-some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others-some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
Breast cancer, I can now report, did not make me prettier or stronger, more feminine or spiritual. What it gave me, if you want to call this a “gift,” was a very personal, agonizing encounter with an ideological force in American culture that I had not been aware of before—one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate.
Barbara Ehrenreich (Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America)
Amira,” because it meant “female leader” in Persian. And “Eliana,” which means “gift of God,
Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time)
The opposite of play is not work—the opposite of play is depression.” He explains, “Respecting our biologically programmed need for play can transform work. It can bring back excitement and newness to our job. Play helps us deal with difficulties, provides a sense of expansiveness, promotes mastery of our craft, and is an essential part of the creative process. Most important, true play that comes from our own inner needs and desires is the only path to finding lasting joy and satisfaction in our work. In the long run, work does not work without play.”2
Brené Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are)
Eventually, I came to understand that a group of people who wield enormous power happen, oddly enough, to espouse some of the very same ideals imparted to me by people in Africa and central Asia who have no power at all. The reason for this, in my view, is that members of the armed forces have worked on the ground-in many cases, during three or four tours of duty-on a level that very few diplomats, academicians, journalists, or policy makers can match. And among other things, this experience has imbued soldiers with the gift of empathy.
Greg Mortenson (Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan)
Coming into a realization that there is purpose in why God has given all of us the gift of life- To promote the cause of Christ and God's Kingdom in a creative manner that expresses our uniqueness.
R. Alan Woods (The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries)
One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious — because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe — some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others — some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal — there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. In the name of God, believe him.
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
I also see courage in myself when I'm willing to risk being vulnerable and disappointed. For many years, if I really wanted something to happen-an invitation to speak at a special conference, a promotion, a radio interview-I pretended that it didn't matter that much. If a friend or colleague would ask, "Are you excited about that television interview?" I'd shrug it off and say, "I'm not sure. It's not that big of a deal." Of course, in reality, I was praying that it would happen. It's only in the last few years that I've learned that playing down the exciting stuff doesn't' take the pain away when it doesn't happen. It also creates a lot of isolation. Once you've diminished the importance of something, your friends are not likely to call and say, "I'm sorry that didn't work out. I know you were excited about it." Now when someone asks me about the potential opportunity that I'm excited about, I'm more likely to practice courage and say, "I'm so excited about the possibility. I'm trying to stay realistic, but I really hope it happens." When things haven't panned out, it's been comforting to be able to call a supportive friend and say, "Remember that event I told you about? It's not going to happen, and I'm so bummed.
Brené Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection)
Pray for people who are in a better situation than you are, who are more gifted than you are, or who currently have wonderful circumstances coming their way. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Pray for someone else’s promotion, someone else’s pregnancy, someone else’s healing. That crucifies envy.
John Eldredge (Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad)
I believe one of the most important reasons I am here today is to practice forgiveness and to learn the power of it as a gift to others and myself. By focusing on forgiveness in my life today, I am promoting my healing and lessening my regrets.
Lisa J. Shultz (A Chance to Say Goodbye: Reflections on Losing a Parent)
I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t. . . . I very much love those mysterious volumes, both ancient and modern, that have no definite author but have had and continue to have an intense life of their own. They seem to me a sort of nighttime miracle, like the gifts of the Befana, which I waited for as a child. . . . True miracles are the ones whose makers will never be known. . . . Besides, isn’t it true that promotion is expensive? I will be the least expensive author of the publishing house. I’ll spare you even my presence.
Elena Ferrante
Love is a verb. One demonstrates one's love through one's actions. And a person can only feel loved when someone else shows their love with kisses, hugs, caresses, and gifts. A lover will always promote the physical and emotional well-being of the person he loves.
Laura Esquivel (Swift as Desire)
Writers write for various reasons:  To educate, to promote a cause, to entertain, to garner emotion, and for myriad reasons that only each writer can uniquely demonstrate.  Poe had a unique gift for writing that delivered a moral message with a twist of the macabre.
Susan Marie Molloy (Two Invitations into Poe's Macabre Funhouse: An Interpretation of "The Masque of the Red Death")
The cultural milieu we live in is one of celebrityism. The temptation, when you get really good at something, is to do it to serve and love yourself, not the world, and to do it for your own glory, not God’s. It’s so easy for gifted people to fall into pride, hubris, shameless self-promoting, and self-aggrandizement. It’s lame.
John Mark Comer (Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human.)
God gives gifts to and also of men/women for His purposes in promoting the cause of Christ and His Kingdom". ~R. Alan Woods [2012]
R. Alan Woods (The Journey Is The Destination: A Photo Journal)
To automatically be promoted from one class to another without any serious self- discipline, and self- improvement is a cheap life.
Sunday Adelaja (How To Become Great Through Time Conversion: Are you wasting time, spending time or investing time?)
Go out there and remind the rest.....to promote love within the world through the use of their creative gifts.
Bien-Aime Wenda (Negus: A Compilation of African-American Science Fiction (Negus Series))
When Politician turned into a showman, followers turned into a cheerleader. For a leader, it may be a promotion, but for followers, it's demotion
Mohammed Zaki Ansari ("Zaki's Gift Of Love")
Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide. (Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?) Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They were free of old saints and martyrs, but fearfully so, left with their own unlabeled flesh. Those without tickets didn't storm the barricades, and during a performance the boys and girls directly below us, scratching at the stage, were less murderous in their love of me, as if realizing finally that my death, to be authentic, must be self-willed- a succesful piece of instruction only if it occured by my own hand, preferrably ina foreign city. I began to think their education would not be complete until they outdid me as a teacher, until one day they merely pantomimed the kind of massive response the group was used to getting. As we performed they would dance, collapse, clutch each other, wave their arms, all the while making absolutely no sound. We would stand in the incandescent pit of a huge stadium filled with wildly rippling bodies, all totally silent. Our recent music, deprived of people's screams, was next to meaningless, and there would have been no choice but to stop playing. A profound joke it would have been. A lesson in something or other. In Houston I left the group, saying nothing, and boarded a plane for New York City, that contaminated shrine, place of my birth. I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest. As to the rest, I left them to their respective uproars- news media, promotion people, agents, accountants, various members of the managerial peerage. The public would come closer to understanding my disappearance than anyone else. It was not quite as total as the act they needed and nobody could be sure whether I was gone for good. For my closest followers, it foreshadowed a period of waiting. Either I'd return with a new language for them to speak or they'd seek a divine silence attendant to my own. I took a taxi past the cemetaries toward Manhattan, tides of ash-light breaking across the spires. new York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague. The cab driver was young, however, a freckled kid with a moderate orange Afro. I told him to take the tunnel. Is there a tunnel?" he said.
Don DeLillo
Self-care is a deliberate choice to gift ourself with people, places, things, events, and opportunities that recharge our personal battery and promote whole health—body, mind, and spirit.
Laurie Buchanan
Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch. Be peace. Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing. Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man’s shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person’s truth, adore every person’s God, protect every person’s rights, preserve every person’s dignity, promote every person’s interests, provide every person’s needs, presume every person’s holiness, present every person’s greatest gifts, produce every person’s blessing, and pronounce every person’s future secure in the assured love of God. Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you.
Neale Donald Walsch (The Complete Conversations with God)
Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man. We must not conclude merely upon a man's haranguing upon liberty, and using the charming sound, that he is fit to be trusted with the liberties of his country. It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves. It is not, I say, unfrequent to see such instances, though at the same time I esteem it a justice due to my country to say that it is not without shining examples of the contrary kind; — examples of men of a distinguished attachment to this same liberty I have been describing; whom no hopes could draw, no terrors could drive, from steadily pursuing, in their sphere, the true interests of their country; whose fidelity has been tried in the nicest and tenderest manner, and has been ever firm and unshaken. The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.
Samuel Adams
One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.
