Self Acclaimed Quotes

I wanted it so much. So much sometimes it felt like I couldn't breathe. Sometimes I would cry, not because I was sad, but because it hurt, physical pain from the intensity of wanting something so much. I'm a good student of philosophy, I know my Stoics, Cynics, their advice, that, when a desire is so intense it hurts you, the healthy path is to detach, unwant it, let it go. The healthy thing for the self. But there are a lot of reasons one can want to be an author: acclaim, wealth, self-respect, finding a community, the finite immortality of name in print, so many more. But I wanted it to add my voice to the Great Conversation, to reply to Diderot, Voltaire, Osamu Tezuka, and Alfred Bester, so people would read my books and think new things, and make new things from those thoughts, my little contribution to the path which flows from Gilgamesh and Homer to the stars. And that isn't just for me. It's for you. Which means it was the right choice to hang on to the desire, even when it hurt so much.

Those who deny guilt and sin are like the Pharisees of old who thought our Saviour had a “guilt complex” because He accused them of being whited sepulchers—outside clean, inside full of dead men’s bones. Those who admit that they are guilty are like the public sinners and the publicans of whom Our Lord said, “Amen, I say to you, that the publicans and the harlots shall go into the Kingdom of God before you” (Matt. 21:31). Those who think they are healthy but have a hidden moral cancer are incurable; the sick who want to be healed have a chance. All denial of guilt keeps people out of the area of love and, by inducing self-righteousness, prevents a cure. The two facts of healing in the physical order are these: A physician cannot heal us unless we put ourselves into his hands, and we will not put ourselves into his hands unless we know that we are sick. In like manner, a sinner’s awareness of sin is one requisite for his recovery; the other is his longing for God. When we long for God, we do so not as sinners, but as lovers.

It is certainly true that cooking is therapeutic, creative and all those other faintly creepy self-helpish words. I would love to tell you that learning to cook was part of my journey toward actualization. I would love to tell Oprah this. I would love to tell Oprah this while weeping. But I learned to cook for a much simpler reason: in the abject hope that people would spend time with me if I put good things in their mouth. It is, in other words (like practically everything else I do), a function of my desperation for emotional connection and acclaim.

The Christian soul knows it needs Divine Help and therefore turns to Him Who loved us even while we were yet sinners. Examination of conscience, instead of inducing morbidity, thereby becomes an occasion of joy. There are two ways of knowing how good and loving God is. One is by never losing Him, through the preservation of innocence, and the other is by finding Him after one has lost Him. Repentance is not self-regarding, but God-regarding. It is not self-loathing, but God-loving. Christianity bids us accept ourselves as we really are, with all our faults and our failings and our sins. In all other religions, one has to be good to come to God—in Christianity one does not. Christianity might be described as a “come as you are” party. It bids us stop worrying about ourselves, stop concentrating on our faults and our failings, and thrust them upon the Saviour with a firm resolve of amendment. The examination of conscience never induces despair, always hope…Because examination of conscience is done in the light of God’s love, it begins with a prayer to the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds. A soul then acts toward the Spirit of God as toward a watchmaker who will fix our watch. We put a watch in his hands because we know he will not force it, and we put our souls in God’s hands because we know that if he inspects them regularly they will work as they should…it is true that, the closer we get to God, the more we see our defects. A painting reveals few defects under candlelight, but the sunlight may reveal it as daub. The very good never believe themselves very good, because they are judging themselves by the Ideal. In perfect innocence each soul, like the Apostles at the Last Supper, cries out, “Is it I, Lord” (Matt. 26:22).

Goodbye to All That, in 1929 and it rapidly established itself as a modern classic. The Times Literary Supplement acclaimed it as ‘one of the most candid self-portraits of a poet, warts and all, ever painted’,

