Small Mind Discuss Quotes

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss other people. Life's too short to worry about what other people do or don't do. Tend your own backyard, not theirs, because yours is the one you have to live in.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

His aim was the creation of self sufficient small towns,really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life with others with no plans of their own. As in all Utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planner in charge. - discussing Ebenezer Howards' Garden City

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Great Minds Discuss Ideas. Average Minds Discuss Events. Small Minds Discuss People

Great minds,” Eleanor Roosevelt said, “discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” How big is your mind?

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."  Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote movingly about having her own equivalent of a Bat Cave, but in the end, she found consolation by telling herself, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” I agreed with this, but I still couldn’t get the small things or people out of my head. EVENTS IN MY PERSONAL LIFE required me to understand better where my “bats” were coming from.

great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. And life’s too short to worry about what other people do or don’t do. Tend your own backyard, not theirs, because yours is the one you have to live in.

Following Someone is always falling in love with you: men and women, infants and children, octogenarians and adolescents. A tenant of heaven-haven on the pearly doorstep hopes you will wave your hand in passing. Where you stood just now a white bird has flown into a ponderosa pine and a black bee hovers in a bush of yellow flowers. People would like to discuss you, but hold back. Mystery is a fragile substance, too easy to tear. Several persons, however, have noticed that you are followed not by the usual shadow but by a shaft of sunlight. Even on a day of fog or light rain. Even after sunset. When you are not present, you still walk quietly through our minds, and we tell ourselves little stories or small poems about you, like this one. When a bird sings, we listen carefully hoping your name will be mentioned.

Chumaka ended with a quotation from a play that Jiro favored. “ ‘Small acts partner small houses and small minds'.

Desperately trying to remember her manners, she curtseyed and murmured, "Your Grace." The smile lines at his eyes deepened subtly. "You appear to be in need of rescue. Why don't you come inside with me, away from this riffraff? The duchess is eager to meet you." As Pandora hesitated, thoroughly intimidated, he assured her. "I'm quite trustworthy. In fact, I'm very nearly an angel. You'll come to love me in no time." "Take heed," Lord St. Vincent advised Pandora sardonically, fastening the loose sides of his vest. "My father is the pied piper of gullible women." "That's not true," the duke said, "The non-gullible ones follow me as well." Pandora couldn't help chuckling. She looked up into silvery-blue eyes lit with sparks of humor and playfulness. There was something reassuring about his presence, the sense of a man who truly liked women. When she and Cassandra were children, they had fantasized about a handsome father who would lavish them with affection and advice, and spoil them just a little, but not too much. A father who might have let them stand on his feet to dance. This man looked very much like the one Pandora had imagined. She moved forward and took his arm. "How was your journey, my dear?" the duke asked as he escorted her into the house. Before Pandora could reply, Lord St. Vincent spoke from behind them. "Lady Pandora doesn't like small talk, Father. She would prefer to discuss topics such as Darwin, or women's suffrage." "Naturally an intelligent young woman would wish to skip over mundane chitchat," the duke said, giving Pandora such an approving glance that she fairly glowed. "However," he continued thoughtfully, "most people need to be guided into a feeling of safety before they dare reveal their opinions to someone they've only just met. There's a beginning to everything, after all. Every opera has its prelude, every sonnet its opening quatrain. Small talk is merely a way of helping a stranger to trust you, by first finding something you can both agree on." "No one's ever explained it that way before," Pandora said with a touch of wonder. "It actually makes sense. But why must it be so often about weather? Isn't there something else we all agree on? Runcible spoons- everyone likes those, don't they? And teatime, and feeding ducks." "Blue ink," the duke added. "And a cat's purr. And summer storms- although I suppose that brings us back to weather." "I wouldn't mind talking about weather with you, Your Grace," Pandora said ingenuously. The duke laughed gently. "What a delightful girl.

Dimitri? She tried not to influence him. It was their decision together, not just hers. She knew he would listen with an open mind to her reasons and she wanted to be able to do the same for him. His laughter was soft in her mind, filling her with an odd tingling sensation, with a small rush of heat. Skyler. That was it. Her name. She sent him a look from under her lashes, one she usually reserved for Josef. Are you mocking me? Teasing you. Just a little. We’re getting the wolf pups. How could I possibly say no to a gift like that? You would never stop arguing with me. Discussing. I was totally prepared to be reasonable and listen to you and then show you all the reasons you were absolutely wrong if you disagreed. Dimitri burst out laughing.

When Leonardo was painting The Last Supper (fig. 74), spectators would visit and sit quietly just so they could watch him work. The creation of art, like the discussion of science, had become at times a public event. According to the account of a priest, Leonardo would “come here in the early hours of the morning and mount the scaffolding,” and then “remain there brush in hand from sunrise to sunset, forgetting to eat or drink, painting continually.” On other days, however, nothing would be painted. “He would remain in front of it for one or two hours and contemplate it in solitude, examining and criticizing to himself the figures he had created.” Then there were dramatic days that combined his obsessiveness and his penchant for procrastination. As if caught by whim or passion, he would arrive suddenly in the middle of the day, “climb the scaffolding, seize a brush, apply a brush stroke or two to one of the figures, and suddenly depart.”1 Leonardo’s quirky work habits may have fascinated the public, but they eventually began to worry Ludovico Sforza. Upon the death of his nephew, he had become the official Duke of Milan in early 1494, and he set about enhancing his stature in a time-honored way, through art patronage and public commissions. He also wanted to create a holy mausoleum for himself and his family, choosing a small but elegant church and monastery in the heart of Milan, Santa Maria delle Grazie, which he had Leonardo’s friend Donato Bramante reconstruct. For the north wall of the new dining hall, or refectory, he had commissioned Leonardo to paint a Last Supper, one of the most popular scenes in religious art. At first Leonardo’s procrastination led to amusing tales, such as the time the church prior became frustrated and complained to Ludovico. “He wanted him never to lay down his brush, as if he were a laborer hoeing the Prior’s garden,” Vasari wrote. When Leonardo was summoned by the duke, they ended up having a discussion of how creativity occurs. Sometimes it requires going slowly, pausing, even procrastinating. That allows ideas to marinate, Leonardo explained. Intuition needs nurturing. “Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least,” he told the duke, “for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

You're Savannah Dubrinsky." Gary breathed her name reverently. "My God, I should have guessed." Gregori's entire demeanor changed, becoming all at once menacing and dangerous. His face was etched in stone, his mouth hard and faintly cruel. The hair on the back of Gary's neck literally stood up. He swallowed hard and instinctively moved a little distance from the woman. Not that he blamed the man, creature, whatever, but his reaction was more that of untamed beast than civilized man. Gary was taking no chances. Savannah laughed softly. She leaned into the man despite Gregori's restraining arm. "He can read your mind," she reminded Gary softly, her breath swirling with tantalizing warmth over his neck. He jumped away as if he'd been burned, his face flamed crimson, and he looked guiltily at Gregori. Gregori's dark features relaxed. The hard edge to his mouth softened. "Do not worry, Gary, she is incorrigible. Even I have trouble with her.I cannot blame you for what I myself cannot control." His arm swept arond Savannah's small waist, and he tucked her beneath his shoulder. Are you angry? The smile was fading from her eyes, her mouth. Gregori tightened his hold on her when her step faltered. We can discuss this at home, cherie.You are already here;you may as well give the boy a thrill.But I warn you,not too big a thrill. She relaxed her body into his.That quickly.That easily.As if she belonged, his other half.He was beginning to believe it might be possible.

