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I'm still prone to periods of isolation, still more fearful of the world out there and more averse to pleasure and risk than I'd like to be; I still direct more energy toward controlling and minimizing appetites than toward indulging them.
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Caroline Knapp (Appetites: Why Women Want)
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You must go further than I did," Nedra said. "You know that."
"Further?"
"With your life. You must become free."
She did not explain it; she could not. It was not a matter of living alone, though in her case this had been necessary. The freedom she meant was self-conquest. It was not a natural state. It was meant only for those who would risk everything for it, who were aware that without it life is only appetites until the teeth are gone.
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James Salter (Light Years)
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In any case I just cannot imagine attaching so much importance to any food or treat that I would grow irate or bitter at the mention of the suffering of animals. A pig to me will always seem more important than a pork rind. There is the risk here of confusing realism with cynicism, moral stoicism with moral sloth, of letting oneself become jaded and lazy and self-satisfied--what used to be called an 'appetitive' person.
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Matthew Scully (Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy)
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The freedom she meant was self-conquest. It was not a natural state. It was meant only for those who would risk everything for it, who were aware that without it life is only appetites until the teeth are gone.
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James Salter (Light Years (Vintage International))
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Loving comfort, risking little, terrified by the thought of change, (the middle class') aim is to establish a materialistic civilization which will banish threats to its complacency. It has conventions, not ideals; it is washed rather than clean. Thus the final degradation of the Baconian philosophy is that knowledge becomes power in the service of appetite.
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Richard M. Weaver (Ideas Have Consequences)
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Stakeholder risk appetite. The risk appetites of key stakeholders on the project are recorded in the risk management plan, as they inform the details of the Plan Risk Management process. In particular, stakeholder risk appetite should be expressed as
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Project Management Institute (A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge PMBOK Guide)
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It is a mistake to think of the expatriate as someone who abdicates, who withdraws and humbles himself, resigned to his miseries, his outcast state. On a closer look, he turns out to be ambitious, aggressive in his disappointments, his very acrimony qualified by his belligerence. The more we are dispossessed, the more intense our appetites and illusions become. I even discern some relation between misfortune and megalomania. The man who has lost everything preserves as a last resort the hope of glory, or of literary scandal. He consents to abandon everything, except his name. [ . . . ]
Let us say a man writes a novel which makes him, overnight, a celebrity. In it he recounts his sufferings. His compatriots in exile envy him: they too have suffered, perhaps more. And the man without a country becomes—or aspires to become—a novelist. The consequence: an accumulation of confusions, an inflation of horrors, of frissons that date. One cannot keep renewing Hell, whose very characteristic is monotony, or the face of exile either. Nothing in literature exasperates a reader so much as The Terrible; in life, it too is tainted with the obvious to rouse our interest. But our author persists; for the time being he buries his novel in a drawer and awaits his hour. The illusion of surprise, of a renown which eludes his grasp but on which he reckons, sustains him; he lives on unreality. Such, however, is the power of this illusion that if, for instance, he works in some factory, it is with the notion of being freed from it one day or another by a fame as sudden as it is inconceivable.
*
Equally tragic is the case of the poet. Walled up in his own language, he writes for his friends—for ten, for twenty persons at the most. His longing to be read is no less imperious than that of the impoverished novelist. At least he has the advantage over the latter of being able to get his verses published in the little émigré reviews which appear at the cost of almost indecent sacrifices and renunciations. Let us say such a man becomes—transforms himself—into an editor of such a review; to keep his publication alive he risks hunger, abstains from women, buries himself in a windowless room, imposes privations which confound and appall. Tuberculosis and masturbation, that is his fate.
No matter how scanty the number of émigrés, they form groups, not to protect their interests but to get up subscriptions, to bleed each other white in order to publish their regrets, their cries, their echoless appeals. One cannot conceive of a more heart rending form of the gratuitous.
That they are as good poets as they are bad prose writers is to be accounted for readily enough. Consider the literary production of any "minor" nation which has not been so childish as to make up a past for itself: the abundance of poetry is its most striking characteristic. Prose requires, for its development, a certain rigor, a differentiated social status, and a tradition: it is deliberate, constructed; poetry wells up: it is direct or else totally fabricated; the prerogative of cave men or aesthetes, it flourishes only on the near or far side of civilization, never at the center. Whereas prose demands a premeditated genius and a crystallized language, poetry is perfectly compatible with a barbarous genius and a formless language. To create a literature is to create a prose.
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Emil M. Cioran (The Temptation to Exist)
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War -- is a last ditch moral nightmare. People begin worshiping a mysterious slouching beast, following after, bowing down, offering gifts, making much of zero; and worse. Love of death, idolatry, fear of life; that roughshod trek of war and warmakers throughout the world, hand in hand with death. Long live death!
They wouldn't worship it if they weren't in love. Or if they weren't in fear. The second being a state of devouring, at least, as the first. I think the clue is the second masquerading as the first -- just as the beast is the ape of god; to do some thing successfully, you have to, above all, hide what your up to. In this way fear can ape love. Death can demand a tribute owed to life, the ape can play God.
Such reflections are of course ill at ease by some: those to whom the state is a given, the church is a given, Western culture a given, war a given, consumerism a given, paying taxes a given. All the neat slots of existence into which one fits, birth to death and every point in between. Nothing to be created, no one to be responsible to, nothing to risk, no objections to lodge. Life is a mechanical horizontal sidewalk, of the kind you sometimes ride at airports between buildings. One is carried along, a zonked spectator...