I personally believe mavericks are people who write their own rulebook. They are the ones who act first and talk later. They are fiercely independent thinkers who know how to fight the lizard brain (to use Seth Godin’s term). I don’t believe many are born, rather they are products of an environment, or their experiences. They are usually the people that find the accepted norm does not meet their requirements and have the self-confidence, appetite, independence, degree of self reliance and sufficient desire to carve out their own niche in life. I believe a maverick thinker can take a new idea, champion it, and push it beyond the ability of a normal person to do so. I also believe the best mavericks can build a team, can motivate with their vision, their passion, and can pull together others to accomplish great things. A wise maverick knows that they need others to give full form to their views and can gather these necessary contributors around them. Mavericks, in my experience, fall into various categories – a/ the totally off-the-wall, uncontrollable genius who won’t listen to anyone; b/ the person who thinks that they have the ONLY solution to a challenge but prepared to consider others’ views on how to conquer the world &, finally, the person who thinks laterally to overcome problems considered to be irresolvable. I like in particular the third category. The upside is that mavericks, because of their different outlook on life, often sees opportunities and solutions that others cannot. But the downside is that often, because in life there is always some degree of luck in success (i.e. being in the right place at the right time), mavericks that fail are often ridiculed for their unorthodox approach. However when they succeed they are acclaimed for their inspiration. It is indeed a fine line they walk in life.

The greatest reward of success isn’t the money or acclaim; it’s the confidence and self-respect that success brings with it.

I am and not: I freeze and yet am burned, Since from myself, my other self I turned.

If we knew nobody thought badly of us then we would have little fear, it would be more of a nuisance to fail and we would then deal with the consequences. We would also not weigh our own self-worth by an exam result. This is the Fridge Door Goblin at its best!

Don't look for knowledge, look for wisdom. Don't look for opinions, look for facts. Don't look for theories, look for evidence. Don't look for speculation, look for certainties. Don't look for certificates, look for competance. Don't look for degrees, look for diligence. Don't look for position, look for influence. Don't look for jobs, look for a career. Don't look for skills, look for talents. Don't look for approval, look for individuality. Don't look for validation, look for self acceptance. Don't look for empires, look for happiness. Don't look for popularity, look for excellence. Don't look for acclaim, look for performance. Don't look for conquests, look for brilliance. Don't look for followers, look for friends. Don't look for muscles, look for courage. Don't look for appearance, look for character. Don't look for body, look for heart. Don't look for sexmates, look for helpmates. Don't look for vengance, look for mercy. Don't look for fate, look for opportunity. Don't look for luck, look for destiny. Don't look for fate, look for opportunity. Don't look for wealth, look for health. Don't look for today, look for tomorrow. Don't look for miracles, look for faith. Don't look for religion, look for love. Don't look for messiahs, look for peace. Don't look for temples, look for truth. Don't look for angels, look for God.

Yet what moved Our Blessed Lord to invective was not badness but just such self-righteousness as this…He said that the harlots and the Quislings would enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the self-righteous and the smug. Concerning all those who endowed hospitals and libraries and public works, in order to have their names graven in stone before their fellow men, He said, “Amen I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matt. 6:2). They wanted no more than human glory, and they got it. Never once is Our Blessed Lord indignant against those who are already, in the eyes of society, below the level of law and respectability. He attacked only the sham indignation of those who dwelt more on the sin than the sinner and who felt pleasantly virtuous, because they had found someone more vicious than they. He would not condemn those whom society condemned; his severe words were for those who had sinned and had not been found out…He would not add His burden of accusation to those that had already been hurled against the winebibbers and the thieves, the cheap revolutionists, the streetwalkers, and the traitors. They were everybody’s target, and everybody knew that they were wrong…And the people who chose to make war against Our Lord were never those whom society had labeled as sinners. Of those who sentenced Him to death, none had ever had a record in the police court, had ever been arrested, was ever commonly known to be fallen or weak. But among his friends, who sorrowed at His death, were coverts drawn from thieves and from prostitutes. Those who were aligned against Him were the nice people who stood high in the community—the worldly, prosperous people, the men of big business, the judges of law courts who governed by expediency, the “civic-minded” individuals whose true selfishness was veneered over with public generosity. Such men as these opposed him and sent Him to His death.