When I first began to criticize small farming, a number of critics (most of them small-scale farmers) roundly condemned me for supporting agribusiness. In my favorite example to date, Joel Salatin, who figures prominently in the grass-fed-beef chapter, condemned my “love affair with confinement hog factories”! This reaction, while wildly inaccurate, is nonetheless important to take seriously. Most notably, it’s almost comically indicative of how narrowly we have framed our options. Joel was serious. His accusation shows that by constricting our choices to animal products sourced from either industrial or nonindustrial operations, by holding up the animal-based alternatives to industrial agriculture as our only alternative, we have silenced discussion of the most fertile, most politically consequential, and most reform-minded choice: eating plants. This alternative to the alternatives changes the entire game of revolutionizing our broken food system. It places the food movement on a new foundation, infuses it with fresh energy, and promotes the only choice that keeps agribusiness executives awake at night.

1. Recruit the smallest group of people who can accomplish what must be done quickly and with high quality. Comparative Advantage means that some people will be better than others at accomplishing certain tasks, so it pays to invest time and resources in recruiting the best team for the job. Don’t make that team too large, however—Communication Overhead makes each additional team member beyond a core of three to eight people a drag on performance. Small, elite teams are best. 2. Clearly communicate the desired End Result, who is responsible for what, and the current status. Everyone on the team must know the Commander’s Intent of the project, the Reason Why it’s important, and must clearly know the specific parts of the project they’re individually responsible for completing—otherwise, you’re risking Bystander Apathy. 3. Treat people with respect. Consistently using the Golden Trifecta—appreciation, courtesy, and respect—is the best way to make the individuals on your team feel Important and is also the best way to ensure that they respect you as a leader and manager. The more your team works together under mutually supportive conditions, the more Clanning will naturally occur, and the more cohesive the team will become. 4. Create an Environment where everyone can be as productive as possible, then let people do their work. The best working Environment takes full advantage of Guiding Structure—provide the best equipment and tools possible and ensure that the Environment reinforces the work the team is doing. To avoid having energy sapped by the Cognitive Switching Penalty, shield your team from as many distractions as possible, which includes nonessential bureaucracy and meetings. 5. Refrain from having unrealistic expectations regarding certainty and prediction. Create an aggressive plan to complete the project, but be aware in advance that Uncertainty and the Planning Fallacy mean your initial plan will almost certainly be incomplete or inaccurate in a few important respects. Update your plan as you go along, using what you learn along the way, and continually reapply Parkinson’s Law to find the shortest feasible path to completion that works, given the necessary Trade-offs required by the work. 6. Measure to see if what you’re doing is working—if not, try another approach. One of the primary fallacies of effective Management is that it makes learning unnecessary. This mind-set assumes your initial plan should be 100 percent perfect and followed to the letter. The exact opposite is true: effective Management means planning for learning, which requires constant adjustments along the way. Constantly Measure your performance across a small set of Key Performance Indicators (discussed later)—if what you’re doing doesn’t appear to be working, Experiment with another approach.

This is the basis for the flipped classroom described by physics professor Eric Mazur in his book Peer Instruction. Mazur doesn’t lecture in his classes at Harvard. Instead, he asks students difficult questions, based on their homework reading, that require them to pull together sources of information to solve a problem. Mazur doesn’t give them the answer; instead, he asks the students to break off into small groups and discuss the problem among themselves. Eventually, nearly everyone in the class gets the answer right, and the concepts stick with them because they had to reason their own way to the answer.

It is thus a very useless commonplace to assert that a religion is necessary for the masses, because all political, divine, and social creeds only take root among them on the condition of always assuming the religious shape -- a shape which obviates the danger of discussion. Were it possible to induce the masses to adopt  atheism, this belief would exhibit all the intolerant ardour of a religious sentiment,  and in its exterior forms would soon become a cult. The evolution of the small  Positivist sect furnishes us a curious proof in point. What happened to the Nihilist  whose story is related by that profound thinker Dostoïewsky has quickly  happened to the Positivists. Illumined one day by the light of reason he broke the images of divinities and saints that adorned the altar of a chapel, extinguished the  candles, and, without losing a moment, replaced the destroyed objects by the works of atheistic philosophers such as Büchner and Moleschott, after which he piously relighted the candles. The object of his religious beliefs had been transformed, but can it be truthfully said that his religious sentiments had changed?

I still experience this chill today when a song or chant touches some place inside my body that my mind cannot name... Harmony, like the chill, reveals itself. We need a body in which it can be revealed. Harmony is seen, heard, and felt with the body. It resides in the body and it is only through the body that we experience harmony. Thus, harmony may be seen as an expression of the body, of nature. It expresses itself without our doing. We have nothing to do with the fragrance of harmony... Given this, we need not insist that discussions of race, sexuality, and gender adversely affect the appearance of harmony or cause it to disappear. The notion that acknowledging lived experience is misaligned with spirituality is something we've made up in our minds, and not the natural reality of things. We must study the self in order to discover harmony in our own lives. We must listen to the earth right under our feet no matter what. We must constantly be attuned to the unfolding of life as it presents the multitude of variations in which harmony manifests in nature as oneness... If we carry awareness of the body as our inheritance of nature, as tender as a maple leaf or a small hummingbird, then the experience of complete tenderness can rise and swell within our ever-evolving relative reality.