Every nation-state tends towards the imperial -- that is the point. Through banks, armies, secret police propaganda courts and jails, treaties, taxes, laws and orders, myths of civil obedience, assumptions of civic virtue at the top. Still it should be said of the political left, we expect something better. And correctly. We put more trust in those who show a measure of compassion, who denounce the hideous social arrangements that make war inevitable and human desire omnipresent; which fosters corporate selfishness, panders to appetites and disorder, waste the earth.
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Daniel Berrigan
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And, what’s worse, we didn’t get where we are today thanks to policy makers—but thanks to the appetite for risks and errors of a certain class of people we need to encourage, protect, and respect.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder)
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The unexamined life is surely worth living, but is the unloved life worth examining? It seems a strange question until one realizes how much of our so-called mental life is about the lives we are not living, the lives we are missing out on, the lives we could be leading but for some reason are not. What we fantasize about, what we long for, are the experiences, the things and the people that are absent. It is the absence of what we need that makes us think, that makes us cross and sad. We have to be aware of what is missing in our lives - even if this often obscures both what we already have and what is actually available - because we can survive only if our appetites more or less work for us. Indeed, we have to survive our appetites by making people cooperate with our wanting. We pressurize the world to be there for our benefit. And yet we quickly notice as children - it is, perhaps, the first thing we do notice - that our needs, like our wishes, are always potentially unmet. Because we are always shadowed by the possibility of not getting what we want, we lean, at best, to ironize our wishes - that is, to call our wants wishes: a wish is only a wish until, as we say, it comes true - and, at worst, to hate our needs. But we also learn to live somewhere between the lives we have and the lives we would like.(…)
There is always what will turn out to be the life we led, and the life that accompanied it, the parallel life (or lives) that never actually happened, that we lived in our minds, the wished-for life (or lives): the risks untaken and the opportunities avoided or unprovided. We refer to them as our unloved lives because somewhere we believe that they were open to us; but for some reason - and we might spend a great deal of our lived lives trying to find and give the reason - they were not possible. And what was not possible all too easily becomes the story of our lives. Indeed, our lived lives might become a protracted mourning for, or an endless tantrum about, the lives we were unable to live. But the exemptions we suffer, whether forced or chosen, make us who we are. As we know more now than ever before about the kinds of lives it is possible to live - and affluence has allowed more people than ever before to think of their lives in terms of choices and options - we are always haunted by the myth of our potential, of what we might have it in ourselves to be or do. So when we are not thinking, like the character in Randall Jarrell's poem, that "The ways we miss our lives is life", we are grieving or regretting or resenting our failure to be ourselves as we imagine we could be. We share our lives with the people we have failed to be.
We discover these unloved lives most obviously in our envy of other people, and in the conscious 9and unconscious) demands we make on our children to become something that was beyond us. And, of course, in our daily frustrations. Our lives become an elegy to needs unmet and desires sacrificed, to possibilities refused, to roads not taken. The myth of our potential can make of our lives a perpetual falling-short, a continual and continuing loss, a sustained and sometimes sustaining rage; though at its best it lures us into the future, but without letting us wonder why such lures are required (we become promising through the promises made to us). The myth of potential makes mourning and complaining feel like the realest things we eve do; and makes of our frustration a secret life of grudges. Even if we set aside the inevitable questions - How would we know if we had realized our potential? If we don't have potential what do we have? - we can't imagine our lives without the unloved lives they contain. We have an abiding sense, however obscure and obscured, that the lives we do lead are informed by the lives that escape us. That our lives are defined by loss, but loss of what might have been; loss, that is, of things never experienced.
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Adam Phillips (Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life)
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The story of Trump was the story of how he tried to make himself a story. He was shameless, campy, and instructive: if you were willing to risk humiliation, the world could be yours. Trump became the objective correlative for the rising appetite for fame and notoriety. Trump came to believe he understood everything about the media—who you need to know, what pretense you need to maintain, what information you could profitably trade, what lies you might tell, what lies the media expected you to tell. And the media came to believe it knew everything about Trump—his vanities, delusions, and lies, and the levels, uncharted, to which he would stoop for ever more media attention.
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Michael Wolff (Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House)
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A distorted sense of danger isn’t just psychologically taxing; it also encourages us to perceive risk where there isn’t any. Steeping in ominous stories can make people into threats themselves. The news is full of examples of how ambient anxiety gets turned against people of color going about their daily lives—taking a nap in the student lounge; walking down the street; selling lemonade. I thought of the woman who called the cops on two Native American brothers who were on a college tour at Colorado State. The teenagers made the woman “nervous,” she told the 911 operator. “If it’s nothing, I’m sorry. But it actually made me like feel sick and I’ve never felt like that.” Many people are feeling sick these days, for many reasons. But we should all be careful about the stories we tell ourselves to explain why.
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Rachel Monroe (Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession)
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But eating with genuine good appetite is no easy thing when you are seated at the opposite end of a long table from a man who makes it a point of moral significance to subsist on half a grapefruit, eaten in under a minute so that the bowl could be pushed emphatically away, another duty done.