Harper Lee
Except during outbreaks of vicious bigotry, it is difficult to persuade white America that the alienation of Black America is actual and ongoing, afflicting each generation through policy, custom, quack science, and if nothing else, the Look.
Theresa Perry (Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students)
..:The gifts and talents that at times seem a heavy burden to you, are the very things that the Lord will use to promote you and introduce you to your destiny. They will keep you there but you must never forget that is He whom grants you the abilities and favor. Stay humble:..
Rafael Garcia
the Piggly Wiggly Stores in 1919, had most of the standard traits of the flamboyant American promoters—suspect generosity, a knack for attracting publicity, love of ostentation, and so on—but he also had some much less common traits, notably a remarkably vivid style, both in speech and writing, and a gift, of which he may or may not have been aware, for comedy. But like so many great men before him, he had a weakness, a tragic flaw. It was that he insisted on thinking of himself as a hick, a boob, and a sucker, and, in doing so, he sometimes became all three. This unlikely fellow was the man who engineered
John Brooks (Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street)
You can do something nice without posting it on social media. Give with heart. Share with authenticity. And help without the spotlight. It gets old fast with so many bragging, marketing and showcasing how giving they are. It also creates the perception that these individuals are doing this for their own promotion, marketing, and visibility, over genuinely trying to help another. There is something beautiful in giving a gift and just doing it to do it and not doing it to brag. The real honor of a person shines through so much brighter when they are not bragging about how much they do, how much they give and how much they care.
Loren Weisman
At any rate, whether we expect another invasion or not, our views of the human future must be greatly modified by these events. We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space. It may be that in the larger design of the Universe this invasion from Mars is not without it's ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and it has done much more to promote the conception of the commonweal of mankind.
H.G. Wells (The War of the Worlds)
[W]hen the emperor Constantine abruptly changed Roman policy from one of persecuting Christians to protecting and favoring them with massive gifts of money, tax exemptions, and enormous prestige, the bishops, now in political favor, sometimes used these new resources to promote unanimity; thus in 381, the Christian emperor Theodosius made "heresy" a crime against the state.
Elaine Pagels (Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity)
Who is the real God in the Garden of Eden? Is it the ignorant “God” who tries to keep humanity away from knowledge – who forbids Adam and Eve from accessing knowledge – or is it the Serpent who leads Adam and Eve to knowledge and transforms them through the gift of consciousness, and, finally, superconsciousness? The False God is always an enemy of knowledge, and the True God always a promoter of knowledge.
David Sinclair (The Church of the Serpent: The Philosophy of the Snake and Attaining Transcendent Knowledge)
And John Nash, my mathematical hero, revolutionized analysis and geometry with the proof of three theorems in scarcely more than five years before succumbing to paranoid schizophrenia. There is a fine line, it is often said, between genius and madness. Neither of these concepts is well defined, however. And in the case not only of Grothendieck but also of Gödel and Nash, periods of mental derangement, so far from promoting mathematical productivity, actually precluded it. Innate versus acquired, a classic debate. Fischer, Grothendieck, Erdős, and Perelman were all Jewish. Of these, Fischer and Erdős were Hungarian. No one who is familiar with the world of science can have failed to notice how many of the most gifted mathematicians and physicists of the twentieth century were Jews, or how many of the greatest geniuses were Hungarian (many
Cédric Villani (Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure)
Muhammad kept his word and returned to Medina with the Emigrants and Helpers. He did not attempt to rule Mecca himself; nor did he replace the Qurayshan officials with his own companions; nor did he establish a purist Islamic regime. All former dignitaries kept their positions in the Haram, and the assembly and the status quo remained intact. His most hated enemies were not only reinstated but promoted and showered with gifts.
Karen Armstrong (Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time (Eminent Lives))
Everything good that we have comes from God—the rain, the sunshine, our health, our food, cute kittens, super-cute puppies, smiling babies, pure-white driven snow, deep-blue sea filled with tasty fish, cool water to drink, succulent fruit to eat, and fresh air to breathe: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (Jas. 1:17). However, instead of having a heartfelt thankfulness to God for all these undeserved blessings, this wicked world ignores God’s will, blasphemes His name, kills unborn children, fornicates, commits adultery, glorifies pornography, mocks the Word of God, promotes homosexuality, despises the gospel, and says that evolution gave us all the blessings of life. But the irony is that when tragedy strikes, they intuitively remember God and ask, “What have I done to deserve this?
Ray Comfort (God Speaks: Finding Hope in the Midst of Hopelessness)
The United States had been created through an act of disloyalty. No matter how eloquently the Declaration of Independence had attempted to justify the American rebellion, a residual guilt hovered over the circumstances of the country's founding. Arnold changed all that. By threatening to destroy the newly created republic through, ironically, his own betrayal, Arnold gave this nation of traitors the greatest of gifts; a myth of creation. The American people had come to revere George Washington, but a hero alone was not sufficient to bring them together. Now they had the despised villain Benedict Arnold. They knew both what they were fighting for - and against. The story of American's genesis could finally move beyond the break with the mother country and start to focus on the process by which thirteen former colonies could become a nation. As Arnold had demonstrated, the real enemy was not Great Britain, but those Americans who sought to undercut their fellow citizens commitment to one another. Whether it was Joseph Reed's willingness to promote his state's interests at the expenses of what was best for the country as a whole or Arnold's decision to sell his loyalty to the highest bidder, the greatest danger to America's future cam from self-serving opportunism masquerading as patriotism. At this fragile state in the country's development, a way had to be found to strengthen rather than destroy the existing framework of government. The Continental Congress was far from perfect, but it offered a start to what could one day be a great nation. By turning traitor, Arnold had alerted the American people to how close they had all come to betraying the Revolution by putting their own interests ahead of their newborn country's. Already the name Benedict Arnold was becoming a byword for that most hateful of crimes: treason against the people of the United States.
Nathaniel Philbrick (Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution (The American Revolution Series))
Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Beginning with Santa Claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. Even if that reality is patently invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies. The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic system. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.
Chuck Palahniuk (Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey)
Physical beauty is a subject that many skirt around and almost everyone attempts to down-play thereby demonstrating some sound moral stance, but it remains one of the glories of human existence. Of course, there are many people who are attractive without being beautiful just as there are beauties who bore, and the danger of beauty in the very young is that it can make the business of life seem deceptively easy. All this I am fully aware of. I know too, however, that of the four great gifts that the fairies may or may not bring to the christening – Brains, Birth, Beauty and Money – it is Beauty that makes locked doors spring open at a touch. Whether it is for a job interview, a place at a dining table, a brilliant promotion or a lift on the motorway, everyone, regardless of their sex or their sexual proclivity, would always rather deal with a good-looking face. And no one is more aware of this than the Beauties themselves. They have a power they simultaneously respect and take for granted. Despite the moralists who tut about its transience, it is generally a power that is never completely lost. One can usually trace in the wrinkled lines of a nonagenarian, stooped and leaning on a stick, the style and confidence that turned heads in a ballroom in 1929.
Julian Fellowes (Snobs)
That promotion is satisfactory. Yes, Liverpool Football Club are back in the First Division. Back in the Big League. But that is only where Liverpool Football Club belong. Only where they should have been all along. In the First Division, in the Big League. So the next time you come bearing gifts, bringing presents, it will be because we've won the Big League. Because Liverpool Football Club have won the First Division. And the FA Cup. And the European Cup. And every cup there is to win. Because only that will be satisfactory, gentlemen. When Liverpool Football Club have won everything there is to win, when Liverpool Football Club have conquered the world. Only that will be enough.