When I first went to Rwanda, I was reading a book called Civil War, which had been receiving great critical acclaim. Writing from an immediate post-Cold War perspective, the author, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a German, observed, “The most obvious sign of the end of the bipolar world order are the thirty or forty civil wars being waged openly around the globe,” and he set out to inquire what they were all about. This seemed promising until I realized that Enzensberger wasn’t interested in the details of those wars. He treated them all as a single phenomenon and, after a few pages, announced: “What gives today’s civil wars a new and terrifying slant is the fact that they are waged without stakes on either side, that they are wars about nothing at all.” In the old days, according to Enzensberger—in Spain in the 1930s or the United States in the 1860s—people used to kill and die for ideas, but now “violence has separated itself from ideology,” and people who wage civil wars just kill and die in an anarchic scramble for power. In these wars, he asserted, there is no notion of the future; nihilism rules; “all political thought, from Aristotle and Machiavelli to Marx and Weber, is turned upside down,” and “all that remains is the Hobbesian ur-myth of the war of everyone against everyone else.” That such a view of distant civil wars offers a convenient reason to ignore them may explain its enormous popularity in our times. It would be nice, we may say, if the natives out there settled down, but if they’re just fighting for the hell of it, it’s not my problem. But it is our problem. By denying the particularity of the peoples who are making history, and the possibility that they might have politics, Enzensberger mistakes his failure to recognize what is at stake in events for the nature of those events. So he sees chaos—what is given off, not what’s giving it off—and his analysis begs the question: when, in fact, there are ideological differences between two warring parties, how are we to judge them? In the case of Rwanda, to embrace the idea that the civil war was a free-for-all—in which everyone is at once equally legitimate and equally illegitimate—is to ally oneself with Hutu Power’s ideology of genocide as self-defense.

Relativistic twins? When one looks at the paths that Newton and Einstein followed while pursuing their theories of gravity, one is struck by the many similarities: the unexplained data on orbits, the sudden insight about falling objects, the need for a new mathematics, the calculational difficulties, the retroactive agreements, the controversy, the problem-plagued expeditions, and the final triumph and acclaim.. Both men had worked in the same eccentric and lonely way, divorced from other scientists, armed with a great feeling of self-reliance while struggling with new concepts and difficult mathematics, and both produced earth-shaking results. One can't help but wonder if these two greatest of scientists, born 237 years apart, were "relativistically related", conceived as twins in some ethereal plane in a far-off galaxy and sent to earth to solve a matter of some gravity.

So for one hundred and sixteen days, fifty-five men who were among the leaders of our nation met and argued and retired to our inns to continue the debate, and we dealt with the most profound topics that men can deal with, the problems of self-government, and not a single clue as to what we were discussing or how we were dividing was revealed to the outside world. Thus, delegates were freed from posturing for public acclaim; more important, they were free to change their minds and to retreat from weak positions hastily taken. I

Alexei has created a language of a hundred and twelve thousand words controlled by an elaborate syntax. It is a pity that no one can enjoy it along with Alexei, but he refuses to translate a single word. He has been accused of both narcissism and ostentation, but he is never offended. It is the typical artist, so he declares, who is mad for acclaim and whose self-esteem depends upon adulation. Alexei sees himself as a lonely man, indifferent to both praise and censure.” Wayness craned her neck. “He is now playing the concertina and dancing a jig, all at the same time. What do you make of that?” “It is just Alexei in one of his moods; it means nothing.

In a society in which the dream of success has been drained of any meaning beyond itself, men have nothing against which to measure their achievements except the achievements of others. Self-approval depends on public recognition and acclaim, and the quality of this approval has undergone important changes in its own right. The good opinion of friends and neighbors, which formerly informed a man that he had lived a useful life, rested on appreciation of his accomplishments. Today men seek the kind of approval that applauds not their actions but their personal attributes. They wish to be not so much esteemed as admired. They crave not fame but the glamour and excitement of celebrity. They want to be envied rather than respected. Pride and acquisitiveness, the sins of an ascendant capitalism, have given way to vanity.

