Recognize Excellence Quotes

It does not matter where we come from or what we look like. If we recognize our abilities, are willing to learn and to use what we know in helping others, we will always have a place in the world.

Reading activates and exercises the mind. Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on the page, make them into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into concepts. Reading pushes us to use our imagination and makes us more creatively inclined.

We may sometimes witness conversations at cross purposes and see how people hold muted dialogues of the deaf. They keep talking without really recognizing what the other is trying to bring home. Why should we not more engage in discussions with animals, promising much better results? Animals often appear to be much wiser, reasonable observers, and excellent listeners. (Let us say more and speak less)-Erik Pevernagie

One may not always know his purpose until his only option is to monopolize in what he truly excels at. He grows weary of hearing the answer 'no' time and time again, so he turns to and cultivates, monopolizes in his one talent which others cannot possibly subdue. Then, beyond the crowds of criticism and rejection, the right people recognize his talent - among them he finds his stage.

I didn't have friends. No one talked to me. I used to go to the Wyndcroft School (nationally recognized for academic excellence) in Pottstown, and when I moved to Wyomissing, I didn't know anybody.

You won’t be able to recognize the things you really care about until you have released your grip on all the things that you’ve been taught to care about.

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty. The more indifferent people are to politics, to the interests of others, the more obsessed they become with their own faces. The individualism of our time. Not being able to fall asleep and not allowing oneself to move: the marital bed. If high culture is coming to an end, it is also the end of you and your paradoxical ideas, because paradox as such belongs to high culture and not to childish prattle. You remind me of the young men who supported the Nazis or communists not out of cowardice or out of opportunism but out of an excess of intelligence. For nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of nonthought… You are the brilliant ally of your own gravediggers. In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty. How to live in a world with which you disagree? How to live with people when you neither share their suffering nor their joys? When you know that you don’t belong among them?... our century refuses to acknowledge anyone’s right to disagree with the world…All that remains of such a place is the memory, the ideal of a cloister, the dream of a cloister… Humor can only exist when people are still capable of recognizing some border between the important and the unimportant. And nowadays this border has become unrecognizable. The majority of people lead their existence within a small idyllic circle bounded by their family, their home, and their work... They live in a secure realm somewhere between good and evil. They are sincerely horrified by the sight of a killer. And yet all you have to do is remove them from this peaceful circle and they, too, turn into murderers, without quite knowing how it happened. The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order. Or to put it the other way around: the desire for order is a virtuous pretext, an excuse for virulent misanthropy. A long time a go a certain Cynic philosopher proudly paraded around Athens in a moth-eaten coat, hoping that everyone would admire his contempt for convention. When Socrates met him, he said: Through the hole in your coat I see your vanity. Your dirt, too, dear sir, is self-indulgent and your self-indulgence is dirty. You are always living below the level of true existence, you bitter weed, you anthropomorphized vat of vinegar! You’re full of acid, which bubbles inside you like an alchemist’s brew. Your highest wish is to be able to see all around you the same ugliness as you carry inside yourself. That’s the only way you can feel for a few moments some kind of peace between yourself and the world. That’s because the world, which is beautiful, seems horrible to you, torments you and excludes you. If the novel is successful, it must necessarily be wiser than its author. This is why many excellent French intellectuals write mediocre novels. They are always more intelligent than their books. By a certain age, coincidences lose their magic, no longer surprise, become run-of-the-mill. Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.

So many people think that they are not gifted because they don’t have an obvious talent that people can recognize because it doesn’t fall under the creative arts category—writing, dancing, music, acting, art or singing. Sadly, they let their real talents go undeveloped, while they chase after fame. I am grateful for the people with obscure unremarked talents because they make our lives easier---inventors, organizers, planners, peacemakers, communicators, activists, scientists, and so forth. However, there is one gift that trumps all other talents—being an excellent parent. If you can successfully raise a child in this day in age to have integrity then you have left a legacy that future generations will benefit from.

Be aware of this truth that the people on this earth could be joyous, if only they would live rationally and if they would contribute mutually to each others' welfare. This world is not a vale of sorrows if you will recognize discriminatingly what is truly excellent in it; and if you will avail yourself of it for mutual happiness and well-being. Therefore, let us explain as often as possible, and particularly at the departure of life, that we base our faith on firm foundations, on Truth for putting into action our ideas which do not depend on fables and ideas which Science has long ago proven to be false.

I reach out and take his hand. “Well, he probably used up a lot of resources helping me knock you out,” I say mischievously. “Yeah, about that,” says Peeta, entwining his fingers in mine. “Don’t try something like that again.” “Or what?” I ask. “Or . . . or . . .” He can’t think of anything good. “Just give me a minute.” “What’s the problem?” I say with a grin. “The problem is we’re both still alive. Which only reinforces the idea in your mind that you did the right thing,” says Peeta. “I did do the right thing,” I say. “No! Just don’t, Katniss!” His grip tightens, hurting my hand, and there’s real anger in his voice. “Don’t die for me. You won’t be doing me any favors. All right?” I’m startled by his intensity but recognize an excellent opportunity for getting food, so I try to keep up. “Maybe I did it for myself, Peeta, did you ever think of that? Maybe you aren’t the only one who . . . who worries about . . . what it would be like if. . .” I fumble. I’m not as smooth with words as Peeta. And while I was talking, the idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realized how much I don’t want him to die. And it’s not about the sponsors. And it’s not about what will happen back home. And it’s not just that I don’t want to be alone. It’s him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread. “If what, Katniss?” he says softly. I wish I could pull the shutters closed, blocking out this moment from the prying eyes of Panem. Even if it means losing food. Whatever I’m feeling, it’s no one’s business but mine. “That’s exactly the kind of topic Haymitch told me to steer clear of,” I say evasively, although Haymitch never said anything of the kind. In fact, he’s probably cursing me out right now for dropping the ball during such an emotionally charged moment. But Peeta somehow catches it. “Then I’ll just have to fill in the blanks myself,” he says, and moves in to me. This is the first kiss that we’re both fully aware of. Neither of us hobbled by sickness or pain or simply unconscious. Our lips neither burning with fever or icy cold. This is the first kiss where I actually feel stirring inside my chest. Warm and curious. This is the first kiss that makes me want another. But I don’t get it. Well, I do get a second kiss, but it’s just a light one on the tip of my nose because Peeta’s been distracted. “I think your wound is bleeding again. Come on, lie down, it’s bedtime anyway,” he says.

I have to admit it humbly, mon cher compatriote, I was always bursting with vanity. I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life, which could be heard in everything I said. I could never talk without boasting, especially if I did so with that shattering discretion that was my specialty. It is quite true that I always lived free and powerful. I simply felt released in the regard to all the for the excellent reason that I recognized no equals. I always considered myself more intelligent than everyone else, as I’ve told you, but also more sensitive and more skillful, a crack shot, an incomparable driver, a better lover. Even in the fields in which it was easy for me to verify my inferiority–like tennis, for instance, in which I was but a passable partner–it was hard for me not to think that, with a little time and practice, I would surpass the best players. I admitted only superiorities in me and this explained my good will and serenity. When I was concerned with others, I was so out of pure condescension, in utter freedom, and all the credit went to me: my self-esteem would go up a degree.

The shame and the downfall of a modern materialistic society is her inability to treasure, care for, admire, adore, cherish, value, revere, respect, uphold, uplift, protect, shield, defend, safeguard, treasure and love her children. I praise all the cultures of this world that naturally harbor and actively manifest these instincts. If a nation or if a population of people fails to recognize the excellent value and distinction of the lives of her children and is defective enough to have lost the capability of expressing and acting upon these instincts then there is nothing that can save that nation or those people. The prosperity of a people is not measured in banks, financial markets, economy and the death of its humanity is evident not through the loss of life but in the loss of love for its children.

If someone does a Great job or provide excellent service, make sure to recognize and reward them! If someone wrote a book you enjoy, tell them. If you want people to put out their best and to strive for excellence, encourage and support them. - Strong by Kailin Gow on Leadership

there are many theologians who are not good in the pulpit but are excellent at recognizing the lacks or excesses of those who preach.

It is very difficult for me to come to terms with my spiritual illness because of my great pride, disguised by my material successes and my intellectual power. Intelligence is not incompatible with humility, provided I place humility first. To seek prestige and wealth is the ultimate goal for many in the modern world. To be fashionable and to seem better than I really am is a spiritual illness. To recognize and to admit my weaknesses is the beginning of good spiritual health. It is a sign of spiritual health to be able to ask God every day to enlighten me, to recognize His will, and to have the strength to execute it. My spiritual health is excellent when I realize that the better I get, the more I discover how much help I need from others.

Factfulness is … recognizing that a single perspective can limit your imagination, and remembering that it is better to look at problems from many angles to get a more accurate understanding and find practical solutions. To control the single perspective instinct, get a toolbox, not a hammer. • Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses. • Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others. • Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields. • Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives. • Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise.

Okay, here’s a cheat I learned in a leadership seminar. It’s called active listening. Someone says something, a complaint, or a criticism, or they’re excited about something that happened to them. For a lot of us, our instinct is to offer a solution, or expand on an idea, to fix or offer something. The key is to think about how they’re feeling, be receptive to that, and parrot it back to them. They just got a new car, and they’re happy about it? A simple ‘that’s excellent’ or ‘you must be so proud’ works. It leaves room for them to keep talking, to know you’re listening. For your teammate who just lost someone she obviously cared about, just recognizing that she’s upset and she’s right to feel upset, that’s enough.

The true democrat wishes to share the great works of culture with all who are able to appreciate them; the egalitarian, recognizing that genuine excellence is rare, declares greatness a fraud and sets about obliterating distinctions.

recognize certain traits that seem to be in every champion: passion, commitment, confidence, pride in performance, high standards of excellence, relentlessness, perseverance, and the ability to perform in adverse circumstances.