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Richard Russo (The Risk Pool)
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Never let go of your appetite to go after new ideas, new experiences, and new adventures. Compete with yourself, not with others. Judge yourself on what is your personal best and you’ll accomplish more than you could ever have imagined. Life stops for no one, so keep moving. Stay awake and stay alive. There’s no AutoCorrect in life—think before texting the universe. Breaking the rules just for fun is too easy—the real challenge lies in perfecting the art of knowing which rules to accept and which to rewrite. The more you experiment, take risks, and make mistakes, the better you’ll know yourself, the better you’ll know the world, and the more focused you’ll be.
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Sophia Amoruso (#Girlboss)
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These are big trade-offs for a simple piece of cake —add five hundred calories, subtract well-being, allure, and self-esteem — and the feelings behind them are anything but vain or shallow... The experience of appetite in this equation is an experience of anxiety, a burden and a risk; yielding to hunger may be permissible under certain conditions, but mostly it's something to be Earned or Monitored and Controlled.
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Caroline Knapp
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A person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way. As long as we think the next election might eliminate crime and establish justice or another scientific breakthrough might save the environment or another pay raise might push us over the edge of anxiety into a life of tranquillity, we are not likely to risk the arduous uncertainties of the life of faith. A person has to get fed up with the ways of the world before he, before she, acquires an appetite for the world of grace.
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Eugene H. Peterson (A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (The IVP Signature Collection))
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Yet Alice Manfred swore she heard a complicated anger in it; something hostile that disguised itself as flourish and roaring seduction. But the part she hated most was its appetite. Its longing for the bash, the slit; a kind of careless hunger for a fight or a red ruby stickpin for a tie--either would do. It faked happiness, faked welcome, but it did not make her feel generous, this juke joint, barrel hooch, tonk house, music. It made her hold her hand in the pocket of her apron to keep from smashing it through the glass pane to snatch the world in her fist and squeeze the life out of it for doing what it did and did to her and everybody else she knew or knew about. Better to close the windows and the shutters, sweat in the summer heat of a silent Clifton Place apartment than to risk a broken window or a yelping that might not know how or where to stop.
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Toni Morrison (Jazz (Beloved Trilogy, #2))
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We want a money-back guarantee before we take a step of obedience, but that eliminates faith from the equation. Sometimes we need to take a flying leap of faith.
We need to step into the conflict without knowing if we can resolve it. We need to share our faith without knowing how our friends will react to it. We need to pray for a miracle without knowing how God will answer. We need to put ourselves in a situation that activates a spiritual gift we've never exercised before. And we need to go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.
If we want to discover new lands, we've got to lose sight of the shore. We've got to leave the Land of Familiarity behind. We've got to sail past the predictable. And when we do, we develop a spiritual hunger for the unprecedented and lose our appetite for the habitual. We also get a taste of God's favor.
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Mark Batterson (All In: You Are One Decision Away From a Totally Different Life)
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Also bearing witness to the unbearable nature of the vulnerability experienced by peer-oriented kids is the preponderance of vulnerability-quelling drugs. Peer-oriented kids will do anything to avoid the human feelings of aloneness, suffering, and pain, and to escape feeling hurt, exposed, alarmed, insecure, inadequate, or self-conscious. The older and more peer-oriented the kids, the more drugs seem to be an inherent part of their lifestyle.
Peer orientation creates an appetite for anything that would reduce vulnerability. Drugs are emotional painkillers. And, in another way, they help young people escape from the benumbed state imposed by their defensive emotional detachment. With the shutdown of emotions come boredom and alienation. Drugs provide an artificial stimulation to the emotionally jaded. They heighten sensation and provide a false sense of engagement without incurring the risks of genuine openness. In fact, the same drug can play seemingly opposite functions in an individual.
Alcohol and marijuana, for example, can numb or, on the other hand, free the brain and mind from social inhibitions. Other drugs are stimulants — cocaine, amphetamines, and ecstasy; the very name of the latter speaks volumes about exactly what is missing in the psychic life of our emotionally incapacitated young people. The psychological function served by these drugs is often overlooked by well-meaning adults who perceive the problem to be coming from outside the individual, through peer pressure and youth culture mores. It is not just a matter of getting our children to say no. The problem lies much deeper.
As long as we do not confront and reverse peer orientation among our children, we are creating an insatiable appetite for these drugs. The affinity for vulnerability-reducing drugs originates from deep within the defended soul. Our children's emotional safety can come only from us: then they will not be driven to escape their feelings and to rely on the anesthetic effects of drugs. Their need to feel alive and excited can and should arise from within themselves, from their own innately limitless capacity to be engaged with the universe.
This brings us back to the essential hierarchical nature of attachment. The more the child
needs attachment to function, the more important it is that she attaches to those responsible for her. Only then can the vulnerability that is inherent in emotional attachment be endured. Children don't need friends, they need parents, grandparents, adults who will assume the responsibility to hold on to them. The more children are attached to caring adults, the more they are able to interact with peers without being overwhelmed by the vulnerability involved.
The less peers matter, the more the vulnerability of peer relationships can be endured. It is exactly those children who don't need friends who are more capable of having friends without losing their ability to feel deeply and vulnerably. But why should we want our children to remain open to their own vulnerability? What is amiss when detachment freezes the emotions in order to protect the child?