David Peace (Red or Dead)
One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. “But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
It is feminist thinking that empowers me to engage in a constructive critique of [Paulo] Freire’s work (which I needed so that as a young reader of his work I did not passively absorb the worldview presented) and yet there are many other standpoints from which I approach his work that enable me to experience its value, that make it possible for that work to touch me at the very core of my being. In talking with academic feminists (usually white women) who feel they must either dismiss or devalue the work of Freire because of sexism, I see clearly how our different responses are shaped by the standpoint that we bring to the work. I came to Freire thirsty, dying of thirst (in that way that the colonized, marginalized subject who is still unsure of how to break the hold of the status quo, who longs for change, is needy, is thirsty), and I found in his work (and the work of Malcolm X, Fanon, etc.) a way to quench that thirst. To have work that promotes one’s lib­eration is such a powerful gift that it does not matter so much if the gift is flawed. Think of the work as water that contains some dirt. Because you are thirsty you are not too proud to extract the dirt and be nourished by the water. For me this is an experience that corresponds very much to the way individuals of privilege respond to the use of water in the First World context. When you are privileged, living in one of the richest countries in the world, you can waste resources. And you can especially justify your dispos­al of something that you consider impure. Look at what most people do with water in this country. Many people purchase special water because they consider tap water unclean—and of course this purchasing is a luxury. Even our ability to see the water that come through the tap as unclean is itself informed by an imperialist consumer per­ spective. It is an expression of luxury and not just simply a response to the condition of water. If we approach the drinking of water that comes from the tap from a global perspective we would have to talk about it differently. We would have to consider what the vast majority of the peo­ ple in the world who are thirsty must do to obtain water. Paulo’s work has been living water for me.
bell hooks (Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom)
Original Statement by Hunger Strikers to Psychiatric Association, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the U.S. Office of the Surgeon General 1. A Hunger Strike to Challenge International Domination by Biopsychiatry. This fast is about human rights in mental health. The psychiatric pharmaceutical complex is heedless of its oath to “first do no harm.” Psychiatrists are able with impunity to: Incarcerate citizens who have committed crimes against neither persons nor property. Impose diagnostic labels on people that stigmatize and defame them. Induce proven neurological damage by force and coercion with powerful psychotropic drugs. Stimulate violence and suicide with drugs promoted as able to control these activities. Destroy brain cells and memories with an increasing use of electroshock (also known as electro-convulsive therapy). Employ restraint and solitary confinement—which frequently cause severe emotional trauma, humiliation, physical harm, and even death—in preference to patience and understanding. Humiliate individuals already damaged by traumatizing assaults to their self-esteem. These human rights violations and crimes against human decency must end. While the history of psychiatry offers little hope that change will arrive quickly, initial steps can and must be taken. At the very least, the public has the right to know IMMEDIATELY the evidence upon which psychiatry bases its spurious claims and treatments, and upon which it has gained and betrayed the trust and confidence of the courts, the media, and the public.21
Seth Farber (The Spiritual Gift of Madness: The Failure of Psychiatry and the Rise of the Mad Pride Movement)
We can’t get seduced by the idea that if only we just rebuild the DNC we’ll be fine. We really have to jump in now to shape the narrative. The starting point—and this is the gift that abolition as an ideology and a practice has given me—is the idea that the system isn’t actually broken. Right? Because then I’m not preoccupied with trying to fix it. That’s not my goal. All I want to do is abolish and end it, therefore the imperatives of what I’m trying to do—the training, the questions, the analysis—all have to be geared towards that, and then this doesn’t force me to run around in circles plugging my fingers in the dyke everywhere as the water is just threatening to overwhelm all of us. Also, this allows me to think of how we can crowd out the current system by building the things that we want to see in the world, that will promote our well-being.
Mariame Kaba
Liberals had tried convincing Americans to vote for them, but that kept ending badly. Except for Lyndon Johnson’s aberrational 1964 landslide, Democrats have not been able to get a majority of white people to vote for them in any presidential election since 1948.13 Their only hope was to bring in new voters. Okay, fine. You won’t vote for us, America? We tried this the easy way, but you give us no choice. We’re going to overwhelm you with new voters from the Third World. As Democratic consultant Patrick Reddy wrote for the Roper Center in 1998: “The 1965 Immigration Reform Act promoted by President Kennedy, drafted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and pushed through the Senate by Ted Kennedy has resulted in a wave of immigration from the Third World that should shift the nation in a more liberal direction within a generation. It will go down as the Kennedy family’s greatest gift to the Democratic Party.”14
Ann Coulter (¡Adios, America!: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole)
...our job sometimes is to divorce ourselves from the fact that I've got to constantly be gifting young people with tools and equip them with - I'm imparting lessons upon them. Sometimes it about, look you hate reading, my job is to figure out how to help you not hate reading. The rest of it we can get to, but I got to figure out how to get you engaged. In order to do that sometimes you got to pull back. Right. You got to put a little grease in the pot. Right. So if that means you've got to have them reading rap lyrics in your class, then that's what it is. If that means you got to have them reading comic books or the athletes reading Sports Illustrated and the sports section in ESPN Magazine, then that's what it is. Our job is not just - it's not to just promote literature, which is what we all do. Our job is to promote literacy and there's a difference. Right. There's a difference. Literacy is what will help them way more than what literature will do.
Jason Reynolds
9. HUMAN RIGHTS [70:9.1] Nature confers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Nature does not even confer the right to live, as might be deduced by considering what would likely happen if an unarmed man met a hungry tiger face to face in the primitive forest. Society's prime gift to man is security. [70:9.2] Gradually society asserted its rights and, at the present time, they are Assurance of food supply. Military defense—security through preparedness. Internal peace preservation—prevention of personal violence and social disorder. Sex control—marriage, the family institution. Property—the right to own. Fostering of individual and group competition. Provision for educating and training youth. Promotion of trade and commerce—industrial development. Improvement of labor conditions and rewards. The guarantee of the freedom of religious practices to the end that all of these other social activities may be exalted by becoming spiritually motivated.
Urantia Foundation (The Urantia Book)
Fr. Joseph is member of the missionary religious community located in the Diocese of Marquette, MI that enjoys the ecclesiastical approval of his local bishop and the added endorsements of two bishops of the Detroit Diocese. As an international association that promotes the Church’s mystical tradition, the missionary community provides solo-wilderness retreats at the CCL (Companions of Christ the Lamb) spiritual center that spans well over 1,000 acres of verdure in the village of Paradise, MI. Those interested in making solo-wilderness retreats to deepen their union with God’s Divine Will may contact Fr. Joseph at soulofjesus@juno.com.  Fr. Joseph is presently completing a dissertation on the writings and doctrines of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta at the Pontifical University of Rome. He is the author of five books on mystical and dogmatic theology, the initiator of international Divine Will communities and instructor on the proper theological presentation of the mystical gift of Living in God’s Divine Will. 
Joseph Iannuzzi (Antichrist And the End Times)
FROM THE WAVERLEY KITCHEN JOURNAL Angelica - Will shape its meaning to your need, but it is particularly good for calming hyper children at your table. Anise Hyssop - Eases frustration and confusion. Bachelor’s Button - Aids in finding things that were previously hidden. A clarifying flower. Chicory - Conceals bitterness. Gives the eater a sense that all is well. A cloaking flower. Chive Blossom - Ensures you will win an argument. Conveniently, also an antidote for hurt feelings. Dandelion - A stimulant encouraging faithfulness. Frequent side effects are blindness to flaws and spontaneous apologies. Honeysuckle - For seeing in the dark, but only if you use honeysuckle from a brush of vines at least two feet thick. A clarifying flower. Hyacinth Bulb - Causes melancholy and thoughts of past regrets. Use only dried bulbs. A time-travel flower. Lavender - Raises spirits. Prevents bad decisions resulting from fatigue or depression. Lemon Balm - Upon consumption, for a brief period of time the eater will think and feel as he did in his youth. Please note if you have any former hellions at your table before serving. A time-travel flower. Lemon Verbena - Produces a lull in conversation with a mysterious lack of awkwardness. Helpful when you have nervous, overly talkative guests. Lilac - When a certain amount of humility is in order. Gives confidence that humbling yourself to another will not be used against you. Marigold - Causes affection, but sometimes accompanied by jealousy. Nasturtium - Promotes appetite in men. Makes women secretive. Secret sexual liaisons sometimes occur in mixed company. Do not let your guests out of your sight. Pansy - Encourages the eater to give compliments and surprise gifts. Peppermint - A clever method of concealment. When used with other edible flowers, it confuses the eater, thus concealing the true nature of what you are doing. A cloaking flower. Rose Geranium - Produces memories of past good times. Opposite of Hyacinth Bulb. A time-travel flower. Rose Petal - Encourages love. Snapdragon - Wards off the undue influences of others, particularly those with magical sensibilities. Squash and Zucchini Blossoms - Serve when you need to be understood. Clarifying flowers. Tulip - Gives the eater a sense of sexual perfection. A possible side effect is being susceptible to the opinions of others. Violet - A wonderful finish to a meal. Induces calm, brings on happiness, and always assures a good night’s sleep.