You wished to discuss something before you depart?” “Yes, regarding the estate, I’ve come to some conclusions--” “I do hope--” she began, and broke off. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to--” “Go on.” Kathleen dropped her gaze to her clenched hands as she spoke. “My lord, if you decide to dismiss any of the servants…or indeed all of them…I hope you take into account that some have served the Ravenels for their entire lives. Perhaps you might consider giving small parting sums to the oldest ones who have little hope of securing other employment.” “I’ll bear it in mind.” She could feel him looking at her, his gaze as tangible as the heat of sunlight. The mahogany bracket clock on the mantel measured out the silence with delicate ticks. His voice was soft. “You’re nervous with me.” “After yesterday--” She broke off and swallowed hard, and nodded. “No one but the two of us will ever know about that.” Even if Kathleen chose to believe him, it didn’t set her at ease. The memory was an unwanted bond with him. He had seen her at her weakest, her lowest, and she would have preferred him to be mocking rather than treat her with gentleness. She forced herself to meet his gaze as she admitted with vexed honesty, “It’s easier to think of you as an adversary.” Devon smiled faintly. “That puts us in an awkward situation, then, as I’ve decided against selling the estate.

When was the last time you made something that someone wasn’t paying you for, and looking over your shoulder to make sure you got it right?” When I ask creatives this question, the answer that comes back all too often is, “I can’t remember.” It’s so easy for creativity to become a means to a very practical end—earning a paycheck and pleasing your client or manager. But that type of work only uses a small spectrum of your abilities. To truly excel, you must also continue to create for the most important audience of all: yourself. In her book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron discusses a now well-known practice that she calls “morning pages.” She suggests writing three pages of free-flowing thought first thing in the morning as a way to explore latent ideas, break through the voice of the censor in your head, and get your creative juices flowing. While there is nothing immediately practical or efficient about the exercise, Cameron argues that it’s been the key to unlocking brilliant insights for the many people who have adopted it as a ritual. I’ve seen similar benefits of this kind of “Unnecessary Creation” in the lives of creative professionals across the board. From gardening to painting with watercolors to chipping away at the next great American novel on your weekends, something about engaging in the creative act on our own terms seems to unleash latent passions and insights. I believe Unnecessary Creation is essential for anyone who works with his or her mind.

Back home, Chris struggled to readjust, physically and mentally. He also faced another decision-reenlist, or leave the Navy and start a new life in the civilian world. This time, he seemed to be leaning toward getting out-he'd been discussing other jobs and had already talked to people about what he might do next. It was his decision, one way or another. But if I’d been resigned to his reenlistment last go-around, this time I was far more determined to let him know I thought he should get out. There were two important reasons for him to leave-our children. They really needed to have him around as they grew. And I made that a big part of my argument. But the most urgent reason was Chris himself. I saw what the war was doing to him physically. His body was breaking down with multiple injuries, big and small. There were rings under his eyes even when he had slept. His blood pressure was through the roof. He had to wall himself off more and more. I didn’t think he could survive another deployment. “I’ll support you whatever you decide,” I told him. “I want to be married to you. But the only way I can keep making sense of this is…I need to do the best for the kids and me. If you have to keep doing what is best for you and those you serve, at some point I owe it to myself and those I serve to do the same. For me, that is moving to Oregon.” For me, that meant moving from San Diego to Oregon, where we could live near my folks. That would give our son a grandfather to be close to and model himself after-very important things, in my mind, for a boy. I didn’t harp on the fact that the military was taking its toll. That argument would never persuade Chris. He lived for others, not himself. It didn’t feel like an ultimatum to me. In fact, when he described it that way later on, I was shocked. “It was an ultimatum,” he said. He felt my attitude toward him would change so dramatically that the marriage would be over. There would also be a physical separation that would make it hard to stay together. Even if he wasn’t overseas, he was still likely to be based somewhere other than Oregon. We’d end up having a marriage only in name. I guess looked at one way, it was an ultimatum-us or the Navy. But it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. I asked him if he could stay in and get an assignment overseas where we could all go, but Chris reminded me there was never a guarantee with the military-and noted he wasn’t in it to sit behind a desk. Some men have a heart condition they know will kill them, but they don’t want to go to the doctor; it’s only when their wives tell them to go that they go. It’s a poor metaphor, but I felt that getting out of the Navy was as important for Chris as it was for us. In the end, he opted to leave. Later, when Chris would give advice to guys thinking about leaving the military, he would tell them it would be a difficult decision. He wouldn’t push them one way or the other, but he would be open about his experiences. “There’ll be hard times at first,” he’d admit. “But if that is the thing you decide, those times will pass. And you’ll be able to enjoy things you never could in the service. And some of them will be a lot better. The joy you get from your family will be twice as great as the pleasure you had in the military.” Ultimatum or not, he’d come to realize retiring from the service was a good choice for all of us.

The phone rang. It was a familiar voice. It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do. In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk." O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in. "Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, to do the things we've always talked about." The jocular tone was gone. This was a serious discussion. They digressed into some things they'd "always talked about," especially reforming Medicare and Social Security. For Paul and Alan, the possibility of such bold reinventions bordered on fantasy, but fantasy made real. "We have an extraordinary opportunity," Alan said. Paul noticed that he seemed oddly anxious. "Paul, your presence will be an enormous asset in the creation of sensible policy." Sensible policy. This was akin to prayer from Greenspan. O'Neill, not expecting such conviction from his old friend, said little. After a while, he just thanked Alan. He said he always respected his counsel. He said he was thinking hard about it, and he'd call as soon as he decided what to do. The receiver returned to its cradle. He thought about Greenspan. They were young men together in the capital. Alan stayed, became the most noteworthy Federal Reserve Bank chairman in modern history and, arguably the most powerful public official of the past two decades. O'Neill left, led a corporate army, made a fortune, and learned lessons - about how to think and act, about the importance of outcomes - that you can't ever learn in a government. But, he supposed, he'd missed some things. There were always trade-offs. Talking to Alan reminded him of that. Alan and his wife, Andrea Mitchell, White House correspondent for NBC news, lived a fine life. They weren't wealthy like Paul and Nancy. But Alan led a life of highest purpose, a life guided by inquiry. Paul O'Neill picked up the telephone receiver, punched the keypad. "It's me," he said, always his opening. He started going into the details of his trip to New York from Washington, but he's not much of a phone talker - Nancy knew that - and the small talk trailed off. "I think I'm going to have to do this." She was quiet. "You know what I think," she said. She knew him too well, maybe. How bullheaded he can be, once he decides what's right. How he had loved these last few years as a sovereign, his own man. How badly he was suited to politics, as it was being played. And then there was that other problem: she'd almost always been right about what was best for him. "Whatever, Paul. I'm behind you. If you don't do this, I guess you'll always regret it." But it was clearly about what he wanted, what he needed. Paul thanked her. Though somehow a thank-you didn't seem appropriate. And then he realized she was crying.