We can never grasp the extent of our depravity until we recognize the excellencies of our created dignity.

I wanted to find something that would make Mom proud of me. Something I could excel at.' she told him. 'But some part of me thought that if I was out there performing, if everyone knew my name, I might reach my father or his family. They might recognize me. They'd hear my music and want to come find me. Know me.' 'I heard you, Etta,' he said softly. 'I heard you.

With the confidence and peace of mind native to true genius, I lay my life story before the world, so that the reader may learn how to educate himself to be a great tomcat, may recognize the full extent of my excellence, may love, value, honour and admire me- and worship me a little. Should anyone be audacious enough to think of casting doubt on the sterling worth of this remarkable book, let him reflect that he is dealing with a tomcat possessed of intellect, understanding, and sharp claws.

In order to pursue excellence one must recognize mediocrity.

Regardless of how you begin your careers, it is important to realize that your life will not necessarily move in a straight line. You have to recognize that the world is an unpredictable place. Sometimes even gifted people such as yourselves will get knocked back on their heels. It is inevitable that you will confront many difficulties and hardships during your lives. When you face setbacks, you have to dig down and move yourself forward. The resilience you exhibit in the face of adversity—rather than the adversity itself—will be what defines you as a person.

All of us, I suspect, imagine that a world exists from which we alone have been excluded; all of us have our noses pressed against the glass. But if we contemplate our own lives, not the phantom life on the other side, we might find things in them to envy-a family that’s intact; a job we like; excellent health (the thing we take for granted and on which all happiness depends). Good fortune is there, however sporadic, however modest, however difficult to achieve. The trick is to recognize it.

The greatest of all faults in a politician, and in any leader, is the failure to recognize that charisma has nothing to do with ability, excellence, or goodness. In fact, charisma enables far more the evils of the universe than great and worthy accomplishments, Give me pedestrian accomplishments over charisma any day.

She was breaking, the edges of her, and through the cracks I saw something terrible, it was dark and powerful and churning, and I recognized with frightening clarity that everything I knew about Su Lan—her excellence, her beauty, her composure—was actually an attempt to control this thing. I realized that I did not know her, and did not want to.

All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason.

...while epic fantasy is based on the fairy tale of the just war, that’s not one you’ll find in Grimm or Disney, and most will never recognize the shape of it. I think the fantasy genre pitches its tent in the medieval campground for the very reason that we even bother to write stories about things that never happened in the first place: because it says something subtle and true about our own world, something it is difficult to say straight out, with a straight face. Something you need tools to say, you need cheat codes for the human brain--a candy princess or a sugar-coated unicorn to wash down the sour taste of how bad things can really get. See, I think our culture has a slash running through the middle of it, too. Past/Future, Conservative/Liberal, Online/Offline. Virgin/Whore. And yes: Classical/Medieval. I think we’re torn between the Classical Narrative of Self and the Medieval Narrative of Self, between the choice of Achilles and Keep Calm and Carry On. The Classical internal monologue goes like this: do anything, anything, only don’t be forgotten. Yes, this one sacrificed his daughter on a slab at Aulis, that one married his mother and tore out his eyes, and oh that guy ate his kids in a pie. But you remember their names, don’t you? So it’s all good in the end. Give a Greek soul a choice between a short life full of glory and a name echoing down the halls of time and a long, gentle life full of children and a quiet sort of virtue, and he’ll always go down in flames. That’s what the Iliad is all about, and the Odyssey too. When you get to Hades, you gotta have a story to tell, because the rest of eternity is just forgetting and hoping some mortal shows up on a quest and lets you drink blood from a bowl so you can remember who you were for one hour. And every bit of cultural narrative in America says that we are all Odysseus, we are all Agamemnon, all Atreus, all Achilles. That we as a nation made that choice and chose glory and personal valor, and woe betide any inconvenient “other people” who get in our way. We tell the tales around the campfire of men who came from nothing to run dotcom empires, of a million dollars made overnight, of an actress marrying a prince from Monaco, of athletes and stars and artists and cowboys and gangsters and bootleggers and talk show hosts who hitched up their bootstraps and bent the world to their will. Whose names you all know. And we say: that can be each and every one of us and if it isn’t, it’s your fault. You didn’t have the excellence for it. You didn’t work hard enough. The story wasn’t about you, and the only good stories are the kind that have big, unignorable, undeniable heroes.

Science is not simply a matter of observing the world, experimenting with its elements and drawing reasonable conclusions. Otherwise, we would have to recognize children, so-called primitives and a good many animals as excellent scientists. But the practical experiments carried out by all of us every day lack a few necessary factors, the first and most important of which is the concept of the universe as a single entity operating under universal, rational, knowable laws. Without this foundation, science cannot operate as such.

brings to mind this insight from C. S. Lewis: “We must picture hell as a state where everyone . . . has a grievance, and where everyone lives in the deadly serious passions of envy . . . and resentment.”20 This pretty well describes ideological social justice. It has no basis for love, forgiveness, or reconciliation. It destroys relationships and tears apart the social fabric. Christians, whose job is to love our neighbors and bless the nations, must recognize and reject this destructive worldview as we attempt, in God’s strength, to live out a “more excellent way.

On account of its originality, excellence in every field strikes us as so new and so strange, that to recognize it at first glance will require not only understanding, but also education in the same discipline. As a rule, excellence achieves late recognition, all the later as the discipline is loftier, and those who truly enlighten humankind share the fate of the fixed stars, the light from which requires many years before it descends to the horizon.

You know,” said Phineas Nigellus, even more loudly than Harry, “this is precisely why I loathed being a teacher! Young people are so infernally convinced that they are absolutely right about everything. Has it not occurred to you, my poor puffed-up popinjay, that there might be an excellent reason why the headmaster of Hogwarts is not confiding every tiny detail of his plans to you? Have you never paused, while feeling hard-done-by, to note that following Dumbledore’s orders has never yet led you into harm? No. No, like all young people, you are quite sure that you alone feel and think, you alone recognize danger, you alone are the only one clever enough to realize what the Dark Lord may be planning . . .

If you don’t have time for yourself, it will be difficult to recognize opportunities when they arrive

Words evolve, perhaps more rapidly and tellingly than do their users, and the change in meanings reflects a society often more accurately than do the works of many historians. In he years preceding the first collapse of NorAm, the change in the meaning of one word predicted the failure of that society more immediately and accurately than did all the analysts, social scientists, and historians. That critical word? 'Discrimination.' We know it now as a term meaning 'unfounded bias against a person, group, or culture on the basis of racial, gender, or ethnic background.' Prejudice, if you will. The previous meaning of this word was: 'to draw a clear distinction between good and evil, to differentiate, to recognize as different.' Moreover, the connotations once associated with discrimination were favorable. A person of discrimination was one of taste and good judgment. With the change of the meaning into a negative term of bias, the English language was left without a single-word term for the act of choosing between alternatives wisely, and more importantly, left with a subterranean negative connotation for those who attempted to make such choices. In hindsight, the change in meaning clearly reflected and foreshadowed the disaster to come. Individuals and institutions abhorred making real choices. At one point more than three-quarters of the youthful population entered institutions of higher learning. Credentials, often paper ones, replaced meaning judgment and choices... Popularity replaced excellence... The number of disastrous cultural and political decisions foreshadowed by the change in meaning of one word is truly endless...

Excellence doesn’t come by obeying doctrines. Excellence comes through recognizing the flaws in the prevailing doctrines of the society and throwing them away if necessary in the path of progress.

For the first time then I recognized that supremacy in our society came from one’s proximity to gold, not from mere excellence - 'If you come with me, what do you bring? If I come to you, what can you give me?

Rallick will kill you,” Murillio said levelly. “Nonsense.” Kruppe placed the mask over his face. “How will the lad ever recognize Kruppe?” Murillio studied the man’s round body, the faded red waistcoat, gathered cuffs, and the short oily curls atop his head. “Never mind.” He sighed. “Excellent,” Kruppe said. “Now, please accept these two masks, gifts from your friend Kruppe. A trip is saved, and Baruk need not wait any longer for a secret message that must not be mentioned.” He replaced his mask in its box, then spun round to study the eastern skyline. “Off to yon alchemist’s abode, then. Good evening, friend—” “Wait a minute,” Murillio said, grasping Kruppe’s arm and turning him round. “Have you seen Coll?” “Why, of course. The man sleeps a deep, recovering sleep from his ordeals.’Twas healed magically, Sulty said. By some stranger, yet. Coll himself was brought in by yet a second stranger, who found a third stranger, who in turn brought a fifth stranger in the company of the stranger who healed Coll. And so it goes, friend Murillio. Strange doings, indeed. Now, Kruppe must be off. Goodbye, friend—” “Not yet,” Murillio snarled. He glanced around. The street was still empty. He leaned close. “I’ve worked some things out, Kruppe. Circle Breaker contacting me put everything into order in my mind. I know who you are.” “Aaai!” Kruppe cried, withdrawing. “I’ll not deny it, then! It’s true, Murillio, Kruppe is Lady Simtal connivingly disguised.