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Gabor Maté (Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers)
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Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony. To accomplish that unity, Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social instincts, the individual and society. Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails. Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress. Property, the dominion of man's needs, the denial of the right to satisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right, when it came to man with the same refrain, even as religion, "Sacrifice! Abnegate! Submit!" The spirit of Anarchism has lifted man from his prostrate position. He now stands erect, with his face toward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring, devastating nature of property, and he is preparing to strike the monster dead. "Property is robbery," said the great French Anarchist, Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far exceeds normal demand a hundredfold. But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution? The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey. It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any business venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable. But those engaged in the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even this simple lesson. Every year the cost of production in human life is growing larger (50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in America last year); the returns to the masses, who help to create wealth, are ever getting smaller. Yet America continues to be blind to the inevitable bankruptcy of our business of production. Nor is this the only crime of the latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is making.
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Emma Goldman (Anarchism and other essays (Illustrated))
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I believe, “Calculated Risk” is a misnomer. It is a phrase coined by those who have no appetite for risk. Did you ever hear, Calculated Failure or Calculated Success? So, either you are taking a risk or you are not. Let’s not confuse “risk” with “stupidity”. A risk is when you know the chances of success and failure are 50:50 or maybe 10:90...and you still go ahead. When you take the risk...you ONLY believe in your capabilities and you give your 100%...you are not scared of FAILURE. Stupidity is when you assume that situations and circumstances are in your favor or you have the illusion of being a man of “golden touch”. Choose Your Journey. Let your journey be the most adventurous. Prepare for it and give your best shot. If you win, you will celebrate; if you lose, you will learn. Don’t let success or failure of your journey sway you. That’s life. You Are Born Limitless. Don’t create any limits for yourself.
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Sanjeev Himachali
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Both hyper-pragmatic cost suppression (currently very normal in Beijing) and an intense devotion and care about experience and aesthetics (currently very normal in Bogota) – both of these are virtues. Likewise, willingness to take smart risks is a virtue, and conservatism and careful selection of reasonably guaranteed success are virtues. Rarer virtues are more likely to outperform. In a place and era with a high appetite for risk, the good risks get chewed up quickly, and the opportunities to take smart risks get harder to find and take comfortably. Likewise, conservatism across the board eats itself as safe bets get their prices bid up higher and higher – until they’re guaranteed small losses instead of guaranteed small gains.
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Sebastian Marshall (PROGRESSION)
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Enough” is realizing that the opposite, an insatiable appetite for more will push you to the point of regret. Reputation is invaluable. Freedom and independence are invaluable. Family and friends are invaluable. Being loved by those who you want to love you is invaluable. Happiness is invaluable. And your best shot at keeping these things is knowing when it’s time to stop taking risks that might harm them. Knowing when you have enough.
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Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
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to the McDover case. She agreed but doubted seriously if she would comply, even though her appetite for risk had been severely diminished. As agreed, Wilton met her near the front entrance and they found a quiet table in a coffee bar at the
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John Grisham (The Whistler (The Whistler, #1))
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Again, we had to ask, who was this gathering for first? The client. And what was the underlying purpose? To come up with bold ideas that the client would have the political capital and risk appetite to implement.
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Priya Parker (The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters)
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USING YOUR NEST EGG TO DELAY CLAIMING If you’re fortunate enough to have a nest egg and you want to retire, you can consider withdrawing more savings up front as a way to hold off starting your Social Security benefit. But does the strategy make sense? It well may, and there are some important things to keep in mind. Social Security benefits go up about 7 percent for each year they are not claimed between age 62 and your full retirement age. Wait longer and the reward grows even more: Benefits increase 8 percent annually for each year they are not claimed between full retirement age and 70. Are your financial resources adequate to support your lifestyle without Social Security, so you can delay claiming and lock in the income gains I just described? The issue can get complicated, and those interested may want to talk it over with a financial advisor. Among the considerations are the following: The tax bite: A portion of your Social Security benefit may be subject to income tax (though at least 15 percent is tax free for everyone). Withdrawals from (non-Roth) Individual Retirement Accounts will surely have tax implications. But some research has shown that withdrawing more up front may reduce the tax bite later. Check your situation with an expert. Family income: Is your spouse eligible for Social Security based on his or her work record? This increases your options. Just know that your total income may affect whether your Social Security benefits are subject to income tax, how much, and whether it makes sense to delay claiming. (See Chapter 13 for a discussion of income tax rules and Social Security, including provisional income.) Your investments: Consider reasonable rates of return, including your appetite for risk, in weighing the pros and cons of delaying a claim for Social Security. It’s extremely difficult to beat Social Security’s guaranteed returns. Finally, a note of caution (and common sense): If your nest egg is modest, the strategy of withdrawing savings to delay Social Security may be unwise, because it’s important to have a cushion. Be realistic when calculating how much of a cushion you need.
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Jonathan Peterson (Social Security For Dummies)
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shape your risk perceptions, your corresponding appetite for accepting certain types of risks, and the decisions you make in responding to a risk that you deem to be unacceptable.
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Mark Abkowitz (The World According to Humpty Dumpty: The New Normal of Managing Risk)
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If you ask a billionaire the secret of his success, he might say it is passion, because that sounds like a sexy answer that is suitably humble. But after a few drinks I think he’d say his success was a combination of desire, luck, hard work, determination, brains, and appetite for risk. So forget about passion when you’re planning your path to success.
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Scott Adams (How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life)
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Although adolescents must be held responsible for their actions, they generally lack mature decision-making capability, have an inflated appetite for risk, are prone to influence by peers, and do not accurately assess future consequences. For the better part of this book I’ve provided scientific evidence supporting the notion that teen brains are different from adult brains. The question the high court was considering was how to weigh those differences in sentencing people for crimes committed when they were still adolescents.