July 8, 2013 Review of Bargain with the Devil Author: Gloria Gravitt Moulder My interest in the death of Margaret Mitchell was sparked as a young child growing up in Georgia. I was born in 1953, 4 years after her death. Older relatives, neighbors and friends would sit around discussing her death as I was growing up and with the inquisitive mind of a young child; I found what they were saying interesting enough to listen in. They talked about how the taxi cab driver, Hugh Gravitt, (some of which knew him as this was a small southern town where everyone knew everyone) was not a drinker because of his health and how the newspaper articles had written he was drunk and speeding when it wasn’t true. I overheard many things about how the media was wrong regarding the circumstances of her death. Some speculated she committed suicide; others suspected her husband pushed her in front of the car Mr. Gravitt was driving. All commented that both Margaret and John were drunk and jaywalking across Peachtree Street. I read the book (Gone with the Wind) when I was 13 and went to see the movie in 1969 at the Fox theatre with friends. I cannot relate how this impacted me. I became interested in all I heard as a child again and over the years have read many articles on the subject of Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh. I never believed the stories about Hugh Gravitt being at fault in her death as a result of all those conversations I had overheard by my elders as a child. Gloria Gravitt Moulder, the daughter of Hugh Gravitt, has written the perfect book called “Bargain with the Devil” with facts derived from her own father on his death bed. I could not put this book down; I read it in one day. It has confirmed everything I heard from people who suspected in the few years after Margaret Mitchell’s death what actually happened. Thank you Mrs. Moulder, for your courage in bringing your father’s version to light after all his suffering from 1949 to his death. Also, for confirming my beliefs in what I heard growing up as this was only suspicion until I read about your father’s version. Kathy Whiten 621 Brighton Drive Lawrenceville, GA 30043 404-516-0623

In 1931, amid that incredible transformation, a brilliant young Russian psychologist named Alexander Luria recognized a fleeting “natural experiment,” unique in the history of the world. He wondered if changing citizens’ work might also change their minds. When Luria arrived, the most remote villages had not yet been touched by the warp-speed restructuring of traditional society. Those villages gave him a control group. He learned the local language and brought fellow psychologists to engage villagers in relaxed social situations—teahouses or pastures—and discuss questions or tasks designed to discern their habits of mind. Some were very simple: present skeins of wool or silk in an array of hues and ask participants to describe them. The collective farmers and farm leaders, as well as the female students, easily picked out blue, red, and yellow, sometimes with variations, like dark blue or light yellow. The most remote villagers, who were still “premodern,” gave more diversified descriptions: cotton in bloom, decayed teeth, a lot of water, sky, pistachio. Then they were asked to sort the skeins into groups. The collective farmers, and young people with even a little formal education, did so easily, naturally forming color groups. Even when they did not know the name of a particular color, they had little trouble putting together darker and lighter shades of the same one. The remote villagers, on the other hand, refused, even those whose work was embroidery. “It can’t be done,” they said, or, “None of them are the same, you can’t put them together.” When prodded vigorously, and only if they were allowed to make many small groups, some relented and created sets that were apparently random. A few others appeared to sort the skeins according to color saturation, without regard to the color. Geometric shapes followed suit. The greater the dose of modernity, the more likely an individual grasped the abstract concept of “shapes” and made groups of triangles, rectangles, and circles, even if they had no formal education and did not know the shapes’ names. The remote villagers, meanwhile, saw nothing alike in a square drawn with solid lines and the same exact square drawn with dotted lines. To Alieva, a twenty-six-year-old remote villager, the solid-line square was obviously a map, and the dotted-line square was a watch. “How can a map and a watch be put together?” she asked, incredulous. Khamid, a twenty-four-year-old remote villager, insisted that filled and unfilled circles could not go together because one was a coin and the other a moon.

I’m first up, love,” Arion says as he starts invading my space again. “I thought the only thing holding you back was your fear. Clearly the fear is absent if you’re willing to turn yourself over to the very darkest part of me. It’s amazing you’re in one piece, so clearly you played submissive very well, Violet. It’s because you were ready for me to save you and overcame your fear of me. Now we can be together.” When I say nothing and simply stare at him like he’s forever losing his mind more and more when we speak, he frowns like he’s genuinely perplexed. “Arion, no matter what you did, I couldn’t have endured another second of those cries. And you were at Abby’s mercy while in that state. You ripped my throat out and told me to put on some healing potion so you could sit down and watch the fight.” Apparently, I guess right, because his pupils widen marginally. “I held your hand when you finished,” he says like he’s defending himself. “So you could watch the fight.” “Vance was focused. It’s been ages since he focused. Thing of beauty while it happens,” he says as if that’s important information. I gesture between us. “That’s sort of the problem. I feel like the conduit for your feelings for them because you have heterosexual body parts with a homosexual mentality. I’m not sure I’m okay with simply being a conduit,” I carefully explain, causing his eyes to widen a little more, as several muffled sounds of amusement spring from somewhere else in the room. “I’m sorry, love, but you’ve really lost me,” Arion says very seriously, brow crinkling. “You want this to be a thing between you and me, even though Idun is returning, because you want them back. It looks like you’re getting that without me, so we can be friends,” I suggest, completely rambling. I don’t think I’m explaining this very well, since they’re all muffling laughter down the hall. Even Vance makes a choked sound of amusement. Or they’re just really immature about these things… That’s definitely possible. Arion scrubs a hand over his face, as someone struggles to cover a surprise laugh with a cough. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be having this conversation right now. It’s inappropriate to do with an audience,” I babble. “But you’re really intense. And I’ve just survived an apocalyptic wolf storm with your mostly naked beta, whose threads are still in my bra because one set of clothes ended up being enough.” The look of frustrated confusion on his face doubles. “I could use a small break before we discuss curses, some really confusing relationship statuses, and the somewhat terrifying woman you’ve all loved rising very soon. And those wolves stole my oranges, so I need to go back and get all of them.” “I’ve already returned them to your cellar,” Emit says from somewhere behind Arion. “Then I need to go start using them while they’re useable,” I say as I quickly disentangle myself from Arion and attempt to escape. “I’ll return the shirt.” “Keep it,” he says quietly from behind me, as I finally take in the other three all standing somewhat close together, smirking at me. “I’ll drive you home,” Damien says with a slow grin. “I’m not talking to you, and if you’re a smart man, you’ll figure out why,” I state firmly. “Only when you figure it out will we discuss it.” “I’ll take you—” “I don’t want to talk to you right now, because I need to get my cool back,” I tell Emit, whose eyes immediately flick away, as his jaw tics. He’s had multiple opportunities to explain to me why he told Damien I was a monster, and yet didn’t even bother telling me what I was. All this time, I’ve been patiently waiting, refusing to get too angry. Now…I’m getting sort of freaking angry, because he still hasn’t said one word about it. “Guess that just leaves me,” Vance says as he puts his hand at the small of my back and starts guiding me out.