But the best managers expect their people to make mistakes, and instead of replacing staff constantly, they recognize that it is more efficient to teach people how to cope with their failures and learn from their

Often, our relationships become an unrealized quest for what is perfect, unfettered, and free of flaws. We expect our partners, spouses, and our friends to avoid missteps and to be magical mind readers. These secret expectations play a sinister part in many of the great tragedies of our lives: failed marriages, dissipated dreams, abandoned careers, outcast family, deserted children, and discarded friendships. We readily forget what we once knew as children: our flaws are not only natural but integral to our beings. They are interwoven into our soul’s DNA and yet we continually reject the crooked, wrinkled, mushy parts of our life rather than embrace them as the very essence of our beings. I once believed that aiming for perfection would land me in the realm of excellence. This, however, may not be the trajectory of how things happen. In fact, the pursuit of perfection may be the biggest obstacle to becoming whole. It seems essential to value hard work and determination and yet recognize that the road to excellence is littered with mistakes and subsequent lessons. Imperfection and excellence are intertwined. There is joy in our pain, strength in weakness, courage in compassion, and power in forgiveness.

From the beginning, Europe assumed the power to make decisions within the international trading system. An excellent illustration of that is the fact that the so-called international law which governed the conduct of nations on the high seas was nothing else but European law. Africans did not participate in its making, and in many instances, African people were simply the victims, for the law recognized them only as transportable merchandise. If the African slave was thrown overboard at sea, the only legal problem that arose was whether or not the slave ship could claim compensation from the insurers! Above all, European decision-making power was exercised in selecting what Africa should export – in accordance with European needs.

We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his work "junk", simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Instead, if the artist's technical excellence is high, he is to be praised for this even if we differ with his worldview... Yet where his work shows his worldview, it must be judged by its relationship to the Christian worldview. If we stand as Christians before a man's canvas and recognize that he is a great artist in technical excellence, we have been fair with him as a man. Then we can say that his worldview is wrong. We can judge his views on the same basis as we judge anybody else- philosopher, common man, laborer, business man, or whatever. God's Word binds the great man and the small, the scientist and the simple, the king and the artist. We should realize that if something untrue or immoral is stated in great art, it can be far more devastating than if it is expressed in poor art. The greater the artistic expression, the more important it is to consciously bring it and it's worldview under the judgment of Christ and the Bible. The common reaction among many however, is just the opposite. Ordinarily, many seem to feel that the greater the art, the less we ought to be critical of its worldview. This we must reverse.

Make then your forecasts, my lords Astrologers, with your slavish physicians, by means of those astrolabes with which you seek to discern the fantastic nine moving spheres; in these you finally imprison your own minds, so that you appear to me but as parrots in a cage, while I watch you dancing up and down, turning and hopping within those circles. We know that the Supreme Ruler cannot have a seat so narrow, so miserable a throne, so straight a tribunal, so scanty a court, so small and feeble a simulacrum that a phantasm can bring to birth, a dream shatter, a delusion restore, a chimera disperse, a calamity diminish, a misdeed abolish and a thought renew it again, so that indeed with a puff of air it were brimful and with a single gulp it were emptied. On the contrary we recognize a noble image, a marvellous conception, a supreme figure, an exalted shadow, an infinite representation of the represented infinity, a spectacle worthy of the excellence and supremacy of Him who transcendeth understanding, comprehension or grasp. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of his kingdom made manifest; he is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.

We all want to do something that we are good at, that the world in some way recognizes, but the point of practice is never just about skill acquisition. It’s about making a contribution to the world. Which is why when we are in the midst of pursuing our calling, we must not only ask if this is something that we are good at, but if it is something good. We need more than excellence to satisfy the deepest longings of our souls. Which should raise the question: Is it, perhaps, possible to succeed at the wrong thing? It is, indeed.

This was not the first time he’d made me feel like less. Like I wasn’t worthy of . . . him. His time. Rationally, I knew this feeling was dissonant with the truth. He’d gone out of his way to contact me, keep me in his class. As a teacher, he was doing his due diligence. As a man, he’d kissed me for Frodo’s sake! TWICE! And yet, as much as I recognized he was an excellent teacher, a brilliant professor, and gifted scholar, I didn’t like him—the man—very much. Because, as a man—after the kisses were over—I’d felt small and shabby. And not in a badass Hobbit way either.

Of all the tasks which are set before man in life, the education and management of his character is the most important, and, in order that it should be successfully pursued, it is necessary that he should make a calm and careful survey of his own tendencies, unblinded either by the self-deception which conceals errors and magnifies excellences, or by the indiscriminate pessimism which refuses to recognize his powers for good. He must avoid the fatalism which would persuade him that he has no power over his nature, and he must also clearly recognize that this power is not unlimited.

No institution of learning of Ingersoll's day had courage enough to confer upon him an honorary degree; not only for his own intellectual accomplishments, but also for his influence upon the minds of the learned men and women of his time and generation. Robert G. Ingersoll never received a prize for literature. The same prejudice and bigotry which prevented his getting an honorary college degree, militated against his being recognized as 'the greatest writer of the English language on the face of the earth,' as Henry Ward Beecher characterized him. Aye, in all the history of literature, Robert G. Ingersoll has never been excelled -- except by only one man, and that man was -- William Shakespeare. And yet there are times when Ingersoll even surpassed the immortal Bard. Yes, there are times when Ingersoll excelled even Shakespeare, in expressing human emotions, and in the use of language to express a thought, or to paint a picture. I say this fully conscious of my own admiration for that 'intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought.' Ingersoll was perfection himself. Every word was properly used. Every sentence was perfectly formed. Every noun, every verb and every object was in its proper place. Every punctuation mark, every comma, every semicolon, and every period was expertly placed to separate and balance each sentence. To read Ingersoll, it seems that every idea came properly clothed from his brain. Something rare indeed in the history of man's use of language in the expression of his thoughts. Every thought came from his brain with all the beauty and perfection of the full blown rose, with the velvety petals delicately touching each other. Thoughts of diamonds and pearls, rubies and sapphires rolled off his tongue as if from an inexhaustible mine of precious stones. Just as the cut of the diamond reveals the splendor of its brilliance, so the words and construction of the sentences gave a charm and beauty and eloquence to Ingersoll's thoughts. Ingersoll had everything: The song of the skylark; the tenderness of the dove; the hiss of the snake; the bite of the tiger; the strength of the lion; and perhaps more significant was the fact that he used each of these qualities and attributes, in their proper place, and at their proper time. He knew when to embrace with the tenderness of affection, and to resist and denounce wickedness and tyranny with that power of denunciation which he, and he alone, knew how to express.

Recognize that performance in school doesn’t tell you much about whether a person has the values and abilities you are looking for. Largely because they are the easiest to measure, memory and processing speed tend to be the abilities that determine success in school, so school performance is an excellent gauge of these qualities.

The left hemisphere reasons sequentially, analyzes details, and excels at linear analysis. “Left-brained” or “linear” thinkers who are analytically strong are often called “bright.” 2. The right hemisphere thinks across categories, recognizes themes, and synthesizes the big picture. “Right-brained” or “lateral” thinkers with more street smarts are often called “smart.

Our discussion so far reveals that the early egalitarian Islamic community largely recognized differences among the faithful on the basis of personal piety and moral excellence alone, tending to devalue kinship and social status in conscious contradistinction to the pre-Islamic period.50 Such a moral attitude found broad reflection in the socio-political organization of the early polity as well.

Dissimulation is not fraud. It is an effort not to show things as they are. And it is a difficult effort: when we excel, others must not recognize our excellence. If someone were to become famous for his ability to disguise himself, as actors do, all would know that he is what he pretends to be. But concerning the true, excellent dissimulators, who have existed and exist still, we have no information.

Sometimes he wakes so far from himself that he can't even remember who he is. 'Where am I?' he asks, desperate, and then, 'Who am I? Who am I?' And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem's whispered incantation. 'You're Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You're the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You're the friend of Malcolm Irvine, Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. You're a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. You're a swimmer. You're a baker. You're a cook. You're a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You're an excellent pianist. You're an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I'm away. You're patient. You're generous. You're the best listener I know. You're the smartest person I know, in every way. You're the bravest person I know, in every way. You're a lawyer. You're the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job, you work hard at it. You're a mathematician. You're a logician. You've tried to teach me, again and again. You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you. On and on Willem talks, chanting him back to himself, and in the daytime - sometimes days later - he remembers pieces of what Willem has said and holds them close to him, as much as for what he said as for what he didn't, for how he hadn't defined him. But in the nighttime he is too terrified, he is too lost to recognize this. His panic is too real, too consuming. 'And who are you?' he asks, looking at the man who is holding him, who is describing someone he doesn't recognize, someone who seems to have so much, someone who seems like such an enviable, beloved person. 'Who are you?' The man has an answer to this question as well. 'I'm Willem Ragnarsson,' he says. 'And I will never let you go.

No amount of black girl magic, no repeated proclamations of our worth can fully treat the wound – although acknowledging its persistence is a beginning. The ultimate remedy, as I see it is supernatural. I look daily toward heaven for restoration, for spiritual healing. My true identity isn’t rooted in our history, grievous and glorious as it is. It is grounded in my designation as a Child of God, the Daughter of the Great Physician. In His care I find my cure. My hope for you is the same one I carry for myself. I pray that amid the heartache of our ancestry you can grant yourself the grace so seldom extended to us. I pray that you can pass that compassion on to your children and to their children so that it slathers comfort on our sore spots. I pray that, as a people, we can give ourselves a soft place to land. I pray even as we rightly express our fury as being regarded as sub-human, that we don’t dwell in that space. That we don’t allow anger to poison our spirits. That we embrace love as our One True Antidote. I hope, too, that you recognize your specialness, the distinctiveness the Creator has imbued us with. I see you as clearly as history has, and in unison with it, I nod. I know that swivel in your hips, that fervor in your testimony, that ebullience in your stride, that flair in your song. The fact that others are constantly trying to diminish you, ever attempting to dismiss your talents even as they mimic you, is proof of your uniqueness! No one bothers to undermine you unless they recognize your brilliance. More than anything, I pray that you can carve out a purpose for yourself, a calling beyond your own survival, a sweet offering to the world. You gain a life by giving yours away. Not everyone is meant to raise a picket sign, and yet each of us can choose a path of impact. Rearing your children with affection and warmth is a form of activism. Honoring your word impeccably is a way to raise your voice. Performing your job with excellence, with your chin high and your standards higher is as powerful as any protest march. Sowing into the lives of young people is a worthy crusade. That is what it means to leave this world of ours more lit up than we found it. It’s also what it means to lead a magnificent life, even if an unlikely one.