You will see that the most powerful and highly placed men let drop remarks in which they long for leisure, acclaim it, and prefer it to all their blessings. They desire at times, if it could be with safety, to descend from their high pinnacle; for, though nothing from without should assail or shatter, Fortune of its very self comes crashing down.8 The deified Augustus, to whom the gods vouchsafed more than to any other man, did not cease to pray for rest and to seek release from public affairs; all his conversation ever reverted to this subject—his hope of leisure. This was the sweet, even if vain, consolation with which he would gladden his labours—that he would one day live for himself. In a letter addressed to the senate, in which he had promised that his rest would not be devoid of dignity nor inconsistent with his former glory, I find these words: "But these matters can be shown better by deeds than by promises. Nevertheless, since the joyful reality is still far distant, my desire for that time most earnestly prayed for has led me to forestall some of its delight by the pleasure of words." So desirable a thing did leisure seem that he anticipated it in thought because he could not attain it in reality. He who saw everything depending upon himself alone, who determined the fortune of individuals and of nations, thought most happily of that future day on which he should lay aside his greatness. He had discovered how much sweat those blessings that shone throughout all lands drew forth, how many secret worries they concealed. Forced to pit arms first against his countrymen, then against his colleagues, and lastly against his relatives, he shed blood on land and sea. Through Macedonia, Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and almost all countries he followed the path of battle, and when his troops were weary of shedding Roman blood, he turned them to foreign wars. While he was pacifying the Alpine regions, and subduing the enemies planted in the midst of a peaceful empire, while he was extending its bounds even beyond the Rhine and the Euphrates and the Danube, in Rome itself the swords of Murena, Caepio, Lepidus, Egnatius, and others were being whetted to slay him. Not yet had he escaped their plots, when his daughter9 and all the noble youths who were bound to her by adultery as by a sacred oath, oft alarmed his failing years—and there was Paulus, and a second time the need to fear a woman in league with an Antony.10 When be had cut away these ulcers11 together with the limbs themselves, others would grow in their place; just as in a body that was overburdened with blood, there was always a rupture somewhere. And so he longed for leisure, in the hope and thought of which he found relief for his labours. This was the prayer of one who was able to answer the prayers of mankind.

What’d you think?” Dan asked as we buckled into the Acclaim after another Sunday under the big top. “I wonder if they realize their worship songs include both amillennial and premillennial theology,” I said with a sigh. “Also, what’s this business from the preacher about Moses writing Numbers? I mean, everyone knows Moses didn’t actually write the book of Numbers. It originated from a combination of written and oral tradition and was assembled and edited by Jewish priests sometime during the postexilic period as an exercise in national self-definition. You can look that up on Wikipedia. And, while we’re at it, a bit more Christology applied to the Old Testament text would be nice.” “Um, Rach, the sermon today was about humility.” Lord, have mercy. See, I’ve got this coping mechanism thing where, when I’m feeling frightened or vulnerable or over my head, I intellectualize the situation to try and regain a sense of control. . . . In some religious traditions, this particular coping mechanism is known as pride. I confess I preened it. I scoffed at the idea of being taught or led. Deconstructing was so much safer than trusting, so much easier than letting people in. I knew exactly what type of Christian I didn’t want to be, but I was too frightened, or too rebellious, or too wounded, to imagine what might be next. Like a garish conch shell, my cynicism protected me from disappointment, or so I believed, so I expected the worst and smirked when I found it. So many of our sins begin with fear . . .

Deep humility. Examination: Have I looked down on anyone? Have I been too stung by criticism? Have I felt snubbed and ignored? Consider the free grace of Jesus until I sense (a) decreasing disdain, since I am a sinner too, and (b) decreasing pain over criticism, since I should not value human approval over God’s love. In light of his grace, I can let go of the need to keep up a good image—it is too great a burden and is now unnecessary. I reflect on free grace until I experience grateful, restful joy. A well-guided zeal. Examination: Have I avoided people or tasks that I know I should face? Have I been anxious and worried? Have I failed to be circumspect, or have I been rash and impulsive? Consider the free grace of Jesus until there is (a) no cowardly avoidance of hard things, since Jesus faced evil for me, and (b) no anxious or rash behavior, since Jesus’ death proves that God cares and will watch over me. It takes pride to be anxious, and I recognize I am not wise enough to know how my life should go. I reflect on free grace until I experience calm thoughtfulness and strategic boldness. A burning love. Examination: Have I spoken or thought unkindly of anyone? Am I justifying myself by caricaturing someone else in my mind? Have I been impatient and irritable? Have I been self-absorbed, indifferent, and inattentive to people? Consider the free grace of Jesus until there is (a) no coldness or unkindness, as I think of the sacrificial love of Christ for me, (b) no impatience, as I think of his patience with me, and (c) no indifference, as I think of how God is infinitely attentive to me. I reflect on free grace until I feel some warmth and affection. A “single” eye. Examination: Am I doing what I do for God’s glory and the good of others, or am I being driven by fears, need for approval, love of comfort and ease, need for control, hunger for acclaim and power, or the fear of other people? (Luke 12:4–5). Am I looking at anyone with envy? Am I giving in to even the first motions of sexual lust or gluttony? Am I spending my time on urgent things rather than important things because of these inordinate desires? Consider how the free grace of Jesus provides me with what I am looking for in these other things.