Great minds discuss ideas, average mind discuss events and small mind discuss people.

Maybe it was the aftermath of a dream that he couldn’t remember – so he told me – but Theophilus Baxter woke up one morning in the middle of October 1658, with an unpleasant sensation of trouble. The second session of the General Court of Sagadac Bay would begin its final meeting later in the day. Although the discussions had been uproarious, Theophilus believed that his presentiment related to matters beyond the court’s jurisdiction He shook his head vigorously and walked barefoot across the cold floor to a water basin on a small table in the corner. A splash of water on his face drove away tiny fragments of sleep. While still in his nightshirt, he took his leather-bound Bible – one Elizabeth gave when they were married – from its shelf next to the door and brought it to the edge of his bed, where he sat down to say a short prayer and to read a passage from Paul’s writings. He then dressed and went down the narrow pine stairs to the kitchen, where Elizabeth was setting the table for breakfast. During a pause in their talk about the needs of the day, his premonition of eventfulness returned. Elizabeth noticed the look in his eyes, a look of happiness cut short. (You’ll find scholarly summaries of our controversy in other places. I want to tell the personal side now, so I’ll add and subtract, embroider and elaborate. I’ll invent conversations. Some will complain about the liberties I’m taking, but our colony, an experiment in living, invites adventures that work to create understanding.) “What is it now?” Elizabeth brought a tray of biscuits from the hearth to the table. “We’ve had too much talk lately about God and the Bible,” Theophilus said. “I don’t understand much of the chatter, and I doubt anyone else does either. It’s bad for the country. I had a dream last night about Lydia Bowstreet.” “What would you want to dream about that troublemaker for?” “Things stick in our minds sometimes in the strangest way.

Never underestimate the audacity of the small minded and slightly crapulous. A rather bleezed young neighbour decided to have a grammar battle with me. It lasted all of two seconds. I said something slightly amicable, and he responded with, “You sure that's how you use that word?” I put down my laundry basket and turned to him slowly and deliberately. “Do you really want to have this discussion with me, son, or do you want to go home and rethink your life?” He grumbled and vanished.

And then you compounded your attractions by keeping my lazy cousin on the hop for days.” He indicated Shevraeth with an airy wave of the hand. Those memories effectively banished my mirth. For it wasn’t just Galdran’s bullying cousin Baron Debegri who had chased me halfway across the kingdom after my escape from Athanarel. Shevraeth had been there as well. I felt my shoulders tighten against the old embarrassment, but I tried not to show it, responding as lightly as I could. “On the contrary, it was he who kept me on the hop for days. Very long days,” I said. And because the subject had been broached and I was already embarrassed, I risked a quick look at the Marquis and asked, “When you said to search the houses. In the lake town. Did you know I was inside one?” He hesitated, looking across at Savona, who merely grinned at us both. Then Shevraeth said somewhat drily, “I…had a sense of it.” “And outside Thoresk. When you and Debegri rode by. You looked right at me. Did you know that was me?” “Will it make you very angry if I admit that I did? But the timing seemed inopportune for us to, ah, reacquaint ourselves.” All this was said with his customary drawl. But I had a feeling he was bracing for attack. I sighed. “I’m not angry. I know now that you weren’t trying to get me killed, but to keep me from getting killed by Debegri and Galdran’s people. Except--well, never mind. The whole thing is stupid.” “Come then,” Savona said immediately. “Forgive me for straying into memories you’d rather leave behind, and let us instead discuss tonight’s prospective delights.” He continued with a stream of small talk about the latest entertainments--all easy, unexceptionable conversation. Slowly I relaxed, though I never dared look at Shevraeth again.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

This is her tenth pregnancy. Hasn’t she learnt anything? There are reports warning of random population growth. Random – that’s the word I’ve been looking for for ages. We’re living in a random world. We’re multiplying and our children stand naked. Sources of inspiration for film-makers, or for discussion around the table at the G8. We are small people but they can’t live without us. For our sake some buildings have fallen down and some railway stations have been blown up. Iron is liable to rust. For our sake there are plenty of picture messages. We are actors who don’t get paid. Our role is to stand as naked as when our mothers gave birth to us, as when the Earth gave birth to us, as the news bulletins gave birth to us, and the multi-page reports, and the villages that border on settlements, and the keys my grandfather carries. My poor grandfather, he didn’t know that the locks had changed. My grandfather, may the doors that open with digital cards curse you and may the sewage water that runs past your grave curse you. May the sky curse you, and not rain. Never mind, your bones can’t grow from under the soil, so the soil is the reason we don’t grow again.

so thoughtful.” Besides reshaping how you see the world, you might make someone’s day. •Keep a gratitude journal. Every night, write three things you’re grateful for. (By the way, researchers have also found that people who regularly write down what they’re grateful for are 25 percent happier.)15 You can also have a nightly family discussion about what happened that day that you’re thankful for. •Perform a daily act of kindness. When you perform a kind act every day, you’ll start noticing other opportunities to be kind, creating a cycle of positivity in your mind. Think small—a thank-you note or letting someone cut in front of you in traffic. (Yet another way to make yourself and someone else happier.)16 •Be mindful of who and what you expose yourself to. Who you spend time with and what you watch, listen to and read all send messages to your brain that influence how you see the world.

If these yearnings seem overpowering, we can suggest a couple of defensive strategies. The first is to use the postponed-pleasure ploy: Tell yourself that you can have a small sweet dessert later if you still want it. (We’ll discuss this ploy later, too.) Meanwhile, eat something else. Remember, your body is craving energy because it has used up some of its supply with self-control. The body feels a desire for sweet foods, but that is only because that is a familiar and effective way to restore energy. Healthy foods will also provide the energy it needs. It’s not what’s on your mind, but it should do the trick.