People who create successful strategic relationships demonstrate 10 essential character traits:    1. Authentic. They are genuine, honest, and transparent. They are cognizant of (and willing to admit to) their strengths and weaknesses.    2. Trustworthy. They build relationships on mutual trust. They have a good reputation based on real results. They have integrity: their word is their bond. People must know, like, and trust you before sharing their valuable social capital.    3. Respectful. They are appreciative of the time and efforts of others. They treat subordinates with the same level of respect as they do supervisors.    4. Caring. They like to help others succeed. They’re a source of mutual support and encouragement. They pay attention to the feelings of others and have good hearts.    5. Listening. They ask good questions, and they are eager to learn about others—what’s important to them, what they’re working on, what they’re looking for, and what they need—so they can be of help.    6. Engaged. They are active participants in life. They are interesting and passionate about what they do. They are solution minded, and they have great “gut” instincts.    7. Patient. They recognize that relationships need to be cultivated over time. They invest time in maintaining their relationships with others.    8. Intelligent. They are intelligent in the help they offer. They pass along opportunities at every chance possible, and they make thoughtful, useful introductions. They’re not ego driven. They don’t criticize others or burn bridges in relationships.    9. Sociable. They are nice, likeable, and helpful. They enjoy being with people, and they are happy to connect with others from all walks of life, social strata, political persuasions, religions, and diverse backgrounds. They are sources of positive energy.   10. Connected. They are part of their own network of excellent strategic relationships.

When the humanity of others who were previously invisible becomes apparent to us for the first time, I think it is because we have noticed something particular in them. By contrast, egalitarian empathy, projected from afar and without discrimination, is more principled than attentive. It is content to posit rather than to see the humanity of its beneficiaries. But the one who is on the receiving end of such empathy wants something more than to be recognized generically. He wants to be seen as an individual, and recognized as worthy on the same grounds on which he has striven to be worthy, indeed superior, by cultivating some particular excellence or skill. We all strive for distinction, and I believe that to honor another person is to honor this aspiring core of him. I can do this by allowing myself to respond in kind, and experience the concrete difference between him and me. This may call for silent deference on my part, as opposed to chummy liberal solicitude.

I spoke off the record to a database consultant who was working with a company in Italy. They had a lot of clients, and their database would generate a client ID for each one by using something like the current year, the first letter of the client company name and then an index number to make sure each ID was unique. For some reason their database was losing companies whose names started with the letter E. It was because they were using Excel and it was converting those client IDs to be a scientific notation number, which was no longer recognized as an ID.

Every now and then, I'm lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side, and light on skepticism. They're curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I'm asked follow-up questions. They've never heard of the notion of a 'dumb question'. But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize 'facts'. By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts has gone out of them. They've lost much of the wonder and gained very little skepticism. They're worried about asking 'dumb' questions; they are willing to accept inadequate answers, they don't pose follow-up questions, the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. They come to class with their questions written out on pieces of paper, which they surreptitiously examine, waiting their turn and oblivious of whatever discussion their peers are at this moment engaged in. Something has happened between first and twelfth grade. And it's not just puberty. I'd guess that it's partly peer pressure not to excel - except in sports, partly that the society teaches short-term gratification, partly the impression that science or mathematics won't buy you a sports car, partly that so little is expected of students, and partly that there are few rewards or role-models for intelligent discussion of science and technology - or even for learning for it's own sake. Those few who remain interested are vilified as nerds or geeks or grinds. But there's something else. I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. 'Why is the Moon round?', the children ask. 'Why is grass green?', 'What is a dream?', 'How deep can you dig a hole?', 'When is the world's birthday?', 'Why do we have toes?'. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation, or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. 'What did you expect the Moon to be? Square?' Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments. Undignified as such a treatment may seem to some of my colleagues, I shall have to take account of this clash and explain a good many divergences of philosophers by it. Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries, when philosophizing, to sink the fact of this temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making a more sentimental or more hardhearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of the opposite temper to be out of key with the world’s character, and in his heart he considers them incompetent and “not in it,” in the philosophic business, even though they may far excel him in dialectical ability. (James 1975a, p. 11)1

Subject: SELF WORTH (Very Deep!!!) In a brief conversation, a man asked a woman he was pursuing the question: 'What kind of man are you looking for?' She sat quietly for a moment before looking him in the eye & asking, 'Do you really want to know?' Reluctantly, he said, 'Yes. She began to expound, 'As a woman in this day & age, I am in a position to ask a man what can you do for me that I can't do for myself? I pay my own bills. I take care of my household without the help of any man... or woman for that matter. I am in the position to ask, 'What can you bring to the table?' The man looked at her. Clearly he thought that she was referring to money. She quickly corrected his thought & stated, 'I am not referring to money. I need something more. I need a man who is striving for excellence in every aspect of life. He sat back in his chair, folded his arms, & asked her to explain. She said, 'I need someone who is striving for excellence mentally because I need conversation & mental stimulation. I don't need a simple-minded man. I need someone who is striving for excellence spiritually because I don't need to be unequally yoked...believers mixed with unbelievers is a recipe for disaster. I need a man who is striving for excellence financially because I don't need a financial burden. I need someone who is sensitive enough to understand what I go through as a woman, but strong enough to keep me grounded. I need someone who has integrity in dealing with relationships. Lies and game-playing are not my idea of a strong man. I need a man who is family-oriented. One who can be the leader, priest and provider to the lives entrusted to him by God. I need someone whom I can respect. In order to be submissive, I must respect him. I cannot be submissive to a man who isn't taking care of his business. I have no problem being submissive...he just has to be worthy. And by the way, I am not looking for him...He will find me. He will recognize himself in me. Hey may not be able to explain the connection, but he will always be drawn to me. God made woman to be a help-mate for man. I can't help a man if he can't help himself. When she finished her spill, she looked at him. He sat there with a puzzled look on his face. He said, 'You are asking a lot. She replied, "I'm worth a lot". Send this to every woman who's worth a lot.... and every man who has the brains to understand!!

Among the Parisians there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason.

Do you know where we are?” he whispered. “Surely that is Baker Street,” I answered, staring through the dim window. “Exactly. We are in Camden House, which stands opposite to our own old quarters.” “But why are we here?” “Because it commands so excellent a view of that picturesque pile. Might I trouble you, my dear Watson, to draw a little nearer to the window, taking every precaution not to show yourself, and then to look up at our old rooms--the starting-point of so many of your little fairy-tales? We will see if my three years of absence have entirely taken away my power to surprise you.” I crept forward and looked across at the familiar window. As my eyes fell upon it, I gave a gasp and a cry of amazement. The blind was down, and a strong light was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me. He was quivering with silent laughter. “Well?” said he. “Good heavens!” I cried. “It is marvellous.” “I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety,” said he, and I recognized in his voice the joy and pride which the artist takes in his own creation. “It really is rather like me, is it not?” “I should be prepared to swear that it was you.” “The credit of the execution is due to Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble, who spent some days in doing the moulding. It is a bust in wax. The rest I arranged myself during my visit to Baker Street this afternoon.

Here are my simple rules for identifying market tops and bottoms: 1. Market tops are relatively easy to recognize. Buyers generally become overconfident and almost always believe “this time is different.” It’s usually not. 2. There’s always a surplus of relatively cheap debt capital to finance acquisitions and investments in a hot market. In some cases, lenders won’t even charge cash interest, and they often relax or suspend typical loan restrictions as well. Leverage levels escalate compared to historical averages, with borrowing sometimes reaching as high as ten times or more compared to equity. Buyers will start accepting overoptimistic accounting adjustments and financial forecasts to justify taking on high levels of debt. Unfortunately most of these forecasts tend not to materialize once the economy starts decelerating or declining. 3. Another indicator that a market is peaking is the number of people you know who start getting rich. The number of investors claiming outperformance grows with the market. Loose credit conditions and a rising tide can make it easy for individuals without any particular strategy or process to make money “accidentally.” But making money in strong markets can be short-lived. Smart investors perform well through a combination of self-discipline and sound risk assessment, even when market conditions reverse.

...the great experiences which form him, arise out of the discontinuity and disharmony between man and the world. Particularly in great personalities, we see how much of their beauty and excellence is really due to trials suffered earlier at the hands of the world. Beauty--as many have recognized--is pain suffered and transformed. Because the animal is adapted to its environment, it is denied the possibility of developing inward maturity and greatness. As an individual creature it cannot grow beyond the limits of its kind; and again, at death, it falls back with its capacities into the group Ego, from which its soul was something like an offshoot or a patrol sent out on reconnaissance.

Sometimes he wakes so far from himself that he can't even remember who he is. 'Where am I?' he asks, desperate, and then, 'Who am I? Who am I?' "And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem's whispered incantation. 'You're Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You're the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You're the friend of Malcolm Irvine, Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. "You're a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. "You're a swimmer. You're a baker. You're a cook. You're a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You're an excellent pianist. You're an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I'm away. You're patient. You're generous. You're the best listener I know. You're the smartest person I know, in every way. You're the bravest person I know, in every way. "You're a lawyer. You're the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job, you work hard at it. "You're a mathematician. You're a logician. You've tried to teach me, again and again. "You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you. "On and on Willem talks, chanting him back to himself, and in the daytime - sometimes days later - he remembers pieces of what Willem has said and holds them close to him, as much as for what he said as for what he didn't, for how he hadn't defined him. "But in the nighttime he is too terrified, he is too lost to recognize this. His panic is too real, too consuming. 'And who are you?' he asks, looking at the man who is holding him, who is describing someone he doesn't recognize, someone who seems to have so much, someone who seems like such an enviable, beloved person. 'Who are you?' "The man has an answer to this question as well. 'I'm Willem Ragnarsson,' he says. 'And I will never let you go.