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Frances E. Jensen (The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults)
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Do not have expensive habits or heavy tuition loan or large EMI for home that u have low risk appetite & miss entrepreneurial opportunities!
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Sandeep Aggarwal
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I need some time for the rest. I just don’t take something like marriage lightly. If I do it, I’ll mean it, and I won’t change my mind. But I think you’d do it right now for all the wrong reasons.” “Does this have anything to do with the guy you didn’t let stay last night?” he asked. “My boyfriend?” she asked, smiling. She knew it was naughty to taunt him like that; she wasn’t thinking of T.J. as a boyfriend at the moment. “It would be nice of me to tell him if things change in my personal life. But until I have matters settled…” “No, Franci, tell him matters are settled. You won’t be dating him!” “And the woman who keeps calling you?” “What woman?” he asked. “Your phone keeps picking up text messages and voice mails. That has to be a woman.” He took a deep breath. This didn’t seem like a good time to lie, just as he was trying to close a deal. “I dated this girl a few times back at Beale and I told her I wasn’t getting into a steady thing. When I went on leave, I told her we had to cool it because it wasn’t working for me, but she’s deaf. I thought when I left town for a couple of months she’d let it go, but she’s hounding me. I’m going to call her, Franci, and tell her I’m off the market. That I’m getting married. She won’t call anymore. Now, come on.” “Poor thing,” Franci said. “She might be as sick in love with you as I was.” “As you were?” he asked, a little frightened of the answer. “And I said I’m not marrying you.” “Okay, let me get this right—I suggested marriage and you said no?” “How about that? What a shocker, huh?” “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do? I thought that’s what I should do!” “Okay, you still don’t get it. We don’t want to because you’re doing what you should. Listen carefully, Sean. I want you to be absolutely sure you want to commit to a life with me and Rosie, because you don’t have to marry me to have time with your daughter. She’s your daughter—I won’t get in the way of that. Though I have to admit, the way you suggested marriage really just knocked me off my feet.” He would never admit it to anyone, but her refusal gave him an instant feeling of relief. He wasn’t ready to take it all on. But it would sure make things tidier if they could just do it the way it probably should be done. He slid close to her and, before she could protest, pulled her right up against him. “You wanna get knocked off your feet, sweetheart? Because we both know we do that to each other.” He put a big hand around the back of her neck and ran his thumb from her earlobe to the hollow of her throat. Then he kissed that spot. “I want you with me, Franci. Tonight, and from now on.” “Sean,” she said gravely, “when you rejected me four years ago, there were times I wondered if I’d lost my mind and my heart. The things we said to each other—I don’t want to risk a marriage like that. After we split and I moved to Santa Rosa, sometimes I grieved so badly I worried that I was hurting the baby with endless crying, sleepless nights, loss of appetite. I just can’t face something like that again.” He ran a knuckle across her soft cheek. “Baby, I didn’t reject you. I wanted to be with you—I just had a hang-up with marriage.” “Well, now the shoe’s on the other foot. Suck it up.” Life
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Robyn Carr (Angel's Peak (Virgin River #10))
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A common refrain among the prophets of penurious retirement is the belief that the rising number of old folks will drain the economy of its dynamism. The ranks of workers fifty-five and older are projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to rise from nearly 20 percent in 2010 to some 25 percent in 2020. The fear is the appetite for risk taking that fuels new products and new markets will diminish with a dramatically aging work force, victims of aching joints, bad backs, and faltering vision. Older workers are hardly considered stalwarts of entrepreneurial ambition and productive energy. They have a reputation for being set in their ways, unwilling to challenge the established order, little interested in the latest technologies and organizational innovations. They
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Chris Farrell (Unretirement: How Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life)
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As we surge towards Indonesia 2045, those who will lead us must have special qualities. To begin with, they will need to exercise transformational, rather than transactional, leadership. This means forward- looking leaders who will continue to transform the nation across sectors. They will need to have a higher risk-appetite and the courage to challenge old assumptions, while coming up with new ideas that suit present- day challenges.