Sarah Addison Allen (Garden Spells (Waverly Family #1))
Life does not offer gifts or rewards, but opportunities. Nobody is entitled to anything. Only behavior and labor defines us and what we have. Whenever you make a choice, you follow one path and move apart from another. If your job occupies more importance in your mind, time and actions, than your dream, then you will not accomplish your dream but maybe receive a raise in your salary instead and be happy with that loss. If you look at relationships as a toy store, if you look at your companion as easily replaceable, then you will very likely lose the one you have. If you rather enjoy life with your friends than with your companion, you will end up alone. If you insult the wise, you then end up surrounded by fools. If you neglect your wealth, you will likely end up poor. If you destroy love, you will end up feeling unloved. If you destroy the good that comes to you, you will end up experiencing evil. Life will always reflect your actions, words and thoughts. You are what you spend most of your time doing, saying and thinking. Your life is always a reflection of your priorities. If you spend your time partying, insulting and occupying your mind with nonsense from social media, music with degrading lyrics, and movies that promote antisocial values, you get zero from life.
Robin Sacredfire
Paying for power was so common that in 2012 the Modern Chinese Dictionary, the national authority on language, was compelled to add the word maiguan—“to buy a government promotion.” In some cases, the options read like a restaurant menu. In a small town in Inner Mongolia, the post of chief planner was sold for $103,000. The municipal party secretary was on the block for $101,000. It followed a certain logic: in weak democracies, people paid their way into office by buying votes; in a state where there were no votes to buy, you paid the people who doled out the jobs. Even the military was riddled with patronage; commanders received a string of payments from a pyramid of loyal officers beneath them. A one-star general could reportedly expect to receive ten million dollars in gifts and business deals; a four-star commander stood to earn at least fifty million. Every country has corruption, but China’s was approaching a level of its own. For those at the top, the scale of temptation had reached a level unlike anything ever encountered in the West. It was not always easy to say which Bare-Handed Fortunes were legitimate and which were not, but political office was a reliable pathway to wealth on a scale of its own. By 2012 the richest seventy members of China’s national legislature had a net worth of almost ninety billion dollars—more than ten times the combined net worth of the entire U.S. Congress.
Evan Osnos (Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China)
Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. “But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. “I’m
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
My former girlfriend said: ‘You don’t deserve the house you have; it’s too good for you.’ I replied: “I found a house that matched all your criteria, to make you happy. If you lost it, and ended up sleeping in a filthy room in a shared apartment, is because you don’t deserve me, I was too good for you, you disappointed me by trying to find a guy that matches you better, and you made me very unhappy. Your priories were wrong.’ Life does not offer gifts or rewards, but opportunities. Nobody is entitled to anything. Only behavior and labor defines us and what we have. Whenever you make a choice, you follow one path and move apart from another. If your job occupies more importance in your mind, time and actions, than your dream, then you will not accomplish your dream but maybe receive a raise in your salary instead and be happy with that loss. If you look at relationships as a toy store, if you look at your companion as easily replaceable, then you will very likely lose the one you have. If you rather enjoy life with your friends than with your companion, you will end up alone. If you insult the wise, you then end up surrounded by fools. If you neglect your wealth, you will likely end up poor. If you destroy love, you will end up feeling unloved. If you destroy the good that comes to you, you will end up experiencing evil. Life will always reflect your actions, words and thoughts. You are what you spend most of your time doing, saying and thinking. Your life is always a reflection of your priorities. If you spend your time partying, insulting and occupying your mind with nonsense from social media, music with degrading lyrics, and movies that promote antisocial values, you get zero from life.
Robin Sacredfire
We all know the elementary form of politeness, that of the empty symbolic gesture, a gesture-an offer-which is meant to be rejected. In John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, after the little boy Owen accidentally kills John's-his best friend's, the narrator's-mother, he is, of course, terribly upset, so, to show how sorry he is, he discreetly delivers to John a gift of the complete collection of color photos of baseball stars, his most precious possession; however, Dan, John's delicate stepfather, tells him that the proper thing to do is to return the gift. What we have here is symbolic exchange at its purest: a gesture made to be rejected; the point, the "magic" of symbolic exchange, is that, although at the end we are where we were at the beginning, the overall result of the operation is not zero but a distinct gain for both parties, the pact of solidarity. And is not something similar part of our everyday mores? When, after being engaged in a fierce competition for a job promotion with my closest friend, I win, the proper thing to do is to offer to withdraw, so that he will get the promotion, and the proper thing for him to do is to reject my offer-in this way, perhaps, our friendship can be saved.... Milly's offer is the very opposite of such an elementary gesture of politeness: although it also is an offer that is meant to be rejected, what makes hers different from the symbolic empty offer is the cruel alternative it imposes on its addressee: I offer you wealth as the supreme proof of my saintly kindness, but if you accept my offer, you will be marked by an indelible stain of guilt and moral corruption; if you do the right thing and reject it, however, you will also not be simply righteous-your very rejection will function as a retroactive admission of your guilt, so whatever Kate and Densher do, the very choice Milly's bequest confronts them with makes them guilty.
Slavoj Žižek (The Parallax View (Short Circuits))
One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cake than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of men. But there is one way in this country which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man equal of an Einstein, and an ignorant man equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human constitution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
All the substances that are the main drugs of abuse today originate in natural plant products and have been known to human beings for thousands of years. Opium, the basis of heroin, is an extract of the Asian poppy Papaver somniferum. Four thousand years ago, the Sumerians and Egyptians were already familiar with its usefulness in treating pain and diarrhea and also with its powers to affect a person’s psychological state. Cocaine is an extract of the leaves of Erythroxyolon coca, a small tree that thrives on the eastern slopes of the Andes in western South America. Amazon Indians chewed coca long before the Conquest, as an antidote to fatigue and to reduce the need to eat on long, arduous mountain journeys. Coca was also venerated in spiritual practices: Native people called it the Divine Plant of the Incas. In what was probably the first ideological “War on Drugs” in the New World, the Spanish invaders denounced coca’s effects as a “delusion from the devil.” The hemp plant, from which marijuana is derived, first grew on the Indian subcontinent and was christened Cannabis sativa by the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. It was also known to ancient Persians, Arabs and Chinese, and its earliest recorded pharmaceutical use appears in a Chinese compendium of medicine written nearly three thousand years ago. Stimulants derived from plants were also used by the ancient Chinese, for example in the treatment of nasal and bronchial congestion. Alcohol, produced by fermentation that depends on microscopic fungi, is such an indelible part of human history and joy making that in many traditions it is honoured as a gift from the gods. Contrary to its present reputation, it has also been viewed as a giver of wisdom. The Greek historian Herodotus tells of a tribe in the Near East whose council of elders would never sustain a decision they made when sober unless they also confirmed it under the influence of strong wine. Or, if they came up with something while intoxicated, they would also have to agree with themselves after sobering up. None of these substances could affect us unless they worked on natural processes in the human brain and made use of the brain’s innate chemical apparatus. Drugs influence and alter how we act and feel because they resemble the brain’s own natural chemicals. This likeness allows them to occupy receptor sites on our cells and interact with the brain’s intrinsic messenger systems. But why is the human brain so receptive to drugs of abuse? Nature couldn’t have taken millions of years to develop the incredibly intricate system of brain circuits, neurotransmitters and receptors that become involved in addiction just so people could get “high” to escape their troubles or have a wild time on a Saturday night. These circuits and systems, writes a leading neuroscientist and addiction researcher, Professor Jaak Panksepp, must “serve some critical purpose other than promoting the vigorous intake of highly purified chemical compounds recently developed by humans.” Addiction may not be a natural state, but the brain regions it subverts are part of our central machinery of survival.