Nietzsche believed that no true human excellence, greatness, or nobility was possible except in aristocratic societies. In other words, true freedom or creativity could arise only out of megalothymia, that is, the desire to be recognized as better than others. Even if people were born equal, they would never push themselves to their own limits if they simply wanted to be like everyone else. For the desire to be recognized as superior to others is necessary if one is to be superior to oneself. This desire is not merely the basis of conquest and imperialism, it is also the precondition for the creation of anything else worth having in life, whether great symphonies, paintings, novels, ethical codes, or political systems. Nietzsche pointed out that any form of real excellence must initially arise out of discontent, a division of the self against itself and ultimately a war against the self with all the suffering that entails: "one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star." Good health and self-satisfaction are liabilities. Thymos is the side of man that deliberately seeks out struggle and sacrifice, that tries to prove that the self is something better and higher than a fearful, needy, instinctual, physically determined animal. Not all men feel this pull, but for those who do, thymos cannot be satisfied by the knowledge that they are merely equal in worth to all other human beings.

But on the contrary I declare that it is the principal duty of a most excellent and pious ruler that there should apply whatever means, authority and power has been granted him by God to this end entirely that God may truly be recognized among his subjects and may, being recognized, be worshipped and adored as the supreme king of all kings. Therefore the man of that description will not merely put forth all the power of his jurisdiction and the authority of the laws against the despisers or disturbers of the true religion who have shown themselves not the least amenable to ecclesiastical words of rebuke and admonition, but will even punish with armed force those who cannot otherwise be restrained from impiety.

Woman of Virtue She could be as still as a statue But unapologetically vibrant Even in her silence She exudes confidence Yet, so humble She runs her race with courage Because she has a clear picture Of where she is going She knows who she is And what she really wants She understands what her worth signifies Extremely dignified Many odds she defies Has influence that no one denies No matter where she goes, she prospers She makes life so much better Never doubts her own power She whose face shines brighter Such a paragon of splendour That recognizes God’s favour Committed to excellence Crowned with brilliance Clothed by abundance Cloaked in resilience Conquers through experience She is someone I look up to A woman of virtue

It might be useful here to say a word about Beckett, as a link between the two stages, and as illustrating the shift towards schism. He wrote for transition, an apocalyptic magazine (renovation out of decadence, a Joachite indication in the title), and has often shown a flair for apocalyptic variations, the funniest of which is the frustrated millennialism of the Lynch family in Watt, and the most telling, perhaps, the conclusion of Comment c'est. He is the perverse theologian of a world which has suffered a Fall, experienced an Incarnation which changes all relations of past, present, and future, but which will not be redeemed. Time is an endless transition from one condition of misery to another, 'a passion without form or stations,' to be ended by no parousia. It is a world crying out for forms and stations, and for apocalypse; all it gets is vain temporality, mad, multiform antithetical influx. It would be wrong to think that the negatives of Beckett are a denial of the paradigm in favour of reality in all its poverty. In Proust, whom Beckett so admires, the order, the forms of the passion, all derive from the last book; they are positive. In Beckett, the signs of order and form are more or less continuously presented, but always with a sign of cancellation; they are resources not to be believed in, cheques which will bounce. Order, the Christian paradigm, he suggests, is no longer usable except as an irony; that is why the Rooneys collapse in laughter when they read on the Wayside Pulpit that the Lord will uphold all that fall. But of course it is this order, however ironized, this continuously transmitted idea of order, that makes Beckett's point, and provides his books with the structural and linguistic features which enable us to make sense of them. In his progress he has presumed upon our familiarity with his habits of language and structure to make the relation between the occulted forms and the narrative surface more and more tenuous; in Comment c'est he mimes a virtually schismatic breakdown of this relation, and of his language. This is perfectly possible to reach a point along this line where nothing whatever is communicated, but of course Beckett has not reached it by a long way; and whatever preserves intelligibility is what prevents schism. This is, I think, a point to be remembered whenever one considers extremely novel, avant-garde writing. Schism is meaningless without reference to some prior condition; the absolutely New is simply unintelligible, even as novelty. It may, of course, be asked: unintelligible to whom? --the inference being that a minority public, perhaps very small--members of a circle in a square world--do understand the terms in which the new thing speaks. And certainly the minority public is a recognized feature of modern literature, and certainly conditions are such that there may be many small minorities instead of one large one; and certainly this is in itself schismatic. The history of European literature, from the time the imagination's Latin first made an accommodation with the lingua franca, is in part the history of the education of a public--cultivated but not necessarily learned, as Auerbach says, made up of what he calls la cour et la ville. That this public should break up into specialized schools, and their language grow scholastic, would only be surprising if one thought that the existence of excellent mechanical means of communication implied excellent communications, and we know it does not, McLuhan's 'the medium is the message' notwithstanding. But it is still true that novelty of itself implies the existence of what is not novel, a past. The smaller the circle, and the more ambitious its schemes of renovation, the less useful, on the whole, its past will be. And the shorter. I will return to these points in a moment.

Society is a conspiracy to keep itself from the truth. We pass our lives submerged in propaganda: advertising messages; political rhetoric; the journalistic affirmation of the status quo; the platitudes of popular culture; the axioms of party, sect, and class; the bromides we exchange every day on Facebook; the comforting lies our parents tell us and the sociable ones our friends do; the steady stream of falsehoods that we each tell ourselves all the time, to stave off the threat of self-knowledge. Plato called this doxa, opinion, and it is as powerful a force among progressives as among conservatives, in Massachusetts as in Mississippi, for atheists as for fundamentalists. The first purpose of a real education (a "liberal arts" education) is to liberate us from doxa by teaching us to recognize it, to question it, and to think our way around it.

HAPPINESS: "Flourishing is a fact, not a feeling. We flourish when we grow and thrive. We flourish when we exercise our powers. We flourish when we become what we are capable of becoming...Flourishing is rooted in action..."happiness is a kind of working of the soul in the way of perfect excellence"...a flourishing life is a life lived along lines of excellence...Flourishing is a condition that is created by the choices we make in the world we live in...Flourishing is not a virtue, but a condition; not a character trait, but a result. We need virtue to flourish, but virtue isn't enough. To create a flourishing life, we need both virtue and the conditions in which virtue can flourish...Resilience is a virtue required for flourishing, bur being resilient will not guarantee that we will flourish. Unfairness, injustice, and bad fortune will snuff our promising lives. Unasked-for pain will still come our way...We can build resilience and shape the world we live in. We can't rebuild the world...three primary kinds of happiness: the happiness of pleasure, the happiness of grace, and happiness of excellence...people who are flourishing usually have all three kinds of happiness in their lives...Aristotle understood: pushing ourselves to grow, to get better, to dive deeper is at the heart of happiness...This is the happiness that goes hand in hand with excellence, with pursuing worthy goals, with growing mastery...It is about the exercise of powers. The most common mistake people make in thinking about the happiness of excellence is to focus on moments of achievement. They imagine the mountain climber on the summit. That's part of the happiness of excellence, and a very real part. What counts more, though, is not the happiness of being there, but the happiness of getting there. A mountain climber heads for the summit, and joy meets her along the way. You head for the bottom of the ocean, and joy meets you on the way down...you create joy along the way...the concept of flow, the kind of happiness that comes when we lose ourselves through complete absorption in a rewarding task...the idea of flow..."Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times...The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limit in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."...Joy, like sweat, is usually a byproduct of your activity, not your aim...A focus on happiness will not lead to excellence. A focus on excellence will, over time, lead to happiness. The pursuit of excellence leads to growth, mastery, and achievement. None of these are sufficient for happiness, yet all of them are necessary...the pull of purpose, the desire to feel "needed in this world" - however we fulfill that desire - is a very powerful force in a human life...recognize that the drive to live well and purposefully isn't some grim, ugly, teeth-gritting duty. On the contrary: "it's a very good feeling." It is really is happiness...Pleasures can never make up for an absence of purposeful work and meaningful relationships. Pleasures will never make you whole...Real happiness comes from working together, hurting together, fighting together, surviving together, mourning together. It is the essence of the happiness of excellence...The happiness of pleasure can't provide purpose; it can't substitute for the happiness of excellence. The challenge for the veteran - and for anyone suddenly deprived of purpose - is not simple to overcome trauma, but to rebuild meaning. The only way out is through suffering to strength. Through hardship to healing. And the longer we wait, the less life we have to live...We are meant to have worthy work to do. If we aren't allowed to struggle for something worthwhile, we'll never grow in resilience, and we'll never experience complete happiness.

In place of the Christian saint Nietzsche wishes to see what he calls the 'noble' man, by no means as a universal type, but as a governing aristocrat. The 'noble' man will be capable of cruelty, and, on occasion, of what is vulgarly regarded as crime; he will recognize duties only to equals. He will protect artists and poets and all who happen to be masters of some skill, but he will do so as himself a member of a higher order than those who only know how to do something. From the example of warriors he will learn to associate death with the interests for which he is fighting; to sacrifice numbers, and take his cause sufficiently seriously not to spare men; to practise inexorable discipline; and to allow himself violence and cunning in war. He will recognize the part played by cruelty in aristocratic excellence: 'almost everything that we call "higher culture" is based upon the spiritualizing and intensifying of cruelty'. The 'noble' man is essentially the incarnate will to power.