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Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
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You allowed the girl to stay just long enough to ensure that Gareth would become enchanted with her — then, when he annoyed you, as he inevitably would, you sent her away. How very cruel, my friend! To use the poor girl to punish your brother! But no. That is not like you to be so heartless. Thus, I can only conclude that you are up to something, though what it could be, I have yet to fathom." He shot Lucien a sideways glance. "Are you certain she's the one Charles was so smitten with?" Lucien was sitting back, smiling and idly watching the musicians. "Dead certain." "And the child?" "The spitting image of her father." "And yet you sent them away." Fox shook his head. "What were you thinking of?" The duke turned his head, raising his brows in feigned surprise. "My dear Roger. You know me better than that. Do you think I would actually banish them?" "'Tis what your sister told me when I arrived." 'Ah, but 'tis what I want my sister to believe," he countered, smoothly. "And my two brothers — especially, Gareth." He sipped his port, then swirled the liquid in the glass, studying it reflectively. "Besides, Roger, if you must know, I did not send the girl away — I merely made her feel so awkward that she had no desire to remain." "Is there a difference?" "But of course. She made the decision to leave, which means she maintains both her pride and a small modicum of respect, if not liking for me — which I may find useful at a future date. Gareth thinks I sent her away, which means he is perfectly furious with me. The result? She leaves, and he chases after her, which is exactly what I wanted him to do." He chuckled. "Oh, to be a fly on the wall when he finds her and the two of them discover my hand in all this..." "Lucien, your eyes are gleaming with that cunning amusement that tells me you're up to something especially Machiavellian." "Is that so? Then I fear I must work harder at concealing the obvious." Fox gave him a shrewd look. "This is most confusing, as I'm sure you intend it to be. You know the child is Charles's and yet you will not acknowledge her ... and this after Charles expressly asked you to make her your ward?" "Really, Roger. There is no need to make the child my ward when Gareth, in all likelihood, will adopt her as his daughter." The barrister narrowed his eyes. "You have some superior, ulterior motive that evades us mere mortals." "But of course," Lucien murmured yet again, lifting his glass and idly sipping its dark liquid. "And perhaps you can explain it to this mere mortal?" "My dear Fox. It is quite simple, really. Drastic problems call for drastic solutions. By sending the girl away, I have set in motion my plan for Gareth's salvation. If things go as I expect, he will stay so furious with me that he will not only charge headlong to her rescue — but headlong into marriage with her." "Bloody hell! Lucien, the girl's completely ill-suited for him!" "On the contrary. I have observed them together, Fox. They compliment each other perfectly. As for the girl, what she lacks in wealth and social standing she more than makes up for in courage, resolve, common sense, and maturity. Gareth, whether he knows it or not, needs someone just like her. It is my hope that she will — shall I say — reform him." Fox shook his head and bit into a fine piece of Cheshire. "You're taking a risk in assuming Gareth will even find her." "Oh, he'll find her. I have no doubt about that." Lucien gestured for a footman, who promptly stepped forward and refilled his glass. "He's already half in love with her as it is. Gareth is nothing if not persistent." "Yes, and he is also given to rashness, poor judgment, and an unhealthy appetite for dissolute living." "Indeed. And that, my dear Fox, is exactly what I believe the girl will cure him of.
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Danelle Harmon (The Wild One (The de Montforte Brothers, #1))
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I didn’t hear a single story about the people who are disproportionately at risk of homicide: sex workers, the homeless, young men of color, trans women. Instead, there were more teaser-trailers for TV specials about murdered moms, or moms who murdered.
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Rachel Monroe (Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession (For True Crime Fans))
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There is a certain degree of risk involved in any venture, you have to be conscious of your risk appetite, and weigh the benefits versus the risks.
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Rupa Mahanti (Thoughts: A Collection of Inspirational Quotes)
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Philanthropic capital should not be doing what at-scale capital can do. It’s at-risk capital. We’re okay if 30 percent of our portfolio fails, as long as we fail fast, learn fast, and move fast. Another 30 percent can get spun out into companies that are structured in a way that is equitable and generous and can execute. And 30 percent are doing good things but might limp along financially, and that’s okay too. We have that 30x30x30 appetite for what success looks like. If we tell ourselves everything needs to be successful, we’ll miss out on a lot.
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John Doerr (Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now)
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...our impulsivity and appetite for risk are some of the only reliable indicators of fraud susceptibility.
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Maria Konnikova (The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time)
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Physical effects, both long and short term, include: Racing heart, headache, nausea, muscle tension, fatigue, dry mouth, dizzy feelings, increase in breathing rate, aching muscles, trembling and twitching, sweating, disturbed digestion, immune system suppression and memory issues. Your body was designed to endure brief moments of acute stress, but chronic stress (stress that is ongoing) can start to cause chronic health conditions, like cardiovascular disease, insomnia, hormonal dysregulation and so on. If the ordinary physical experience of stress is prolonged, the physical effects can have consequences in the rest of your life… Mental and psychological effects include: Exhaustion and fatigue, feeling on edge, nervousness, irritability, inability to concentrate, lack of motivation, changes to libido and appetite, nightmares, depression, feeling out of control, apathy and so on. Stress can reinforce negative thinking patterns and harmful self-talk, lower our confidence, and kill our motivation. More alarming than this, overthinking can completely warp your perception of events in time, shaping your personality in ways that mean you are more risk averse, more negatively focused and less resilient. When you’re constantly tuned into Stress FM you are not actually consciously aware and available in the present moment to experience life as it is. You miss out on countless potential feelings of joy, gratitude, connection and creativity because of your relentless focus on what could go wrong, or what has gone wrong. This means you’re less likely to recognize creative solutions to problems, see new opportunities and capitalize on them, or truly appreciate all the things that are going right for you. If you are constantly in a low-level state of fear and worry, every new encounter is going to be interpreted through that filter, and interpreted not for what it is, but for what you’re worried it could be. Broader social and environmental effects include: Damage to close relationships, poor performance at work, impatience and irritability with others, retreating socially, and engaging in addictive or harmful behaviors. A person who is constantly stressed and anxious starts to lose all meaning and joy in life, stops making plans, cannot act with charity or compassion to others, and loses their passion for life. There is very little spontaneity, humor or irreverence when someone’s mind is too busy catastrophizing, right? As you can imagine, the physical, mental and environmental aspects all interact to create one, unified experience of overthinking and anxiety. For example, if you overthink consistently, your body will be flooded with cortisol and other stress hormones. This can leave you on edge, and in fact cause you to overthink even more, adding to the stress, changing the way you feel about yourself and your life. You might then make bad choices for yourself (staying up late, eating bad food, shutting people out) which reinforce the stress cycle you’re in. You may perform worse at work, procrastinating and inevitably giving yourself more to worry about, and so on…