Gabor Maté (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)
Practicing yoga promotes peace. When you slow down and tune in to yourself, you feel more confident, less stressed, stronger, and free from negativity. It truly is being good to yourself; it is your gift to yourself.
M.E. Dahkid (Yoga: The Essential Guide: How to Master Weight Loss, Stress Reduction and Find Inner Peace (yoga, mindfulness, meditations, mindfulness, weight loss, stress reduction, spirituality))
​While God is inviting us to a joyful life of selfless generosity, the world is trying to seduce us into an all-encompassing selfishness... God invites us to a life of gratitude while the world masters discontent. God proposes trust; the world arouses fear. God promotes giving; the world promotes getting. God invites us to cooperate with his providence while the world rallies behind self-determinism. God appoint us in stewardship while the world touts ownership. The world encourages entitlement when in reality everything is a gift from God. God invites us to look out for our neighbor; the world tells us to look out for ourselves...
Matthew Kelly (The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic: How Engaging 1% of Catholics Could Change the World)
The Hour of the Ministers was devoted to Imperial matters, but who cares about Imperial matters when the treasure chest is open and the favorites and chosen ones are swarming around it like ants! No one wants to go away empty-handed, without a gift, without an envelope, without a promotion, without having cashed in. Sometimes His Highness would answer such greediness with a kindly scolding, but he never became angry, since he knew that it was because of the open purse that they pressed around him and served him more humbly. Our Emperor knew that one who is satiated will defend his own contentedness, and where else could one be satiated but in the Palace?
Ryszard Kapuściński (The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat)
There is something shut up in you, something big that’s about to be released—dreams, books, movies, inventions, businesses, ministries, potential that you haven’t tapped into, gifts and talents that you hadn’t known were there. You haven’t seen them yet because it hasn’t been the right time, but your season is coming. The good break, the promotion, the opportunity—it’s on the way.
Joel Osteen (It Is Finished: Defeat What's Defeating You)
Most human characteristics that are genuinely universal are easily accounted for in evolutionary terms, and the arguments are widely known. For example, we all live in families and societies because to do so aids our survival and the propagation of our genes. We all have the capacity for love because it is an emotion that promotes family and social life. We all have laws of one kind or another because these, too, reinforce family and social ties and thus make us stronger and more competitive. We all eat food and drink water because we will soon die if we don't. We all use the unique human gift of language to preserve knowledge handed down from previous generations, and to create culture - thus further sharpening our competitive edge.
Graham Hancock (Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind)
Our expectations set the limits for our lives. If you expect little, you’re going to receive little. If you don’t anticipate things to get better, then they won’t. But if you expect more favor, more good breaks, a promotion, and an increase, then you will see new levels of favor and success. Every morning when you wake up, you should declare, “Something good is going to happen to me today.” You have to set the tone at the beginning of each day. Then all through the day you should have this attitude of expectancy. Like a little child waiting to open a gift, you should be on the lookout, thinking, “I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen”--not passive, but actively expecting. Too many people drag around, thinking, “Nothing good ever happens to me.” Instead, start looking for good breaks. Expect to be at the right place at the right time. Expect your dreams to come to pass. Expect to be a winner. Don’t walk into a room anticipating people to not like you. Don’t go to the store believing that you won’t find what you need. Don’t interview for a job assuming not to get it. Your expectation is your faith at work. When you expect good breaks, expect people to like you, or expect to have a great year, then you’re releasing your faith. That’s what allows good things to happen. But your expectations work in both directions. If you get up in the morning and expect it to be a lousy day and expect no breaks and expect people to be unfriendly, then you’ll draw that in. Your faith is working. The problem is you’re using it in the wrong direction.
Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
Studies show that enthusiastic people get better breaks. They’re promoted more often, have higher incomes, and live happier lives. That’s not a coincidence. The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek word entheos. Theos is a term for “God.” When you’re enthusiastic, you are full of God. When you get up in the morning excited about life, recognizing that each day is a gift, you are motivated to pursue your goals. You will have a favor and blessing that will cause you to succeed. The eight undeniable quality of a winner is that they stay passionate throughout their lives. Too many people have lost their enthusiasm. At one time they were excited about their futures and passionate about their dreams, but along the way they hit some setbacks. They didn’t get the promotions they wanted, maybe a relationship didn’t work out, or they had health issues. Something took the wind out of their sails. They’re just going through the motions of life; getting up, going to work, and coming home. God didn’t breathe His life into us so we would drag through the day. He didn’t create us in His image, crown us with His favor, and equip us with His power so that we would have no enthusiasm. You may have had some setbacks. The wind may have been taken out of your sails, but this is a new day. God is breathing new life into you. If you shake off the blahs and get your passion back, then the winds will start blowing once again--not against you, but for you. When you get in agreement with God, He will cause things to shift in your favor. On January 15, 2009, Capt. Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger successfully landed a jet airplane in the Hudson River after the plane’s engines were disabled by multiple bird strikes. Despite the dangers of a massive passenger plane landing in icy waters, all 155 passengers and crew members survived. It’s known as the “Miracle on the Hudson.” Just after the successful emergency landing and rescue, a reporter asked a middle-aged male passenger what he thought about surviving that frightening event. Although he was shaken up, cold and wet, the passenger had a glow on his face, and excitement in his voice when he replied: “I was alive before, but now I’m really alive.” After facing a life-and-death situation, the survivor found that his perspective had changed. He recognized each moment as a gift and decided that instead of just living, he would start really living.
Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
Live in amazement We all have seen God’s goodness in some way. God opened a door, gave you a promotion, protected you on the freeway, and caused you to meet someone who has been a blessing. It was His hand of favor. Don’t let it become ordinary. We should live in amazing at what God has done. When I look at my children I think, “God, you’re amazing.” When I see Victoria, I think, “God, you’ve been good to me.” Driving up to my house, I think, “Lord, thank you for your favor.” Don’t let your miracles become so common that they don’t excite you anymore. I read about this famous surgeon who continued to go to work every day even into his late eighties. He loved medicine. His staff tried to get him to retire and take it easy, but he wouldn’t do it. He had invented a certain procedure that he had performed over ten thousand times. It seemed so routine and so ordinary. He’d done it again and again. The surgeon was asked in an interview if he ever grew tired of performing his procedure and if it ever got old. He said, “No, because I act like every operation is my very first one.” He was saying, “I don’t take for granted what God has allowed me to do. I don’t let it become so ordinary that I lose the awe.” What has God done for you? Do you have healthy children? Do you have people to love? Do you have a place to work? Do you realize your gifts and talents come from God? Do you recognize what seemed like a lucky break was God directing your steps? There are miracles all around us. Don’t take them for granted. Don’t lose the amazement of God’s works. Fan your flames. Stir up your gifts. Sometimes we hold back, thinking we’ll get excited when the next big thing comes along. Only then will we allow that spring back in our step. But I’ve learned if you aren’t happy where you are, you won’t get where you want to be. You need to sow a seed. Maybe nothing exciting is going on; perhaps you’re facing big challenges. You could easily grow discouraged and give up on your dreams. But when you go to work with a smile, give it your best, offer kindness to others, you are sowing a seed. God will take that seed and grow it to bring something exciting into your life. The scripture tells us God will take us from glory to glory and from victory to victory. You may be in between victories right now, but keep your passion and hold on to your enthusiasm. The good news is another victory is on its way, another level of glory and another level of God’s favor.
Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
Even more thaqn making money, Joe Kennedy's special gift is elf promotion. Chamberlain can't go to the bathroom without Kennedy.
Edward Halifax
It is rather your limitation that decides to what extent of greatness and to what height you are going to arise in this life. Your level of promotion in life is determined by how much you know.
Sunday Adelaja (How To Become Great Through Time Conversion: Are you wasting time, spending time or investing time?)
Kléber—who shared Dumas’s opinion of Napoleon—memorably summed up his command by stating that Bonaparte was “the General who costs 10,000 men a month.” Kléber detested the way he used people as mere instruments and was ready to send thousands to perish if it would give him the smallest advantage. “Is he loved? How could he be?” Kléber scribbled in a notebook. “He loves nobody. But he thinks he can make up for this with promotions and gifts.
Tom Reiss (The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo)
But Brown argues that play is not an option. In fact he writes, “The opposite of play is not work—the opposite of play is depression.” He explains, “Respecting our biologically programmed need for play can transform work. It can bring back excitement and newness to our job. Play helps us deal with difficulties, provides a sense of expansiveness, promotes mastery of our craft, and is an essential part of the creative process. Most important, true play that comes from our own inner needs and desires is the only path to finding lasting joy and satisfaction in our work. In the long run, work does not work without play.”2
Brené Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are)
Compared to all this, Ronstadt and Browne were still trying to graduate from the kids' table. Ronstadt had released her first album for Geffen, Don't Cry Now, in September 1973. Browne followed a few weeks later, in October, with his second album, For Everyman. Both albums sold respectably, but neither cracked the Top 40 on the Billboard album chart. And while Geffen had great expectations for both artists, in early 1974 each was still building an audience. Their tour itinerary reflected their transitional position. It brought them to big venues in Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, but also took them far from the bright lights to small community theaters and college campuses in Oxnard, San Luis Obispo, New Haven, and Cortland, New York. At either end, there wasn't much glamour in the experience. They had moved up from the lowest rung on the touring ladder, when they had lugged their gear in and out of station wagons, but had progressed only to a Continental Trailways bus without beds that both bands crammed into for the late-night drives between shows. "The first thing that happened is we were driving all night, and the next morning we were exhausted," Browne remembered. "Like, no one slept a wink. We were sitting up all night on a bus."' "Touring was misery," Ronstadt said, looking back. "Touring is just hard. You don't get to meet anybody. You are always in a bubble . . . You saw the world outside the bus window, and you did the sound check every day."9 The performances were uneven, too. "While Browne is much more assured and confident on stage than he was a year or two ago, he's still very much like a smart kid with a grown-up gift for songwriting," sniffed Judith Sims of Rolling Stone. She treated Ronstadt even more dismissively, describing her as peddling "country schmaltz."' The young rock journalist Cameron Crowe, catching the tour a few days later in Berkeley, described Browne's set as "painfully mediocre."" But Ronstadt and Browne found their footing as they progressed, each alternating lead billing depending on who had sold more records in each market. By the time the cavalcade rolled into Carnegie Hall, the reception for Browne and Ronstadt was strong enough that the promoters added a second show. In February 1974, Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt were still at the edge of the stardom they would soon achieve.
Ronald Brownstein (Rock Me on the Water: 1974—The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics)
Leaders within the organization would recognize that I had a gift for leadership and would be eager for me to take on leadership roles. Then, when time came for me to lead, others within the organization (and sometimes the leaders that initially promoted me) would start to question my leadership. I’m not talking about the type of questioning and scrutiny that helps good leaders become more effective. It was much deeper than that. Not only did I have to demonstrate that I would continue to be an asset to the organization, I had to prove that I would not also be a liability.
Ally Henny (I Won't Shut Up: Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to Silence You (An Unvarnished Perspective on Racism That Calls Black Women to Find Their Voice))
As long as we realize that the symbols we use to describe our world are not that which they attempt to describe, there is no confusion. When we forget, however, that the map is not the territory, we get hypnotized into seeing the world as a complex and scrambled jigsaw puzzle, too big and complicated for us ever to completely put together. This way of thinking not only promotes the idea that we are separate from our environment, but it also encourages manipulation and exploitation of, instead of cooperation with, that environment.
Leo Hartong (Awakening to the Dream: The Gift of Lucid Living)
But with a lot of brilliant people running around, you run a risk. Sometimes really talented people have heard for so long how great they are, they begin to feel they really are better than everybody else. They might smirk at ideas they find unintelligent, roll their eyes when people are inarticulate, and insult those they feel are less gifted than they are. In other words, these people are jerks. If you are promoting a culture of candor on your team, you have to get rid of the jerks. Many may think, “This guy is so brilliant, we can’t afford to lose him.” But it doesn’t matter how brilliant your jerk is, if you keep him on the team you can’t benefit from candor.
Reed Hastings (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention)
In the late eighteenth-century, German educationalist Friedrich Froebel found that the best way to promote learning in children was through play. His studies found that people are naturally creative, and that their creativity was best brought out inside educational environments that included materials (which he called “gifts”) that encouraged learning through hands-on play. The idea was to teach young children through ways they valued and enjoyed rather than through ways they viewed as useless and boring.
John Couch (My Life at Apple: And the Steve I Knew)
The shortcuts of great individuals do not arise from the need for a positive public image, but rather from the deep roots of their personal values. They do not seek to stand out in front of others; instead, they naturally radiate authenticity. Moderation is the foundation of their luminous power, while greatness comes to the forefront through respect for others and the ability to share their light with the world, without the need for self-promotion. Instead, they gift light through their actions and kindness, leaving a trace that identifies their greatness, rather than the shine that arises from artificial shadows of pretense
A.Petrovski
As just mentioned in the treatment of verse 11, haplotēs refers to single-minded commitment to God’s will. The word for “contribution” here is koinōnia, which means, fundamentally, “fellowship” or “communion.”[16] Paul thereby indicates that God is glorified when we commit ourselves to promoting the koinōnia, or communion, of the larger Church. He explains that the Corinthians’ generosity in contributing will glorify God because it will “confess” in action the gospel and embody God’s gift of reconciliation.