Several years ago I visited a church in a nearby city. The pastor was known as a godly man and a prayer warrior. As we spoke about life in general, he said, “We’re not supposed to enjoy life, are we?” To him it was a rhetorical question; unfortunately most Christians hold this same view. They believe in Christ; He is their savior. They love Him with all their heart. Their future home is in heaven, they attend church each Sunday and most mid- week services. They endeavor to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They witness to friends and family, yet to them, life is something to endure. They are like the small orphan boy adopted by a well-to-do family from a poor orphanage. The child reveled in the luxury of his own room. Sleeping in such a wonderful bed was a dream come true. He awoke the next morning to the sun streaming in his open window. The songs of birds welcomed him to a beautiful summer day. As he came down to breakfast, he saw a place was set for him at the large table in the dining room. Fine china and silverware gleamed in the light of the expensive chandelier. At his plate set a large glass of milk filled to the brim. At the orphanage each child would drink from the glass only so far, then pass it on. This continued until the glass was empty. The glass was then refilled and passed to the next child. With big eyes the little child looked at his new mother. “Please, ma’am, how deeply may I drink?” With tears in her eyes, his mother said “Drink it all son, it’s all for you.” I believe God has given us the cup of life filled to the brim and overflowing. God says, “Drink it all, my child, it’s all for you.” Many Christians believe life is drudgery. Therefore they miss the real pleasures God has intended for His children. His word promises us abundant life. Albert Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” We can choose to view everything as a miracle from God. Will there be sorrows? Of course. Will we suffer difficult setbacks? Undoubtedly. Are there enemies of Christians and the Lord? Surely. Does this mean God has changed His mind or abandoned us? No. In this book we will discuss ways of enjoying living on God’s blessings. You can indeed “live life to the fullest.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people,

I think Jesus would agree with the maxim, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Meeting and Greeting 1. Use eye contact and smiling as your first contact with others. In doing so, you can scout out the friendly, approachable strangers in the room and feel immediately more at ease. 2. Be the first to say hello. Stay calm if you are left alone to mingle—large parties, forgetful hosts, and friendly guests make this situation inevitable. 3. Introduce yourself to others. Offer your hand and say: “Hello. My name is . . .” 4. As you shake hands, repeat the person’s name. “Nice to meet you, Jack.” This will help imprint the name in your own mind. 5. Make an extra effort to remember names and use them in conversation: “Don’t you agree, Jim?” This makes people feel special. 6. Go out of your way to meet new people. They may feel as out of place as you do: “Hi, I don’t believe we’ve met yet, I’m . . . “ or “I don’t know a soul.” 7. Ask neutral questions that are easy to answer to convey the message that you’d like to get to know this person better. 8. Be prepared to say something interesting about what you do—but in small doses. No one wants to hear you talk exclusively about yourself. 9. Communicate a sense of enthusiasm about the event at hand or life in general. Focus on the positive. 10. Look for passing comments that could open up a whole topic of conversation. “The New York subways were a real experience for this country boy” could lead to a discussion of childhood on the farm, adjusting to city life, public transportation. . . . Clothes, jewelry, and accessories also make excellent conversation pieces. It’s up to you to take the conversational ball and run with it, but be sure to pass it back to your teammate from time to time.

The argument is that we are influenced by historical research.” Michael Simpson glanced over at Sophie before continuing. “When one commences an education, to become say a physicist or a chemist in today’s society, one is automatically loaded up with all the accumulated knowledge of what is wrong and what is right. Many of the scientists thus have a very similar line of attack for new problems. And this colours our scientific progress. We advance, but only in small steps. True progress most often is made when some individual looks at a problem from a totally new angle, and that is hard when everybody has been through the same basic foundations. Take Albert Einstein. The revolutionary ideas he came up with weren’t the result of discussions with equal minded academics in the university hall. They were a result of Albert Einstein’s relentless pondering and single minded focus on theoretical abstractions, alone in a small crummy patent office in Switzerland, back in 1905. If Einstein at an early stage had discussed his ideas with colleagues at a university, there is a real danger he would have been set forth on a different line of thinking, and quite possibly we wouldn’t have the theory of relativity in the form we have it today.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” I

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

She shielded her eyes from the sun, her truck keys dangling down the back of her free hand, as Cooper lowered the passenger window and leaned forward so he could see her. “G’day, Starfish. Need a lift?” She needed a lot of things. Hot coffee, sisters who weren’t nosy, a clear vision about what should be next on her life agenda. Being inside a small, sporty vehicle, trapped mere inches from Cooper Jax, even for the short ride down to Half Moon Harbor? That she definitely did not need. “I’m good, thanks. And can we retire the nickname? Please?” He’d begun calling her that after she’d regaled him with a steady string of childhood stories of life lived by the sea, and he’d commented that she seemed too big a fish for such a small pond. A starfish, as it were. She’d rolled her eyes at the very bad pun, but the nickname had stuck. Aussies were big on nicknames. And the honest truth of it was, she hadn’t minded hearing him call her that, even though it had been a joke, delivered as a ribbing, not an endearment. Now? Now she wasn’t sure how he meant it, or what it made her feel when he said it. Better to just bury it right, Ker? Like you do everything that makes you uncomfortable. She really needed to find a way to strangle her little voice. “I’ve got a meeting,” she went on, not giving him a chance to respond. He nodded to the basket in her arms. “Yes, I can see that. Demanding lot, laundry.” She glanced down, then back at him. “No, with my sisters. About Fiona’s wedding.” “Yes, I heard about it.” She didn’t ask how he could possible know that, or who he’d been talking to this time, because any person in town could have brought him up to speed on the goings-on about pretty much any person he wanted to know about. The downside to being home. One of the great things about being a wanderer was that folks only knew whatever parts of her story she opted to share with them. Cooper, she realized now, had already known more than pretty much anyone she’d met in her travels up to that point. God only knows what he’d learned in the twenty-four hours he’d been in the Cove. She didn’t want to examine how that made her feel either. “Three McCrae weddings in less than a year,” he commented, as if casually discussing the weather. Then he grinned. “Is it catching?

BC) “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people” Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962)