Tempestuous plains tell the tale, Windswept wastes do bewail, Haunting Spirit of the land, Seeks the living, seeks the damned. Horizoned edge sheared with grass, Dark Storm Rising in the pass, Ageless Spirit seeks the path, To torment souls to the last. Brooding Spirit upon the plain, Thunderhead gathers for the rain. Light grows dim then bolts with pain, On dry Earth her sin is stained. (Frightened creatures do stampede, Into night, they do recede). Ungodded hand on seasoned blade, Reaps the harvest of the Age. Released from her eternal din, Spirit of the Age rises again. Seeking to plunder and consume, Those who were proud, those who presumed. Spirits rage while storm draws nigh, Upon burning plain and emblazoned sky. It is said giants grapple in the Earth so deep, To contend for souls that they might keep. The Storm spirit now searches the high and the low, To seek her manchild victim in the fields below. Leaves bad wasteland to claim but a fallen man, Denying it Heaven, crowning it, ‘Son of the Damned.’ Treacherous Spirit of the far lost night, Tramples souls down denying them light. Storm seethes with furious hiss, Leads men on to bottomless pit. This most ancient of foes has come from her den, To seek the living, to make ready those dead. A living sacrifice is her soul desire, To snatch the soul for black funeral pyre. A double-damned devil, that is she, This one who lies, who claims to make free. A lying spirit, that is her domain, A storm-wracked Fury of self-proclaim. Onward she seeks, this bleak Northern wind, Searching for naught but for a soul akin. Amidst the howling and the rage, To murder again, that is her trade. As this spirit of graves left the plain, She left a wake of dead in shrouded train. Now down from the plain Storm did come, Unto those cities wherein was no sun. There with whirlwind she did rip and scour, For those souls of whom she could tear and devour. She comes to seek the living and the dead, Those who were frightened, those with no dread. Thus upon those she did acclaim, “I am the Mistress of the living and the slain.” O’ haunting Spirit of this land, Taker of life, maker of the damned. --On Villainess Storm, Ch. One Valley of the Damned

Otherwise we run the risk of failing God in the one thing that so greatly determined His choice of us; and in failing God, we shall fail ourselves. Find your personal worth in your special calling from God Our Christian vocation carries responsibility, but it has its compensations, too. One such compensation is the wholesome feeling of personal worth that should be mine. If I am important to God, I am indeed an important person. Other people may not rate me very highly. My talents may be quite limited, and to those who know me, I may be just an average sort of person. My job may be a relatively humble one, and I may be tempted to feel inferior as I see others around me making their mark in the world. Then I remember that money, position, and popularity - all the yardsticks by which the world measures success - are to God nothing more than a child's playthings. Eventually they must be cast aside and left behind. In the meantime, if I am in a state of grace and am following God's will as my road map through life, then every least action of mine has an everlasting value. However lowly the world may esteem me, every breath I draw is precious to God. Speaking again in human terms, God made me because He needs me. There is something that has to be done that only I can do. What greater personal worth could there be than to be needed by God? It matters little that I do not know the nature of my essential role in God's plan. It is enough to know that I am as valuable to God as the most distinguished person the world has ever acclaimed. This sense of personal worth is not pride. It is not even vanity. Pride consists in declaring my independence of God, as though I alone were responsible for whatever merit I possess. Vanity is simply a silly preoccupation with God's lesser natural gifts, such as looks or talents. It would not be humility - it would be a belittling of God's wisdom and goodness - to pretend that I do not amount to much, that my life is meaningless, that I would never have been missed if I had not been born. It is quite true that apart from God I am nothing. It is just as true that God's love has made me great. To admit this is to do simple justice to God. I must never surrender to the temptation to think, "I am no good. I am a failure." Neither must I surrender - ever - to self-pity; to the feeling that nobody loves me, nobody cares about me. How awful it would be, after all the love God has expended and is expending on me, to brood and sorrow because I do not receive as much human love as I might wish. That would be about as silly as the complaint of a millionaire at not winning on the penny slot machine. A self-pitying person can only be one who is weak in faith or ignorant in religion. God's love for me is such a tremendous thing! From my sense of Christian vocation there follows another effect: freedom from serious worry. If I really believe that God loves me with an infinite love (as He does) and that He wants what is best for me (as He does), I cannot worry very long or very intensely. God is infinitely wise; He always knows what is best. God is infinitely powerful; He can accomplish anything