Thomas D. Stegman (Second Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture): (A Catholic Bible Commentary on the New Testament by Trusted Catholic Biblical Scholars - CCSS))
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Mama Sabot
Understanding consumer preferences, market trends, and business opportunities all depend on market research. However, a nuanced approach is required when conducting market research survey in Myanmar. Participation in surveys and the quality of the data can be significantly influenced by cultural norms, beliefs, and practices. The challenges and opportunities of conducting surveys in this one-of-a-kind cultural landscape are brought to light in this article, which examines the intricate connection between culture and market research in Myanmar. Researchers can gain valuable insights for informed decision-making and successful market strategies by comprehending and adapting to Myanmar's cultural nuances. Introduction to market research survey in Myanmar is a country with a lot of culture and tradition that makes it a special place to conduct market research. Understanding the cultural nuances that influence survey participation is essential for businesses trying to comprehend consumer preferences and behaviors in this diverse market. An Overview of Myanmar's Market Research Landscape Market research is rapidly evolving in Myanmar in tandem with the country's economic expansion. In order to gain useful insights from surveys, it is necessary to have a comprehensive comprehension of the cultural dynamics of a population with a wide range of languages and ethnic groups. Understanding How Culture Affects Survey Participation Culture has a big impact on how people respond to market research surveys. Survey response rates can be influenced by interpersonal dynamics, social norms, and traditional beliefs in Myanmar. Cultural Factors That Affect Survey Response Rates People's responses to surveys can be influenced by factors like respect for authority, communal decision-making, and communication styles. The key to maximizing survey participation is recognizing and adapting to these cultural differences. The willingness of respondents to participate in surveys can be influenced by traditional beliefs and practices like face-saving behaviors, hierarchical structures, and superstitions. Researchers can create survey environments that are conducive to honest and valuable feedback by recognizing and respecting these traditional beliefs. Tailoring Survey Designs to Match Cultural Preferences in Myanmar To guarantee the success of market research surveys in Myanmar, survey designs must be adapted to match cultural norms and preferences. In addition to increasing respondent engagement, this strategy encourages inclusivity and a respect for local customs. Adjusting Poll Arrangement for Social Awareness From the language utilized in study inquiries to the visual plan of overview materials, social responsiveness ought to be a core value in forming review surveys. Researchers can increase respondent trust and openness by avoiding potential taboos and including references that are culturally relevant. Respecting local customs, such as greeting rituals, gift-giving practices, and preferred modes of communication, can increase respondents' willingness to participate in surveys by incorporating them into the design of the survey. Researchers can create a more engaging and culturally appropriate research experience by incorporating these elements into survey design. Overcoming Language Barriers in Market Research Surveys Myanmar's language diversity makes conducting market research surveys a significant challenge. Language barriers must be overcome and multilingual survey administration must be promoted in order to ensure effective communication and data collection. Challenges of Myanmar's Language Diversity With over 100 languages spoken there, language barriers can make it hard to take surveys and understand them. Utilizing survey materials that are suitable for a particular language and, if necessary, the services of an interpreter, researchers must overcome these obstacles. The use of bilingual survey
market research survey in Myanmar
I hate my gift, Uncle Kim. I'll watch Houston burn to ash before I use my gift to stop their war.” And that is what hatred is. Ultimately selfish, but determined. No amount of cajoling or pleading, no force of logic nor appealing to his mercy will change his mind. Only he can decide the most important thing to him, and for him, that’s his gift.
Jennifer Cody (Promote (Shattered Pawns, #3))
The Semitic religions of Abrahamic lineage present themselves as gifts come down from Heaven at a particular moment in history; now in order for them to be able to impinge on whole collectives, that is, to convert them and to integrate them, they must appeal to volitive and emotional factors, and this clearly has nothing to do with pure intellection, or a sophisticated dialectic. The monotheists were finally in need of Hellenism, not only to learn how to give more explicit account of their intellectual intentions, but also in order to promote the blossoming forth of intellection itself, thanks precisely to the aid of a more supple means of expression than the symbols and ellipses of the Scriptures.
Frithjof Schuon (The Eye of the Heart: Metaphysics, Cosmology, Spiritual Life (Library of Traditional Wisdom))
As Quakers we are called to honor that of God in every person, to live in harmony with others, and to avoid subtle and overt forms of violence. We are called to respect and be good stewards of this precious earth, knowing that it is a gift from God. We are reminded not to accumulate earthly treasures while others have nothing. We are called to examine our needs and wants with a pure and tranquil heart, living in simplicity and restraint to promote ecological and spiritual renewal. We understand the interconnectedness of all things and seek to walk gently and graciously on this earth.
Valerie Brown (The Mindful Quaker: A Brief Introduction to Buddhist Wisdom for Friends (Pendle Hill Pamphlets Book 386))
Christians, it would seem, are stuck with a very unattractive product to promote: Christ on the cross. This is a weak, shameful image that offends the sensibilities and shocks the refined emotions of decent people. The claim that Roman soldiers executed the God of the universe on a cross, like a criminal, also assaults our rational minds. It’s an affront to the pride we carry for having the gift of reason that puts us above the animals.
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus)
Judith Richards (1993), a teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, recounts her experience in a third/fourth grade classroom of children of white and African-American professionals and working-class Haitian immigrants. When she structured a traditional math problem-solving activity, the children of professionals invariably took the lead. However, when she embedded the same type of math problem-solving activity in a traditional Haitian folk tale, the Haitian children took the lead. It seems reasonable that culturally responsive pedagogy would positively affect learning. In both instances, the cognitive task facing children from cultures that were different from mainstream culture was simplified when they did not have to deal with both an unfamiliar speech event and instructional content. Further, one can imagine that using a familiar communication style could possibly reduce cultural dissonance, create a sense of membership, and symbolically affirm children who are members of racial minority groups (Erickson 1987).
Theresa Perry (Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students)
The visible, in-your-face manifestations of oppression have been mostly eliminated. But you scarcely can find a Black student who cannot recall or give you a litany of instances when he or she was automatically assumed to be intellectually incompetent.
Theresa Perry (Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students)
A handful of individual football stars—not necessarily the most talented, but those boasting good looks, beautiful wives and an animated private life—assumed a role in European public life and popular newspapers hitherto reserved for movie starlets or minor royalty. When David Beckham (an English player of moderate technical gifts but an unsurpassed talent for self-promotion) moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid in 2003, it made headline television news in every member-state of the European Union. Beckham’s embarrassing performance at the European Football Championships in Portugal the following year—the England captain missed two penalties, hastening his country’s ignominious early departure—did little to dampen the enthusiasm of his fans.
Tony Judt (Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945)
Where do we get the notion that our idea of success and God’s are the same? You have written a book; you are a clever manager and promoter; you are a talented artist; you are independently wealthy; you have achieved fame and fortune. Without the gifts of intelligence, imagination, personality, and physical energy—which are all endowed by God—where would you be?
Billy Graham (Billy graham in quotes)
Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is most greatly experienced in the heart of those willing to surrender all self-sufficiency: self-promotion, self-reliance, self-protection, and self-absorption: it is a gift given.
Robin M. Bertram
Finding Source promotes Spiritual nourishment, The gift of giving, Serene Appreciation, The power of love, Eternal wisdom, Divine guidance.
Finding Source
Uncomplicated Systems Of giftcity - A Background The sort of present you give can have an enduring impression on the receiver. Gift will make a person feel special so it is important that when selecting a gift, you must always keep the receiver in mind. Gift has the power to keep up it for a long time and to develop relationship that is powerful. Particularly in the corporate world, a a happy customer or a partner that is satisfied can have an enormous impact on the business. Thus, when picking corporate gift, one must be attentive and be diplomatic as well. Firms organises occasions and events to market their services and products. During such occasions, corporate gifts Singapore can play an enormous part in attracting more customers and keep up the old ones. Companies can emboss the presents reach to more individuals and they give away to further their advertisement with company emblems. Inexpensive gift item like pencils mugs bags etc are perfect for such giveaways they not only promote the company but also bring more customers company may also organize Corporate Gifting such as jewellery branded goods electronics and gadgets etc for significant occasions giveaways to high achievers for the company or business associates. Some of the things proposed by Giftcitysingapore are leather goods, branded wristwatches, kitchenwares, gadgets and electronic good etc are perfect for corporate gifts. Such expensive items can be given on particular company's occasion and occasions. Depending on the occasion and recipients corporate gifts can be chosen. One should also keep in your mind not to tarnish the company's persona with affordable presents for special occasions when choosing corporate gifts. Latest gadgets and electronic devices makes wonderful gifts for family members and friends, the exact same thought can be used on corporate gift ideas. Everyone will appreciate being gifted with the most recent gadget in the industry. Present city website has also implied that electronic devices and gadgets are perfect corporate gifts. Gadgets and electronic devices even have practical use consequently most firms regularly give away such expensive gifts to valued employees and clients.
giftcitysingapore
Your life goal and mission is to find your gift, become what you have been created to be and with your gift serve mankind, promoting advancement and influencing humanity
Sunday Adelaja
CRISIS IN LOVE crisis in love , is what makes love no longer love but haterd , it also distroy friendship , ,, . We have two major crisi s in love , .MONEY & SEX.... Most of our gals nowadays no longer interested in true love , but un does who send money un dem, many has gone because of it , dat is why men nowadays are using dem for rituals ,, , while some are having problem in their marriage because of it, this is also break the marriage when the möney is gone, , True love is like a seed , if u water it , it wil grow , if not it wil die . What shall do to prevent dis , for gals dont love a gal because of his money , bt love him because of his future ,.SEX. What shall it profit a man to gain the pride ,of a woman and loses it his bright future, , Some of our gals are decive by the word "I LOVE U,," that makes some mothers in this dear youth stages, Some are also distorying dear womb , in the name of abortion , and also some family are childless because of this ,.., and so sin before God and man. Shine ur eyes gals, many has gone, before u openup for a guy makes sure he has paide ur bride price, .. LET u understand the sex , is devine gift from God to promote marriage life......NB Love is devine by one word sacrifice, ..that is why God sent his son to die for us. JESUS is pure example of love. Thanks . I LOVE u all ,but God LOVE most.