With a historian’s eye, Archibald Gracie attempted to separate truth from fantasy as he listened to the survivors’ stories, a potential book beginning to form in his mind. Second Officer Lightoller and Third Officer Pitman regularly stopped by the small cabin Gracie shared with Hugh Woolner to discuss various aspects of the disaster. All agreed that the explosions heard during the sinking could not have been the ship’s boilers blowing up. From the discovery of the severed wreck in 1985 we now know that the “explosions” were actually the sound of the ship being wrenched apart. But Gracie and Lightoller firmly believed that the ship had sunk intact—a view that would become the prevailing opinion for the next seventy-three years. Gracie thought that Norris Williams and Jack Thayer, “the two young men cited as authority … of the break-in-two theory,” had confused the falling funnel for the ship breaking apart. But both Williams and Thayer knew exactly what they had seen, as did some other eyewitnesses. On the Carpathia, Jack Thayer described the stages of the ship’s sinking and breaking apart to Lewis Skidmore, a Brooklyn art teacher, who drew sketches that were later featured in many newspapers. The inaccuracies in Skidmore’s drawings, however, only bolstered the belief that the ship had, in fact, sunk intact. And what of the most famous Titanic legend of all—that the band played “Nearer My God to Thee” as the ship neared its end? It’s often claimed that this was a myth that took hold among survivors on the Carpathia and captivated the public in the aftermath of the disaster. None of the musicians survived to confirm or deny the story, but Harold Bride noted that the last tune he heard being played as he left the wireless cabin was “Autumn.” For a time this was believed to be a hymn tune by that name, but Walter Lord proposed in The Night Lives On that Bride must have been referring to “Songe d’Automne,” a popular waltz by Archibald Joyce that is listed in White Star music booklets of the period. Historian George Behe, however, has carefully studied the survivor accounts regarding the music that was heard during the sinking and has found credible evidence that “Nearer My God to Thee” and perhaps other hymns were played toward the end. Behe also recounts that the orchestra’s leader, Wallace Hartley, was once asked by a friend what he would do if he ever found himself on a sinking ship. Hartley replied, “I don’t think I could do better than play ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’ or ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ ” The legendary hymn may not have been the very last tune played on the Titanic but it seems possible that it was heard on the sloping deck that night.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Never before has so much power been concentrated into the hands of such a few number of people, who literally can decide what countries live or die on a minute by minute basis. Never before has all the world’s wealth been subject to the decisions of such a small clique of individuals, who can, as we said earlier, completely alter the economic, sociological, and legislative landscape of entire nations as if with the wave of a magic wand. And if this situation weren’t bad enough, what makes it worse is the fact that the mental condition of this clique is such that makes the whole situation a ticking time bomb. It’s true, on it’s face, that such a threat from such a statistically small number of people makes no sense, except when considering what possibilities exist when this small number of people have the ear of the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. And, if these people can literally make the president dance on strings like a puppet, (as has obviously been the case with every American president since Lyndon Johnson) then it becomes apparent how such machinery can be made to operate. We are talking about an unprecedented concentration of the world’s power in the hands of a few individuals who are, by any standards that can be used to measure, criminally insane. They possess 90% of the world’s wealth, control the political machinery of the world’s most powerful nations, control the informational infrastructure of these nations, and are imbued with the mindset that they have a right to possess all of this by virtue of: A: Their superiority, and by B. The inferiority of the rest of the world’s inhabitants. This situation does not paint a pretty picture, even to the most shallow-minded of thinkers. When it is reduced to its irreducible minimum, the program under which such individuals have deluded themselves is that it is impossible that evil in any form may emanate from the Jewish quarter, and, conversely, that the only evil that can exist is that which works against the Jewish agenda. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the sentiments of such individuals can be turned on like a light switch in defending the agenda of their masters, sentiments completely disconnected with any true intellectual processes and which vary between loyalty for the hand that feeds them and fear of the hand that can grab them by the throat. And thus it is in this manner therefore that we must view the intellectual parrying that takes place by today’s skeptics as but a magic act, and particularly so when the other side of the coin is discussed.

With these issues in mind, Dan has a unique way of tying exams into the learning process. After attending a workshop run by the Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman, he was converted to the idea of two-stage exams. The first stage of the exam is the same as any other. The second stage brings the students together in groups of four, and gives them all a subset of the questions they just answered in the first stage. The students are encouraged to discuss their answers in their groups, and they all submit a second version. Groups who manage to improve upon the students’ individual scores get a small boost in the final outcome.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Horseman is the haunting sequel to the 1820 novel The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and takes place two decades after the events that unfolded in the original. We are introduced to 14-year-old trans boy Bente “Ben” Van Brunt, who has been raised by his idiosyncratic grandparents - lively Brom “Bones” Van Brunt and prim Kristina Van Tassel - in the small town of Sleepy Hollow, New York, where gossip and rumour run rife and people are exceedingly closed-minded. He has lived with them on their farm ever since he was orphaned when his parents, Bendix and Fenna, died in suspicious and enigmatic circumstances. Ben and his only friend, Sander, head into the woodland one Autumn day to play a game known as Sleepy Hollow Boys, but they are both a little startled when they witness a group of men they recognise from the village discussing the headless, handless body of a local boy that has just been found. But this isn't the end; it is only the beginning. From that moment on, Ben feels an otherworldly presence following him wherever he ventures, and one day while scanning his grandfather’s fields he catches a fleeting glimpse of a weird creature seemingly sucking blood from a victim. An evil of an altogether different nature. But Ben knows this is not the elusive Horseman who has been the primary focus of folkloric tales in the area for many years because he can both feel and hear his presence. However, unlike others who fear the Headless Horseman, Ben can hear whispers in the woods at the end of a forbidden path, and he has visions of the Horseman who says he is there to protect him. Ben soon discovers connections between the recent murders and the death of his parents and realises he has been shaded from the truth about them his whole life. Thus begins a journey to unravel the mystery and establish his identity in the process. This is an enthralling and compulsively readable piece of horror fiction building on Irvings’ solid ground. Evoking such feelings as horror, terror, dread and claustrophobic oppressiveness, this tale invites you to immerse yourself in its sinister, creepy and disturbing narrative. The staggering beauty of the remote village location is juxtaposed with the darkness of the demons and devilish spirits that lurk there, and the village residents aren't exactly welcoming to outsiders or accepting of anyone different from their norm. What I love the most is that it is subtle and full of nuance, instead of the usual cheap thrills with which the genre is often pervaded, meaning the feeling of sheer panic creeps up on you when you least expect, and you come to the sudden realisation that the story has managed to get under your skin, into your psyche and even into your dreams (or should that be nightmares?) Published at a time when the nights are closing in and the light diminishes ever more rapidly, not to mention with Halloween around the corner, this is the perfect autumnal read for the spooky season full of both supernatural and real-world horrors. It begins innocuously enough to lull you into a false sense of security but soon becomes bleak and hauntingly atmospheric as well as frightening before descending into true nightmare-inducing territory. A chilling and eerie romp, and a story full of superstition, secrets, folklore and old wives’ tales and with messages about love, loss, belonging, family, grief, being unapologetically you and becoming more accepting and tolerant of those who are different. Highly recommended.