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Nick Trenton (Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind, and Focus on the Present (The Path to Calm Book 1))
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Politicians in their speeches, goals, and promises aim at the timid concepts of “resilience,” “solidity,” not antifragility, and in the process are stifling the mechanisms of growth and evolution. We didn’t get where we are thanks to the sissy notion of resilience. And, what’s worse, we didn’t get where we are today thanks to policy makers—but thanks to the appetite for risks and errors of a certain class of people we need to encourage, protect, and respect.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder)
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there is no context in which my ego, if not fastidiously monitored, won’t run amok. It is extremely difficult to put aside a lifetime’s conditioning. The only way I can stay drug free is one day at a time, with vigilance, humility, and support. My tendency is still, after eleven years, to drift towards oblivion. My appetite for attention too can only be positively directed with great care. Look out your window, turn on your TV, see which values are being promoted, which aspects of humanity are being celebrated. The alarm bells of fear and desire are everywhere; these powerful primal tools, designed to aid survival in a world unrecognizable to modern civilized humans, are relentlessly jangled. A facet of our unevolved nature—comparable to that which still craves sugar and fat, a relic from the days when it was scarce—is being pricked and jabbed and buzzed every time we see a billboard bikini or a Coca-Cola floozy. Our saber-toothed terrors and mammoth anxieties are being dragged up and strung out by shrill transmissions about immigrants, junkies, pit bulls, and cancer. Once I sat in that kundalini class, in white robes, cross-legged, with pan-piped serenity caressing the congregation as we meditated as one, and all I was really thinking about was if I should buy a gun. I was in America after all and you are allowed a gun. Have you ever held a Glock 38? It feels so cool in your hand. Even the word makes you feel tough. “Glock.” Tupac had one; Eminem loves them—I want one. Never mind all this hippie-dippie, yin–yang, Ramadan, green-juice bullshit; I want a gat, like Tupac. Of course, I think things like that; the messages that are broadcast on that frequency move fast and stick hard. Look at the state of the world. I didn’t buy one, though; my mum had to remind me that I’m a peace-loving lad and that if I had a gun in the house, the person most at risk would be me. The kundalini techniques worked: They advanced my mind, they tuned me in. How much more powerful these techniques would be if supported by a culture of spiritual evolution, not one of self-fortification.
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Russell Brand (Revolution)
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The goal of the magician, particularly the chaos magician, is to position his or her life so that it responds positively to volatility rather than negatively. Volatility should make your life better, not worse, just as the thousands of microtears in your muscles during weight training lead to larger biceps. Be the bicep, not the teacup! It’s easier than it sounds, and it gets easier the further you stray from society’s recommended life. As for those who do not consider themselves risk takers, this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both risk and their own personalities. The appetite for risk exists on a spectrum, it is not binary. You may be so comfortable taking certain risks that you do not consider them risks at all, like smokers at the airport worrying about their flight, or patrons expressing concern over terrorism in the pub before driving home drunk. The other side of this inability to see risks you are comfortable with as inherently risky is the propensity to see risks that make you uncomfortable as much riskier than they are.
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Gordon White (The Chaos Protocols: Magical Techniques for Navigating the New Economic Reality)
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a handful of decisions that only the board can make: the decisions to select, retain, or dismiss the chief executive; to establish a climate of ethics and integrity; to set the goals and incentives for the executive team; and to pinpoint the company’s central idea, risk appetite, and capital structure.
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Ram Charan (Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way)
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At a boardroom or at a 'nuke proof' datacenter, a Chief Information Security Officer 2.0 participates in creating and protecting the digital value. The role of a CISO evolves from a ´policeman of computers´ to a ´dietician of risk appetite´. For success in digital transformation, turn the comprehensive risk management and cybersecurity into key business differentiators.
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Stephane Nappo
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Fifty years ago he found the dinosaur in the barranca. Now, toothless, hairless and in his middle eighties, he was one of the oldest flying pilots in the world. Each morning he put on his white canvas flying-suit, pottered down to the Aero Club in his Moskva and hurled himself and his antique monoplane to the gales. The risk merely increased his appetite for life. The wind had polished his nose and coloured it pale lilac. I found him at lunch ladling the bortsch into the ivory orb of his head. He had made his room cheerful, in the Baltic way, with flowered curtains, geraniums, diplomas for stunt flying and a signed photograph of Neil Armstrong.
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Bruce Chatwin (In Patagonia)
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The future of the human organism is here phased out by a tumefying mechanosphere and, as Butler wrote, the ‘servant glides by imperceptible approaches into the master’. In using machines to adapt our environment to our ends, we instead end up becoming increasingly adapted to the machine. In this sense, the tool—which was once a mere means—transforms ‘into the master’. Günther Anders picked up on this theme beautifully a century later. He wrote that, through mechanisation, we are constructing our own extinction-by-obsolescence. By ceding everything to the machine in the name of convenience, we are wilfully manufacturing a ‘world without us’—in so far as we will eventually be adapted out of the rat race, a casualty of evolutionary parsimony. Where others had spoken of humans becoming parasites of the technological realm, Anders spoke of the technological realm ‘parasitically exploiting’ us. Technology is a ‘skin cancer’ on the planet, he wrote (hours after receiving treatment for the lung tumour that later killed him), a ‘metastasis’ that lives ‘parasitically’ off the biosphere.