When people ask what I would tell my younger self, the budding writer at the beginning of her career, it is always the same: I wish I could have prepared myself for what happens to a writer when she is brutally honest, when she speaks truth to power in a raw and emotional way. The literary establishment continues to privilege work that’s just a touch removed, “refined” they would call it. Writers who tone down their anguish, their rage, their nontraditional, “deviant choices are perceived as more skilled, more worthy of critical acclaim. This often has a lot to do with racism and sexism, and the stories we are “allowed” to tell as people of color. The classification is not a new phenomenon nor is the marginalization of powerful autobiographical stories that demand engagement. I wish I had known all this, not because I would have done things differently, but because I would not have been so surprised by some of the dismissive responses to my work. I would have been more prepared.

What’d you think?” Dan asked as we buckled into the Acclaim after another Sunday under the big top. “I wonder if they realize their worship songs include both amillennial and premillennial theology,” I said with a sigh. “Also, what’s this business from the preacher about Moses writing Numbers? I mean, everyone knows Moses didn’t actually write the book of Numbers. It originated from a combination of written and oral tradition and was assembled and edited by Jewish priests sometime during the postexilic period as an exercise in national self-definition. You can look that up on Wikipedia. And, while we’re at it, a bit more Christology applied to the Old Testament text would be nice.” “Um, Rach, the sermon today was about humility.” Lord, have mercy.

I am not super-attached to my career,' Audrey Tautou says in that sultry, Gallic voice of hers, a glint of recklessness in her big brown eyes. 'I have several plan Bs: I want to become a sailor; I like to draw; I would love to learn many things, but I don’t have time…' She trails off, leaving an uncertain silence hanging over the Kensington hotel room where we’ve met to discuss her latest film, a delightful comic confection called Beautiful Lies. 'That is the problem, you know,' she continues, more carefully. 'That is the reason why I will quit acting very soon.' She lets out a strange little laugh, a creaky exhalation, as if her own admission has taken her by surprise... 'I didn’t want to have this power,' she says, with a shrug. 'I would rather have freedom; and to find that you have to stop being in big, exposed movies. I don’t surf on the big waves. When I see them coming, I take my board and go straight back to the beach.'... 'I am always surprised to be chosen by a director for a role because I never understand why they like me,' she says. Surely, I suggest, that is false modesty, coming from one of Europe’s most bankable stars. 'Oh no, really, I am serious,' she says, leaning forward and planting her feet back on the carpet. 'I am always surprised to be cast.' Does her track record – in Jeunet’s hits; or in Stephen Frears’s acclaimed Dirty Pretty Things, or as a compellingly self-possessed Coco Chanel in Anne Fontaine’s 2009 biopic – not give her at least a little confidence? 'No,' she says with a scowl, 'pas du tout.' 'A few months ago, I watched one of my old movies and I thought to myself, 'Oh, Jesus!’ Thank God that at the point I made that film I didn’t realise the extent to which I was terrible. Oh, mon dieu! Mon dieu!' But surely, I say, she can take from that the reassurance that she has only improved as an actress. 'Or,' she says, jabbing a finger in the air, 'I say to myself, does it simply mean that if in another 10 years I rewatch the films I am making today I will say, 'Oh mon dieu, how terrible I was then.’ She laughs that odd, breathy laugh again and then looks me dead in the eye. 'You have to be very careful in this life.