BUKASON
The church is known more for what it is against than what it believes and promotes.
Carlton Rivers (The Freeing Power of Grace: Grace: God’s Gift of Freedom)
Language guardians have often blamed linguists as defenders of bad language: moral and cultural relativism is often tossed in at no extra charge. We as a profession are supposedly promoting the idea that anything goes in grammar... But no, we have never said anything goes in grammar. (...) When it comes to the proper use of language, universal grammar is the ultimate authority. It is not about what rules are deemed reasonable or popular; it is about what rules are true. And one sign for a true rule is that it appears in young children, long before they are polluted by dubious grammatical advice.
Charles Yang (The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World)
But virtually all aspects of underperformance—lower standardized test scores, lower college grades, lower graduation rates—persist among students from the African-American middle class. This situation forces on us an uncomfortable recognition: that beyond class, something racial is depressing the academic performance of these students.
Theresa Perry (Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students)
Most forms of martial arts have long histories of eastern religious influence. However, the tae kwon do philosophy was established in the 1950s by the South Korean army for self-defense and combat techniques. Tae kwon do includes “love and benevolence, magnanimity, sympathy and character as well as the five tenets of tae kwon do: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and an indomitable spirit.” The American missionary who came to my country felt that tae kwon do could be used as a suitable, effective way to model discipleship and promote Christianity. The Lord gives talents and gifts, and even sport can be used to advance His Kingdom.
Samaa Habib (Face to Face with Jesus: A Former Muslim's Extraordinary Journey to Heaven and Encounter with the God of Love)
You can’t justify your existence by what you do. You can’t justify it through a promotion, a huge bonus, or the ability to feed your family all organic food. You can’t justify your existence through your holiday cards or your well-attended speech. You can’t justify it through your huge Twitter following or your mommy blog. These attempts to attain some measure of success are vanity, according to Ecclesiastes. What we long for is perfection—in our works and in who we are. This is only possible through Jesus—Jesus lived the perfect life we can’t, paid the penalty for our sins that we can’t, and rose from the dead so that one day we will rise if we trust Him for the gift of eternal life. What needs to be done has already been done! Until then, we invest. We invest what we’ve received so that we multiply His gifts for His glory.
Carolyn McCulley (The Measure of Success: Uncovering the Biblical Perspective on Women, Work, and the Home)
Infant formula samples are placed in ‘discharge bags’ full of promotional products. These are presented as attractive gifts when in fact they are snares to entrap women at their most vulnerable.
Gabrielle Palmer (The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business)
It was her concern and commitment to a friend which last year involved her in perhaps the most emotional period of her life. For five months she secretly helped to care for Adrian Ward-Jackson who had discovered that he was suffering from AIDS. It was a time of laughter, joy and much sorrow as Adrian, a prominent figure in the world of art, ballet and opera, gradually succumbed to his illness. A man of great charisma and energy, Adrian initially found it difficult to come to terms with his fate when in the mid-1980s he was diagnosed as HIV positive. His word as deputy chairman of the Aids Crisis Trust, where he first met the Princess, had made him fully aware of the reality of the disease. Finally he broke the news in 1987 to his great friend Angela Serota, a dancer with the Royal Ballet until a leg injury cut short her career and now prominent in promoting dance and ballet. For much of the time, Angela, a woman of serenity and calm practicality, nursed Adrian, always with the support of her two teenage daughters. He was well enough to receive a CBE at Buckingham Palace in March 1991 for his work in the arts--he was a governor of the Royal Ballet, chairman of the Contemporary Arts Society and a director of the Theatre Museum Association--and it was at a celebratory lunch held at the Tate Gallery that Angela first met the Princess. In April 1991 Adrian’s condition deteriorated and he was confined to his Mayfair apartment where Angela was in almost constant attendance. It was from that time that Diana made regular visits, once even brining her children Princes Willian and Harry. From that time Angela and the Princess began to forge a supportive bond as they cared for their friend. Angela recalls: “I thought she was utterly beautiful in a very profound way. She has an inner spirit which shines forth though there was also a sense of pervasive unhappiness about her. I remember loving the way she never wanted me to be formal.” When Diana brought the boys to see her friends, a reflection of her firmly held belief that her role as mother is to bring them up in a way that equips them for every aspect of life and death, Angela saw in William a boy much older and more sensitive than his years. She recalls: “He had a mature view of illness, a perspective which showed awareness of love and commitment.” At first Angela kept in the background, leaving Diana alone in Adrian’s room where they chatted about mutual friends and other aspects of life. Often she brought Angela, whom she calls “Dame A”, a gift of flowers or similar token. She recalls: “Adrian loved to hear about her day-to-day work and he loved too the social side of life. She made him laugh but there was always the perfect degree of understanding, care and solicitude. This is the point about her, she is not just a decorative figurehead who floats around on a cloud of perfume.” The mood in Mount Street was invariably joyous, that sense of happiness that understands about pain. As Angela says: “I don’t see death as sad or depressing. It was a great journey he was going on. The Princess was very much in tune with that spirit. She also loved coming for herself, it was an intense experience. At the same time Adrian was revitalized by the healing quality of her presence.” Angela read from a number of works by St. Francis of Assisi, Kahil Gibran and the Bible as well as giving Adrian frequent aromatherapy treatments. A high spot was a telephone call from Mother Teresa of Calcutta who also sent a medallion via Indian friends. At his funeral they passed Diana a letter from Mother Teresa saying how much she was looking forward to meeting her when she visited India. Unfortunately Mother Teresa was ill at that time so the Princess made a special journey to Rome where she was recuperating. Nonetheless that affectionate note meant a great deal to the Princess.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat. The world is bad; let us learn to be independent of it. External goods are precarious; they are the gift of fortune, not the reward of our own efforts. Only subjective goods—virtue, or contentment through resignation—are secure, and these alone, therefore, will be valued by the wise man. Diogenes personally was a man full of vigour, but his doctrine, like all those of the Hellenistic age, was one to appeal to weary men, in whom disappointment had destroyed natural zest. And it was certainly not a doctrine calculated to promote art or science or statesmanship, or any useful activity except one of protest against powerful evil.
Anonymous
A few people in a basement room take the best of that service and repackage it, freeze-drying it for print. Print becomes a promotional vehicle for the brand’s online services and a supplier of cash flow to subsidize research and development. That
Jeff Jarvis (Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News)
we don’t need Dolce & Gabbana Belt Buckle Preacher Guy. In a subscribe-to-my-YouTube-channel world, we don’t need men of God who still need our constant admiration and approval. But a man who is able to sit and listen, to root for others, to be a voice of affirmation and guidance with no significant payoff in mind? Yeah, that guy is refreshing. There aren’t many of that type. We need more. We need you to become that guy. And this isn’t about taking on a tough, I-don’t-need-anybody persona. That’s immaturity too, because you’re still trying to prove something. The point is to recognize this desperate, yawning gap in our lives, this drive for significance, and find satisfaction for it in our relationship with God instead of in one more promotion or compliment or whatever.
Brant Hansen (The Men We Need: God’s Purpose for the Manly Man, the Avid Indoorsman, or Any Man Willing to Show Up (Christian Book on Masculinity & Gift Idea for Father's Day or Graduation Gift for Guys))