Indeed, we might classify industrial modernity itself as a mechanical, planet-enclosing brood parasite: just as the Sacculina is a diversion of resources away from crab reproduction, hijacking the crab’s instincts to nurture the next generation of barnacles, so too does industry divert and capture the resources of humanity, utilising our ancient appetites to pollinate and propagate itself by luring us with artificial pleasures, from sugar to screens, while our own fertility collapses.
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Thomas Moynihan (X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction)
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I can't deny the attraction between us.” She paused and emitted a shaky laugh. “But surely you must know that we would never suit! I am meant for a small, quiet life—your way of living is too grand and fast for me. You would grow bored with me in a very short time, and you would long to be free of me—” “No.” “—and I would find it such a misery, trying to live with a man of your appetite and ambition. One of us would have to change, and that would cause terrible resentment, and the marriage would come to a bitter end.” “You can't be certain of that.” “I can't take such a risk,” she replied with absolute finality. Bronson stared at her through the shadows, his head tilted a bit, as if he were relying on some sixth sense to penetrate her thoughts. He came to her and sank to his haunches before the chair. He startled her by reaching for her hand, his fingers closing over her small, cold fist. Slowly his thumb rubbed over her knotted knuckles. “There is something you're not telling me,” he murmured. “Something that makes you anxious… even afraid. Is it me? Is it my past, the fact that I was a fighter, or is it—” “No,” she said with a laugh that caught hard in her throat. “Of course I'm not afraid of you.” “I know fear when I see it,” he persisted. Holly shook her head, refusing to debate the comment. “We must put this night behind us,” she said, “or I will have to take Rose and leave right away. And I don't wish to leave you or your family. I want to stay as long as possible and fulfill our agreement. Let us agree not to speak of this again.” His eyes gleamed with black fire. “Do you think that's possible?” “It has to be,” she whispered. “Please, Zachary, tell me you'll try.” “I'll try,” he said tonelessly. She drew a trembling breath. “Thank you.” “You'd better leave now,” he said, unsmiling. “The sight of you in that nightgown is about to drive me mad.” Were she not so miserable, Holly would have been amused by the remark. The tiers of ruffles that adorned her nightgown and pelisse made the ensemble far less revealing than an ordinary day gown. It was only Bronson's inflamed state of mind that made her seem desirable. “Will you be retiring now as well?” she asked. “No.” He went to fill his glass, and answered her over his shoulder. “I have some drinking to do.” Wrenched with unexpressed emotion, she tried to twist her mouth into a smile. “Good night, then.” “Good night.” He did not glance back at her, his shoulders held stiffly as he listened to the sound of her retreating footsteps.
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Lisa Kleypas (Where Dreams Begin)
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Cutting carbs, protein, and fat to the extent that you get insufficient total calories and overall nutrition is a bad deal. Our genetics are highly averse to overexercising; the frequent depletion and fatigue is perceived to be a matter of life or death, as it was in primal times. Consequently, our appetite and reproductive hormones rage in response to the extent that we not only overeat, but also that we direct those calories to be stored as fat instead of burned. When you add to the picture the common themes of insufficient sleep and overly stressful lifestyle patterns with insufficient downtime, you have a high-stress approach that puts you at risk of total operating system failure: blowing out your thyroid, frying your adrenal glands, picking up a mysterious autoimmune illness, or landing with other world-of-hurt conditions that often escape the diagnostics of Western medicine.
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Mark Sisson (The Keto Reset Diet: Reboot Your Metabolism in 21 Days and Burn Fat Forever)
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In my view of the world, the few individuals I call Master Persuaders are a level above cognitive scientists in persuasion power and possess what I call weapons-grade persuasion skills. The qualities that distinguish weapons-grade persuasion from the academic or commercial types are the level of risk taking and the personality that goes with it. Trump the candidate had an appetite for risk, a deep understanding of persuasion, and a personality that the media couldn’t ignore. He brought the full package.
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Scott Adams (Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter)
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Nomad’s appetite for reasonable businesses selling at unreasonably low prices made sense, given the opportunities available at the time. But this strategy had one drawback. When stocks like these rebounded and were no longer that cheap, they had to sell them and hunt for new bargains. But what if nothing particularly attractive was on sale when they sought to redeploy those winnings? An obvious solution to this reinvestment risk was to buy and hold higher-quality businesses that were more likely to continue compounding for many years.
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William Green (Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life)
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Risk culture is the area where the Board’s engagement is key. It is good practice to develop a set of questions that a Board should be constantly asking itself, to prompt good risk conversations. These may include, for example, how it perceives the tone it is setting from the top; whether decisions are taken within the stated risk appetite; and what mechanisms are in place to ensure that new joiners absorb the desired values of the firm.
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Elena Pykhova (Operational Risk Management in Financial Services: A Practical Guide to Establishing Effective Solutions)
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To be a successful investor, you don't need to take excessive risks and be involved in all sorts of financial instruments. You need to understand your risk appetite and understand a few asset classes well. Stay within your boundaries, and your wealth will grow at a decent pace.
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Naved Abdali
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I believe the more personally removed people are from a major financial event, the less it is to affect their appetite for risk.
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Ziad K. Abdelnour (Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics)
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Identify your 70/20/10 (or 60/30/10 depending on risk appetite). Most people know of this allocation from the innovation approach that Eric Schmidt pioneered at Google: 70 percent of time allocated to core business tasks, 20 percent to projects directly related to the core business, and 10 percent dedicated to projects unrelated to the core business.
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Joseph Jaffe (Z.E.R.O.: Zero Paid Media as the New Marketing Model)