Many high achievers, for all their accomplishments, cannot trust in a basic idea: that it might be acceptable to be themselves, outside of any acclaim, notice or distinction. Simply being is not enough; their right to exist can only be assured by constant doing. Their frantic activity masks an underlying unquenchable doubt as to their acceptability.

little inspiration, you can make them want to want to learn.  The problem is, you never really know how to do that.  You don’t know what is going to inspire them: Talent? Pride? Fear? Self-love?  Self-loathing? Acclaim? Humiliation? Praise? Reward?  In the end, you have to guess.  And when you guess wrong, you try something else.  There is no single best way to teach anything.  It depends on the student, the instructor, and the subject.  It’s a wonder we convey any knowledge to the next generation at all,” he said, cynically.

Lifecast by Stewart Stafford Lifecast Be your play's lead actor, Beware of its shooting star, In drama's immortal mania, Your reputation carries far. Fish your dawn-gold phrases, From out the impostor's throat, Your tongue streaming candor, Not stumbling forth by rote. Let no Salieri hand, Override your author's claim, Even if remuneration's elusive, You may still relish the acclaim. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.

results for people with profit goals were more complicated. Those who said they were attaining their goals—accumulating wealth, winning acclaim—reported levels of satisfaction, self-esteem, and positive affect no higher than when they were students. In other words, they’d reached their goals, but it didn’t make them any happier. What’s more, graduates with profit goals showed increases in anxiety, depression, and other negative indicators—again, even though they were attaining their goals.

Christmas and the New Year were celebrated with vastly more acclaim and spontaneity than in most civilized countries, and there were many other gala days which no voyageur ever passed up without the celebration prescribed in the pays d’en haut. Harmon’s first Christmas in the interior came as somewhat of a shock to him, accustomed to the proprieties of the New England mode of celebration, for he says, “This day being Christmas, our people have spent it as usual in drinking and fighting.”11 Kennicott, however, was alive to the picturesqueness of this class of men and more in sympathy with their methods of self-expression. Consequently his remarks on a Christmas celebration in the Northwest are more detailed and full of interest. “The day after Christmas, Flett gave a Christmas ball…. The dancing was, I may say without vulgarity, decidedly ‘stunning.’ I should hardly call it graceful. The figures, if they may be called such, were only Scotch reels of four, and jigs; and … the main point to which the dancers’ efforts seemed to tend, was to get the largest amount of exercise out of every muscle in the frame…. The music consisted of a very bad performance of one vile, unvarying tune, upon a worse old fiddle, accompanied by a brilliant accompaniment upon a large tin pan.

The Eclipse ofAchievement In a society in which the dream of success has been drained of any meaning beyond itself, men have nothing against which to measure their achievements except the achievements of others. Self-approval depends on public recognition and acclaim, and the quality of this approval has undergone important changes in its own right. The good opinion of friends and neighbors, which formerly informed a man that he had lived a useful life, rested on appreciation of his accomplishments. Today men seek the kind of approval that applauds not their actions but their personal attributes. They wish to be not so much esteemed as admired. They crave not fame but the glamour and excitement of celebrity. They want to be envied rather than respected. Pride and acquisitiveness, the sins of an ascendant capitalism, have given way to vanity. Most Americans would still define success as riches, fame, and power, but their actions show that they have little interest in the substance of these attainments. What a man does matters less than the fact that he has "made it." Whereas fame depends on the performance of notable deeds acclaimed in biography and works of history, celebrity-the reward of those who project a vivid or pleasing exterior or have otherwise attracted attention to themselves-is acclaimed in the news media, in gossip columns, on talk shows, in magazines devoted to "personalities." Accordingly it is evanescent, like news itself, which loses its interest when it loses its novelty. Worldly success has always carried with it a certain poignancy, an awareness that "you can't take it with you"; but in our time, when success is so largely a function of youth, glamour, and novelty, glory is more fleeting than ever, and those who win the attention of the public worry incessantly about losing it.

DO NOT RESIST OR RUN from the difficulties in your life. These problems are not random mistakes; they are hand-tailored blessings designed for your benefit and growth. Embrace all the circumstances that I allow in your life, trusting Me to bring good out of them. View problems as opportunities to rely more fully on Me. When you start to feel stressed, let those feelings alert you to your need for Me. Thus, your needs become doorways to deep dependence on Me and increasing intimacy between us. Although self-sufficiency is acclaimed in the world, reliance on Me produces abundant living in My kingdom. Thank Me for the difficulties in your life since they provide protection from the idolatry of self-reliance.