(Pericles Funeral Oration) But before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose to power, and under what institutions and through what manner of life our empire became great. Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors', but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own. Then, again, our military training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries; Our enemies have never yet felt our united strength, the care of a navy divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our own citizens everywhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part of our army, are as proud as if they had routed us all, and when defeated they pretend to have been vanquished by us all. None of these men were enervated by wealth or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a man, though poor, may one day become rich. But, deeming that the punishment of their enemies was sweeter than any of these things, and that they could fall in no nobler cause, they determined at the hazard of their lives to be honorably avenged, and to leave the rest. They resigned to hope their unknown chance of happiness; but in the face of death they resolved to rely upon themselves alone. And when the moment came they were minded to resist and suffer, rather than to fly and save their lives; they ran away from the word of dishonor, but on the battlefield their feet stood fast, and in an instant, at the height of their fortune, they passed away from the scene, not of their fear, but of their glory. I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives, and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in word and deed. For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men.

People who see a purpose in their lives have a better chance of creating enduring work than people who don’t, because the kind of project they work on does make a difference to them. The general statement here is that to believe life has a purpose carries with it a predisposition to put one’s talents in the service of whatever is the best—not the most lucrative, not the most glamorous, but that which represents the highest expression of the object of one’s vocation. The link is to some degree a tautology. We use the phrase life has a purpose only when that purpose has a transcendental element, something more important than the here and now. Thus when someone says something like “Sure, my life has a purpose: to make as much money as I can,” we recognize that as mocking the word purpose. To have a purpose in life is to be compelled to try to live up to that transcendental element. The composition and role of the potential transcendental elements are discussed in Chapter 20. For now, this simple proposition: Purpose in life shapes a life’s work, and for the better.

You have insulted me and degraded me every time I’ve been in your presence. If my brother were here, he’d call you out! Since he is not here,” she continued almost mindlessly, “I shall demand my own satisfaction. If I were a man, I’d have the right to satisfaction on the field of honor, and as a woman I refuse to be denied that right.” “You’re ridiculous.” “Perhaps,” Elizabeth said softly, “but I also happen to be an excellent shot. I’m a far worthier opponent for you on the dueling field than my brother. Now, will you meet me outside, or shall I-I finish you here?” she threatened, so beside herself with fury that she never stopped to think how reckless, how utterly empty her threat was. Her coachman had insisted she learn to fire a weapon for her own protection, but although her aim was excellent when she’d practiced with targets, she had never shot a living thing. “I’ll do no such silly damned thing.” Elizabeth raised the gun higher. “Then I’ll have your apology right now.” “What am I to apologize for?” he asked, still infuriatingly calm. “You may start by apologizing for luring me into the greenhouse with that note.” “I didn’t write a note. I received a note from you.” “You have great difficulty sorting out the notes you send and don’t send, do you not?” she said. Without waiting for a reply she continued, “Next, you can apologize for trying to seduce me in England, and for ruining my reputation-“ “Ian!” Jake said, thunderstruck. “It’s one thing to insult a lady’s handwriting, but spoilin’ her reputation is another. A thing like that could ruin her whole life!” Ian shot him an ironic glance. “Thank you, Jake, for that helpful bit of inflammatory information. Would you now like to help her pull the trigger?” Elizabeth’s emotions veered crazily from fury to mirth as the absurdity of the bizarre tableau suddenly struck her: Here she was, holding a gun on a man in his own home, while poor Lucinda held another man at umbrella point-a man who was trying ineffectually to sooth matters by inadvertently heaping more fuel on the volatile situation. And then she recognized the stupid futility of it all, and that banished her flicker of mirth.

In recognizing how thoroughly non-European science and technology have been explored, let’s also give credit where credit is due: By and large, it has not been Asian or Arabic scholars, fighting for recognition against European indifference, who are responsible for piecing together the record of accomplishment by non-European cultures, but Europeans themselves. Imperialists they may have been, but one of the by-products of that imperialism was a large cadre of Continental, British, and later American scholars, fascinated by the exotic civilizations of Arabia and East Asia, who set about uncovering evidence of their accomplishments that inheritors of those civilizations had themselves neglected. Joseph Needham’s seven-volume history of Chinese science and technology is a case in point.[10] Another is George Sarton’s Introduction to the History of Science, in five large volumes published from 1927–1948, all of which is devoted to science before the end of 14C, with the bulk of it devoted to the period when preeminence in science was to be found in the Arab world, India, and China.

Dominating every conversation could be heard the inexhaustible prattle of M. de Charlus, who was talking with His Excellency the Duc de Sidonia, whose acquaintance he had just made. As profession recognizes profession, so, too, does vice. M. de Charlus and M. de Sidonia had each immediately nosed out that of the other, which was, for both, to be, when in company, monologuists, to the extent of being unable to bear any interruption. Having at once adjudged that the malady was without remedy, as a famous sonnet has it,6 they had made a resolve, not to stay silent, but each to speak without concerning himself with what the other would say. This had created that jumble of sound which, in Molière’s comedies, is produced by several people saying different things at one and the same time. The Baron, with his resonant voice, was certain in any case of having the better of it, of drowning out the feeble voice of M. de Sidonia, without discouraging the latter, however, for, whenever M. de Charlus drew breath for a moment, the interval was filled by the susurration of the Spanish grandee, who had imperturbably continued discoursing.

Experience. Travel the path less taken. By seeing more of the world, we begin to see both how differently people live their lives as well as the underlying rhythms of life. We realize that many of these differences run only so deep. Learn something new every day. This does not mean you have to cram it into your head, remembering everything you encounter, but sit with the idea for a few minutes and consider your own thoughts on it. Your thoughts, not what you are supposed to think. By exposing yourself to new things, you broaden your understanding of what exists out there and how people think, and this in turn makes you aware of the sheer number of possibilities. The power of education is to open up the world to you, and allow you to realize that there are equally an infinite number of ways you might open up to the world. By recognizing that there are so many possibilities, you have the option of confronting situations in more productive, positive ways. Go towards your fears. This is an excellent mantra if you want to continue to challenge yourself. If something scares you, it can also be interpreted as something you have left to confront and conquer.

Knowing one’s emotions. Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence. As we will see in Chapter 4, the ability to monitor feelings from moment to moment is crucial to psychological insight and self-understanding. An inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy. People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take. 2. Managing emotions. Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self-awareness. Chapter 5 will examine the capacity to soothe oneself, to shake off rampant anxiety, gloom, or irritability—and the consequences of failure at this basic emotional skill. People who are poor in this ability are constantly battling feelings of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from life’s setbacks and upsets. 3. Motivating oneself. As Chapter 6 will show, marshaling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery, and for creativity. Emotional self-control—delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness—underlies accomplishment of every sort. And being able to get into the “flow” state enables outstanding performance of all kinds. People who have this skill tend to be more highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake. 4. Recognizing emotions in others. Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional self-awareness, is the fundamental “people skill.” Chapter 7 will investigate the roots of empathy, the social cost of being emotionally tone-deaf, and the reason empathy kindles altruism. People who are empathic are more attuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want. This makes them better at callings such as the caring professions, teaching, sales, and management. 5. Handling relationships. The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others. Chapter 8 looks at social competence and incompetence, and the specific skills involved. These are the abilities that undergird popularity, leadership, and interpersonal effectiveness. People who excel in these skills do well at anything that relies on interacting smoothly with others; they are social stars.

Many mothers don't want to appear vulnerable, both our of fear of being diminished, infantilized, or threatened with unwanted interventions, and because they know they are almost solely in charge of keeping a new human being alive. Who the hell has time for vulnerability? It is a profound testament to the strength and resilience of women that so many of them suffer from debilitating fear, sadness, and confusion and yet they soldier on working, taking care of their families, getting the myriad everyday chores done. The fact that they're asked to do so, to carry and bear alone not only the child but the chemical and biological shifts, the solitude, the loss, the grief, the complex questions of their own transformation, reveals a society that values mothers only as passive, docile, keeping their motherhood safely tucked in the sentimental cultural space reserved for it. The idea is not to study the mother, to listen to her, to recognize her in her fullness, to explore her becoming, but to keep her contained: prevent her from causing harm, encourage her to follow the rules. Anxiety is an excellent weapon for containing women; it needs only to be gently stoked in the context of pregnancy and women will weaponize it against themselves.

(Pericles:) 'Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them.It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes,the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life,and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having an especial regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment. 'And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; our homes are beautiful and elegant; and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as of our own. (Book 2 Chapter 37-38)

From the cobbled Close, we all admired the Minster's great towers of fretted stone soaring to the clouds, every inch carved as fine as lacework. Once we had passed into the nave, I surrendered my scruples to that glorious hush that tells of a higher presence than ourselves. It was a bright winter's day, and the vaulted windows tinted the air with dappled rainbows. Sitting quietly in my pew, I recognized a change in myself; that every morning I woke quite glad to be alive. Instead of fitful notions of footsteps at midnight, each new day was heralded by cheery sounds outside my window: the post-horn's trumpeting and the cries and songs of busy, prosperous people. I was still young and vital, with no need for bed rest or sleeping draughts. I was ready to face whatever the future held. However troubled my marriage was, it was better by far than my former life with my father. Dropping my face into my clasped hands, I glimpsed in reverie a sort of labyrinth, a mysterious path I must traverse in the months to come. I could not say what trials lay ahead of me- but I knew that I must be strong, and win whatever happiness I might glean on this earth. It was easy to make such a resolution when, as yet, I faced no actual difficulties. Each morning, Anne and I returned from our various errands to take breakfast at our lodgings. Awaiting us stood a steaming pot of chocolate and a plate of Mrs. Palmer's toast and excellent buns. Anne and I both heartily agreed that if time might halt we should have liked every day to be that same day, the gilt clock chiming ten o'clock, warming our stockinged feet on the fire fender, splitting a plate of Fat Rascals with butter and preserves, with all the delightful day stretching before us.

Harvard’s Theodore Levitt states the case as well as anyone else: The trouble with much of the advice business gets today about the need to be more vigorously creative is that its advocates often fail to distinguish between creativity and innovation. Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things…. A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words into action. Ideas are useless unless used. The proof of their value is only in their implementation. Until then, they are in limbo. If you talk to the people who work for you, you’ll discover that there is no shortage of creativity or creative people in American business. The shortage is of innovators. All too often, people believe that creativity automatically leads to innovation. It doesn’t. Creative people tend to pass the responsibility for getting down to brass tacks to others. They are the bottleneck. They make none of the right kind of effort to help their ideas get a hearing and a try…. The fact that you can put a dozen inexperienced people in a room and conduct a brainstorming session that produces exciting new ideas shows how little relative importance ideas themselves have…. Idea men constantly pepper everybody with proposals and memorandums that are just brief enough to get attention, to intrigue and sustain interest — but too short to include any responsible suggestions for implementation. The scarce people are the ones who have the know-how, energy, daring, and staying power to implement ideas…. Since business is a “get-things-done” institution, creativity without action-oriented follow-through is a barren form of behavior. In a sense, it is irresponsible.

A similar experiment may be tried in metaphysics as regards the *intuition* of objects. If the intuition had to conform to the constitution of objects, I would not understand how we could know anything of them *a priori*; but if the object (as object of the senses) conformed to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, I could very well conceive such a possibility. As, however, I cannot rest in these intuitions if they are to become knowledge, but have to refer them as representations, to something as their object, and must determine this object through them, I can assume either that the *concepts* through which I arrive at this determination also conform to the object, and I would again be as perplexed about how I can know anything about it *a priori*; or else that the objects, or what is the same thing, the *experience* in which alone they are known (as objects that are given to us), conform to those concepts. In the latter case, I recognize an easier solution because experience itself is a kind of knowledge that requires understanding; and this understanding has its rules which I must presuppose as existing within me even before objects are given to me, and hence *a priori*. These rules are expressed in *a priori* concepts to which all objects of experience must necessarily conform, and with which they must agree. With regard to objects, insofar as they are thought merely through reason and thought indeed as necessary, and which can never, at least not in the way in which reason thinks them, be given in experience, the attempts at thinking them (for they must admit of being thought) will subsequently furnish an excellent touchstone of what we are adopting as our new method of thought, namely, that we know of things *a priori* only that which we ourselves put into them." ―from_Critique of Pure Reason_. Preface to the Second Edition. Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 18-19

These are the general propositions that form this Humility Code: 1. We don’t live for happiness, we live for holiness. Day to day we seek out pleasure, but deep down, human beings are endowed with moral imagination. All human beings seek to lead lives not just of pleasure, but of purpose, righteousness, and virtue. As John Stuart Mill put it, people have a responsibility to become more moral over time. The best life is oriented around the increasing excellence of the soul and is nourished by moral joy, the quiet sense of gratitude and tranquillity that comes as a byproduct of successful moral struggle. The meaningful life is the same eternal thing, the combination of some set of ideals and some man or woman’s struggle for those ideals. Life is essentially a moral drama, not a hedonistic one. 2. Proposition one defines the goal of life. The long road to character begins with an accurate understanding of our nature, and the core of that understanding is that we are flawed creatures. We have an innate tendency toward selfishness and overconfidence. We have a tendency to see ourselves as the center of the universe, as if everything revolves around us. We resolve to do one thing but end up doing the opposite. We know what is deep and important in life, but we still pursue the things that are shallow and vain. Furthermore, we overestimate our own strength and rationalize our own failures. We know less than we think we do. We give in to short-term desires even when we know we shouldn’t. We imagine that spiritual and moral needs can be solved through status and material things. 3. Although we are flawed creatures, we are also splendidly endowed. We are divided within ourselves, both fearfully and wonderfully made. We do sin, but we also have the capacity to recognize sin, to feel ashamed of sin, and to overcome sin. We are both weak and strong, bound and free, blind and far-seeing. We thus have the capacity to struggle with ourselves. There is something heroic about a person in struggle with herself, strained on the rack of conscience, suffering torments, yet staying alive and growing stronger, sacrificing a worldly success for the sake of an inner victory.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments. Undignified as such a treatment may seem to some of my colleagues, I shall have to take account of this clash and explain a good many of the divergencies of philosophers by it. Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of opposite temper to be out of key with the world's character, and in his heart considers them incompetent and 'not in it,' in the philosophic business, even tho they may far excel him in dialectical ability....But the one thing that has COUNTED so far in philosophy is that a man should see things, see them straight in his own peculiar way, and be dissatisfied with any opposite way of seeing them. There is no reason to suppose that this strong temperamental vision is from now onward to count no longer in the history of man's beliefs. .... Rationalism usually considers itself more religious than empiricism, but there is much to say about this claim, so I merely mention it. It is a true claim when the individual rationalist is what is called a man of feeling, and when the individual empiricist prides himself on being hard-headed. In that case the rationalist will usually also be in favor of what is called free-will, and the empiricist will be a fatalist—I use the terms most popularly current. The rationalist finally will be of dogmatic temper in his affirmations, while the empiricist may be more sceptical and open to discussion. I will write these traits down in two columns. I think you will practically recognize the two types of mental make-up that I mean if I head the columns by the titles 'tender-minded' and 'tough-minded' respectively. THE TENDER-MINDED Rationalistic (going by 'principles'), Intellectualistic, Idealistic, Optimistic, Religious, Free-willist, Monistic, Dogmatical. THE TOUGH-MINDED Empiricist (going by 'facts'), Sensationalistic, Materialistic, Pessimistic, Irreligious, Fatalistic, Pluralistic, Sceptical.

The Extraordinary Persons Project In fact, Ekman had been so moved personally—and intrigued scientifically—by his experiments with Öser that he announced at the meeting he was planning on pursuing a systematic program of research studies with others as unusual as Öser. The single criterion for selecting apt subjects was that they be “extraordinary.” This announcement was, for modern psychology, an extraordinary moment in itself. Psychology has almost entirely dwelt on the problematic, the abnormal, and the ordinary in its focus. Very rarely have psychologists—particularly ones as eminent as Paul Ekman—shifted their scientific lens to focus on people who were in some sense (other than intellectually) far above normal. And yet Ekman now was proposing to study people who excel in a range of admirable human qualities. His announcement makes one wonder why psychology hasn't done this before. In fact, only in very recent years has psychology explicitly begun a program to study the positive in human nature. Sparked by Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania long famous for his research on optimism, a budding movement has finally begun in what is being called “positive psychology”—the scientific study of well-being and positive human qualities. But even within positive psychology, Ekman's proposed research would stretch science's vision of human goodness by assaying the limits of human positivity Ever the scientist, Ekman became quite specific about what was meant by “extraordinary.” For one, he expects that such people exist in every culture and religious tradition, perhaps most often as contemplatives. But no matter what religion they practice, they share four qualities. The first is that they emanate a sense of goodness, a palpable quality of being that others notice and agree on. This goodness goes beyond some fuzzy, warm aura and reflects with integrity the true person. On this count Ekman proposed a test to weed out charlatans: In extraordinary people “there is a transparency between their personal and public life, unlike many charismatics, who have wonderful public lives and rather deplorable personal ones.” A second quality: selflessness. Such extraordinary people are inspiring in their lack of concern about status, fame, or ego. They are totally unconcerned with whether their position or importance is recognized. Such a lack of egoism, Ekman added, “from the psychological viewpoint, is remarkable.” Third is a compelling personal presence that others find nourishing. “People want to be around them because it feels good—though they can't explain why,” said Ekman. Indeed, the Dalai Lama himself offers an obvious example (though Ekman did not say so to him); the standard Tibetan title is not “Dalai Lama” but rather “Kundun,” which in Tibetan means “presence.” Finally, such extraordinary individuals have “amazing powers of attentiveness and concentration.

THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAHHOTEP Part III Report your commission without faltering, Give your advice in your master’s council. If he is fluent in his speech, It will not be hard for the envoy to report, Nor will he be answered, "Who is he to know it ?” As to the master, his affairs will fail If he plans to punish him for it. He should be silent upon (hearing): "I have told.” If you are a man who leads. Whose authority reaches wide, You should do outstanding things, Remember the day that comes after. No strife will occur in the midst of honors, But where the crocodile enters hatred arises. If you are a man who leads. Listen calmly to the speech of one who pleads; Don’t stop him from purging his body Of that which he planned to tell. A man in distress wants to pour out his heart More than that his case be won. About him who stops a plea One says: “Why does he reject it ?” Not all one pleads for can be granted, But a good hearing soothes the heart. If you want friendship to endure In the house you enter As master, brother, or friend, In whatever place you enter, Beware of approaching the women! Unhappy is the place where it is done. Unwelcome is he who intrudes on them. A thousand men are turned away from their good: A short moment like a dream, Then death comes for having known them. Poor advice is “shoot the opponent,” When one goes to do it the heart rejects it. He who fails through lust of them, No affair of his can prosper. If you want a perfect conduct, To be free from every evil, Guard against the vice of greed: A grievous sickness without cure, There is no treatment for it. It embroils fathers, mothers, And the brothers of the mother, It parts wife from husband; It is a compound of all evils, A bundle of all hateful things. That man endures whose rule is rightness, Who walks a straight line; He will make a will by it, The greedy has no tomb. Do not be greedy in the division. Do not covet more than your share; Do not be greedy toward your kin. The mild has a greater claim than the harsh. Poor is he who shuns his kin, He is deprived of 'interchange' Even a little of what is craved Turns a quarreler into an amiable man. When you prosper and found your house, And love your wife with ardor, Fill her belly, clothe her back, Ointment soothes her body. Gladden her heart as long as you live, She is a fertile held for her lord. Do not contend with her in court, Keep her from power, restrain her — Her eye is her storm when she gazes — Thus will you make her stay in your house. Sustain your friends with what you have, You have it by the grace of god; Of him who fails to sustain his friends One says, “a selfish ka". One plans the morrow but knows not what will be, The ( right) ka is the ka by which one is sustained. If praiseworthy deeds are done, Friends will say, “welcome!” One does not bring supplies to town, One brings friends when there is need. Do not repeat calumny. Nor should you listen to it, It is the spouting of the hot-bellied. Report a thing observed, not heard, If it is negligible, don’t say anything. He who is before you recognizes worth. lf a seizure is ordered and carried out, Hatred will arise against him who seizes; Calumny is like a dream against which one covers the face. If you are a man of worth, Who sits in his master’s council. Concentrate on excellence, Your silence is better than chatter. Speak when you know you have a solution, It is the skilled who should speak in council; Speaking is harder than all other work. He who understands it makes it serve.