I am an autonomous human being, self-regulating and self-governing, and duty bound to quest for the pure idea of how I wish to exist. I need to make the most of this breath of life while I can. I wish to live mindfully. I seek a roadmap leading to personal enlightenment, a means to live as effortlessly as a cork bobbing on a river, not resisting the flow of the stream, not fighting myself, liberated from the anxiety of foolishly lingering over prior travels, unconcerned where I am at, and accepting without reservation where I am heading without desiring more. A person with a light heart and a sound mind wants for nothing. I seek to travel into the mist of future while conscientiously working towards obtaining spiritual enlightenment. I search to acquire an active and open state of mindfulness, but I must exercise caution in doing so, because any degree of wanting, any foray to acquire money or acclaim, undermines the desire to achieve mental stillness and emotional equanimity. By living in an authentic and spontaneous manner, without striving, without obsessing about the horror of the past and the ambiguity of looming future, and by living exclusively in the now, I hope to experience the universal truths – the ultimate reality of absolute existence – reflective of the true nature of the universe.

I find that money magic is more effective in situations of specific need than general greed. For long-term wealth, it's usually better practice to work on the level of improving your career and drawing customers and acclaim to your business.

Impostor Syndrome is a pervasive feeling of self-doubt, insecurity, or fraudulence despite often overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It strikes smart, successful individuals. It often rears its head after an especially notable accomplishment, like admission to a prestigious university, public acclaim, winning an award, or earning a promotion.1

The picture of the Pythia breathing in vapors from a chasm below her tripod has always been the dominant model for understanding how the oracle at Delphi functioned. To such an extent that finding the mechanism of the vapors was originally regarded as the litmus test for successful archaeological investigation at Delphi. The original excavators of the site were extremely disappointed not to find a chasm below the temple—they felt almost cheated by the “deception” of the literary sources. The stakes were understandably high: at the time of Delphi’s excavation in the 1890s, interest in the oracle, and in psychic research more generally, could not have been stronger. In 1891 the burlesque opera Apollo, or The Oracle at Delphi played to great acclaim on Broadway. In the same year, John Collier painted his famous Priestess of Delphi in which a sensual priestess breathes in vapors from her tripod over a chasm (see plate 4), and the Society of Psychical Research was started by Cambridge academics and published its first volume examining the oracle at Delphi. In the wake of the disappointing excavations, thus, there was a feeling that the ancient sources had lied. The scholar A. P. Oppé in 1904 in the Journal of Hellenic Studies argued that the entire practice at Delphi was a farce, a sham, put on by the priests of Apollo, tricking the ancient world. Others sought different explanations for the Pythia’s madness: they focused on the laurel leaves, and suggested the Pythia had been high from eating laurel. One German scholar, Professor Oesterreich, even ate laurel leaves to test the theory, remarking disappointedly that he felt no different. Others opined that the answer relied not in some form of drug, but in psychology. Herbert Parke and Donald Wormell argued in the 1950s that the Pythia, in the heat of the moment after so much preparation on the particular day of consultation, and after so many years perhaps involved with the temple as one of the women guarding the sacred flame, would have found herself in an emotionally intense relationship with the god, and could easily have fallen victim to self-induced hypnosis. More recently, scholars have employed a series of anthropological approaches to understand belief in spirit possession, and applied these to how the Pythia may have functioned.

Religion is a personal thing and every man has the right to choose his own, or practice it the way he likes. Most of the sycophants that use religion to defame the character of Buhari are not even practicing their acclaimed self righteousness. Many of them are occultists. They kill and conduct daily human sacrifices to remain in power

When after celebrating the Glory of the Grace of God we find way too much self congratulatory glory taking by a person who seem to need "More Acclaim" than he actually deserve and if there is way too self referencing involved in one's Christian ministry, then that can be indisputable sign of one's failing to recognize his Bias and own Spiritual Blindness. Such a person can never be Right or Honest with God no matter what he claims. One will be tempted to be less than honest about what's really going on in his heart and ministry. In the light of above premise we have to understand that the underlying danger is if one is too caught up in searching his own will then he will never find the secret of discovering God's divine will.