Patients may not know how to measure clinical outcomes, and they may not understand the technical know-how that a doctor must have in order to perform a complex heart surgery or neurosurgery, but they can form clear judgments about their experience. They know whether their rooms are clean and whether people are polite to them. They recognize differences in the quality of the food and in how an organization looks and feels. They know whether they feel cared for. Most of all, they can tell whether they’ve had a healing experience—or whether being in a hospital has only impeded their healing.

The way we do small things determines the way that we do everything. If we execute our minor tasks well, we will also excel at our larger efforts. Mastery then becomes our way of being. But more than this—each tiny effort builds on the next, so that brick by brick, magnificent things can be created, great confidence grows and uncommon dreams are realized. The truly wise recognize that small daily improvements always lead to exceptional results over time.

Make Small Daily Progress The way we do small things determines the way that we do everything. If we execute our minor tasks well, we will also excel at our larger efforts. Mastery then becomes our way of being. But more than this—each tiny effort builds on the next, so that brick by brick, magnificent things can be created, great confidence grows and uncommon dreams are realized. The truly wise recognize that small daily improvements always lead to exceptional results over time.

In any profession, you will be respected if you are good at your job – not because you are good at talking about your beliefs. It may be quite irrational, but the fact is that, if you are recognized as being outstanding on one thing, you will be listened to on all sorts of subjects in no way related to it... and so, if you are going to be really effective [for your cause] in your place of work, you must set out to be the best man at your job.

The scholarship of Christian academics isn’t recognized as scholarship at all unless it conforms to the prevailing rules of scholarship in the academic disciplines. This forces Christian scholars to accommodate and blend in; even when their work is excellent, it isn’t identified as Christian.

Augustine then cites Proverbs 30:7–9 as an example: “Give me neither poverty nor riches: Feed me with food appropriate for me lest I be full and deny you . . . or lest I be poor, and steal and take the name of my God in vain.” This is an excellent test. Consider the petition “O Lord—give me a job so I won’t be poor.” That is an appropriate thing to ask God for. Indeed, it is essentially the same thing as to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Yet the Proverbs 30 prayer reveals the only proper motivation beneath the request. If you just jump into prayer without recognizing the disordered nature of the heart’s loves, your prayer’s intention will be, “Make me as wealthy as possible.” The Proverbs 30 prayer is different. It is to ask, “Lord, meet my material needs, and give me wealth, yes, but only as much as I can handle without it harming my ability to put you first in life. Because ultimately I don’t need status and comfort—I need you as my Lord.

The habit of seeking to realize the highest capacities and widest relationships of our nature in every act is conscientiousness. Conscience is our consciousness of the ideal in conduct and character. Conscience is the knowledge of our duty, coupled as that knowledge always is with the feeling that we ought to do it.—Knowledge of any kind calls up some feeling appropriate to the fact known. Knowledge that a given act would realize my ideal calls up the feeling of dissatisfaction with myself until that act is performed; because that is the feeling appropriate to the recognition of an unrealized yet attainable ideal. Conscience is not a mysterious faculty of our nature. It is simply thought and feeling, recognizing and responding to the fact of duty, and reaching out toward virtue and excellence.

February 16 A Love both Tough and Tender God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.—Psalm 68:6 This beautiful passage holds three keys on how God deals with His creation. The first is an image of God constructing a home for each of us. Not only has he given us a dwelling in heaven, but the Bible says that He gives us families right here. Our own expectations can keep us from recognizing this gift. God has given us more than blood relatives; He has given us relatives by His blood. If we feel displaced, we should look around for the family that we have been failing to see. The second phrase tells us that he leads forth the prisoners with singing. God has designed abundant life for us and sent His Son to set us free (John 10:10, 8:36). He has given us the gift of song to celebrate our freedom. We return the gift by praising his name. We are encouraged by song when the world around us is harsh and lonely. The third word picture is that of a sun-scorched land. Obedient sheep follow their shepherd into abundance. The rebellious sheep insist that Jesus is unworthy to lead, nibbling instead at whatever leftovers he or she can find. God’s ultimate goal is that all His sheep would come into His fold (2 Peter 3:9), but He allows us independence. If your life is barren right now, why not turn around and seek the excellent grazing land that God has set aside for you? God also wants us to thrive for His glory. He is tender enough to meet our needs and give us families, tough enough to break the chains that bind us, and gracious enough to let us wander until we recognize our need for Him. Lord, thank You for Your great love and wisdom. You are so good! Please teach me to be grateful, and let me never forget that Your plans are always better than mine.

matured satisfactorily in that climate. Some green foods were available in the summer and some vegetables were grown and stored for winter. This diet, which included a liberal supply of fish, included also the use of livers of fish. One important fish dish was baked cod's head that had been stuffed with oat meal and chopped cods' livers. This was an important inclusion in the diets of the growing children. The oats and fish, including livers, provided minerals and vitamins adequate for an excellent racial stock with high immunity to tooth decay. For the Eskimos of Alaska the native diet consisted of a liberal use of organs and other special tissues of the large animal life of the sea, as well as of fish. The latter were dried in large quantities in the summer and stored for winter use. The fish were also eaten frozen. Seal oil was used freely as an adjunct to this diet and seal meat was specially prized and was usually available. Caribou meat was sometimes available. The organs were used. Their fruits were limited largely to a few berries including cranberries, available in the summer and stored for winter use. Several plant foods were gathered in the summer and stored in fat or frozen for winter use. A ground nut that was gathered by the Tundra mice and stored in caches was used by the Eskimos as a vegetable. Stems of certain water grasses, water plants and bulbs were occasionally used. The bulk of their diet, however, was fish and large animal life of the sea from which they selected certain organs and tissues with great care and wisdom. These included the inner layer of skin of one of the whale species, which has recently been shown to be very rich in vitamin C. Fish eggs were dried in season. They were used liberally as food for the growing children and were recognized as important for growth and reproduction. This successful nutrition provided ample amounts of fat-soluble activators and minerals from sea animal

By contrast to the above views, people with self-esteem believe they are neither more or less than human. Knowing their faults and rough edges, they still are deeply and quietly glad to be who they are (Briggs 1977). They are like the good friend who knows you well and likes you anyway because they recognize the goodness, excellence, and potential that coexist alongside imperfections.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in his vitriolic but penetrating attack on Christianity, clearly recognized the function of sin in this context. “Sin,” he writes, “...that form par excellence of the self-violation of man, was invented to make science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility of man impossible; the priest rules through the invention of sin.”1 In order to understand fully the nature

The Lord enjoins us to do good to all without exception, though the greater part, if estimated by their own merit, are most unworthy of it. But Scripture subjoins a most excellent reason, when it tells us that we are not to look to what men in themselves deserve, but to attend to the image of God, which exists in all, and to which we owe all honor and love. But in those who are of the household of faith, the same rule is to be more carefully observed, inasmuch as that image is renewed and restored in them by the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, whoever be the man that is presented to you as needing your assistance, you have no ground for declining to give it to him. Say he is a stranger. The Lord has given him a mark which ought to be familiar to you: for which reason he forbids you to despise your own flesh (Gal. 6:10). Say he is mean and of no consideration. The Lord points him out as one whom he has distinguished by the luster of his own image (Isaiah 58:7). Say that you are bound to him by no ties of duty. The Lord has substituted him as it were into his own place, that in him you may recognize the many great obligations under which the Lord has laid you to himself. Say that he is unworthy of your least exertion on his account; but the image of God, by which he is recommended to you, is worthy of yourself and all your exertions. But if he not only merits no good, but has provoked you by injury and mischief, still this is no good reason why you should not embrace him in love, and visit him with offices of love. He has deserved very differently from me, you will say. But what has the Lord deserved? Whatever injury he has done you, when he enjoins you to forgive him, he certainly means that it should be imputed to himself. In this way only we attain to what is not to say difficult but altogether against nature, to love those that hate us, render good for evil, and blessing for cursing, remembering that we are not to reflect on the wickedness of men, but look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, should by its beauty and dignity allure us to love and embrace them.

Fourth letter : Make small daily progress The way we do small things determines the way we do everything. If we execute our minor task well, we will also excel at our larger efforts. Mastery then becomes our way of being. But more than this - each tiny efforts builds on the next, so that brick by brick, magnificent things can be created, great confidence grows and uncommon dreams are realized. The truely wise recognize that small daily improvements always lead to exceptional results over time.