As sometimes happened following a visit to Kent, the city had a chill to it that went beyond a sense of the air outside. Though Maisie loved her flat in Pimlico, there was a warmth to her father's cottage, to being at Chelstone, that made her feel cocooned and safe. And she felt wanted. That flat was hers to do with as she wished, and to do exactly as she pleased within those walls, but sometimes she felt it still held within it the stark just-moved-in feeling that signaled the difference between a house and a home. Of course, it still was not fully furnished, and there were no ornaments displayed - a vase, perhaps, that a visitor might comment upon and the hostess would say, "Oh, that was a gift, let me tell you about it..." There were no stories attached to the flat - but how could there be, when she was always alone in her home. There were no family photographs, no small framed portraits on the mantelpiece over the fire in the sitting room as there were at her father's house. She thought the flat would be all the better for some photographs, not only to serve as reminders of those who were loved, or reflections of happy times spent in company, but to act as mirrors, where she might see the affection with which she was held by those dear to her. A mirror in which she could see her connections. ... Most of the time, thought, she was not lonely, just on her own, an unmarried woman of independent means, even when the extent of the means - or lack thereof - sometimes gave her cause to remain awake at night. She knew the worries that came to the fore at night were the ones you had to pay attention to, for they blurred reasoned thought, sucked clarity from any consideration of one's situation, and could lead a mind around in circles, leaving one drained and ill-tempered. And if there was no one close with whom to discuss those concerns, they grew in importance in the imagination, whether were rooted in good sense or not. ... She wondered if one could take leave of one's senses, even if one had no previous occasions of mental incapacity, simply by being isolated from others. Is that what pushed the man over the edge of all measured thought? Were his thoughts so distilled, without the calibrating effect of a normal life led among others, that he ceased to recognize the distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil, or between having a voice and losing it? And if that were so, might an ordinary woman living alone with her memories, with her work, with the walls of her flat drawing in upon her, be at some risk of not seeing the world as it is?

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people.

Then he'd received the call from Eagle's Nest and his brain had seized the idea, as if someone had thrown him a lifeline. A small town where everyone knew everyone else. A town where people looked out for their neighbors and didn't set their significant others on fire. It became a beacon of change in his mind. A city where he wouldn't deal with gangs or excessive homelessness. A town where he could be a person, not a uniform, who helped. "Shitty people are everywhere," the psychiatrist had told Truman when they'd discussed his job offer. "Small towns, big cities, African villages. You can't run away from it.

The Buddha told his disciples the following fable: “Once upon a time, a clever king invited several people blind from birth to visit the palace. He brought out an elephant and asked them to touch it and then describe what the elephant was like. The blind man who rubbed its legs said that the elephant was like the pillars of a house. The man who stroked its tail said the elephant was like a feather duster. The person who touched its ears said it was like a winnowing basket, and the man who touched its stomach said it was like a round barrel. The person who rubbed its head said the elephant was like a large earthenware jar, and the person who touched its tusk said the elephant was like a stick. When they sat down to discuss what the elephant was like, no one could agree with anyone else, and a very heated argument arose. “Bhikkhus, what you see and hear comprises only a small part of reality. If you take it to be the whole of reality, you will end up having a distorted picture. A person on the path must keep a humble, open heart, acknowledging that his understanding is incomplete. We should devote constant effort to study more deeply in order to make progress on the path. A follower of the Way must remain open-minded, understanding that attachment to present views as if they were absolute truth will only prevent us from realizing the truth. Humility and open-mindedness are the two conditions necessary for making progress on the path.

The critics discuss Baron Bodissey’s Life: A monumental work if you like monuments … One is irresistibly put in mind of the Laocoön group, with the good baron contorted against the coils of common sense, and the more earnest of his readers likewise endeavoring to disengage themselves. — Pancretic Review, St. Stephen, Boniface Ponderously the great machine ingests its bales of lore; grinding, groaning, shuddering, it brings forth its product: small puffs of acrid vari-colored vapor. — Excalibur,, Patris, Krokinole Six volumes of rhodomontade and piffle. — Academia, London, Earth — Egregious, ranting, boorish, unacceptable — — The Rigellian, Avente, Alphanor — Sneers jealously at the careers of better men … Impossible not to feel honest anger. — Galactic Quarterly, Baltimore, Earth — Tempting to picture Baron Bodissey at work in the Arcadian habitat he promulgates, surrounded by admiring goat-herds. — El Orchide, Serle, Quantique

recalled a quote I picked up somewhere: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

From Introduction to The Demon Princes, by Caril Carphen (Elucidarian Press, New Wexford, Aloysius, Vega): It may well be asked how, from so many thieves, kidnappers, pirates, slavers and assassins within and beyond the Pale, one can isolate five individuals and identify them as ‘Demon Princes’. The author, while conceding to a certain degree of arbitrariness, can nevertheless in good conscience define the criteria which in his mind establish the Five as arch-fiends and overlords of evil. First: the Demon Princes are typified by grandeur. Consider the manner in which Kokor Hekkus gained his cognomen ‘The Killing Machine’, or Attel Malagate’s ‘plantation’ on Grabhorne Planet (a civilization of his own definition), or Lens Larque’s astounding monument to himself, or Viole Falushe’s Palace of Love. Certainly these are not the works of ordinary men, nor the results of ordinary vices (though Viole Falushe is said to be physically vain and in certain exploits of Kokor Hekkus there is the quaintly horrid quality of a small boy’s experiments with an insect). Secondly: these men are constructive geniuses, motivated not by malice, perversity, greed, or misanthropy, but by violent inner purposes, which are for the most part shrouded and obscure. Why does Howard Alan Treesong glory in chaos? What are the goals of the inscrutable Attel Malagate, or that fascinating flamboyant Kokor Hekkus? Thirdly: each of the Demon Princes is a mystery; each insists on anonymity and facelessness. Even to close associates these men are unknown; each is friendless, loveless (we can safely discount the self-indulgences of the sybaritical Viole Falushe). Fourthly: and obverse to the above, is a quality best to be described as absolute pride, absolute self-sufficiency. Each considers the relationship between himself and the balance of humanity as no more than a confrontation of equals. Fifthly: and ample in itself, I cite the historic conclave of 1500 at Smade’s Tavern (to be discussed in Chapter One) where the five acknowledged themselves, grudgingly perhaps, as peers, and defined their various areas of interest. Ipsi dixerunt!

From the standpoint of physics, I had merely introduced into my brain a small collection of foreign particles. But that change was enough to eliminate the familiar impression that I freely control the activities playing out in my mind. While the reductionist-level template remained in full force (particles governed by physical laws), the human-level template (a reliable mind endowed with free will navigating through a stable reality) was upended. Of course, I am not presenting a mind-altering moment as an argument for or against free will. But the experience made visceral an understanding that would otherwise have remained abstract. Our sense of who we are, the capacities we have, and the freedom of will we seemingly exert all emerge from the particles moving through our heads. Fiddle with the particles, and those familiar qualities can fall away. It’s an experience that helped align my rational grasp of the physics with my intuitive sense of the mind. Everyday experience and everyday language are filled with references, implicit and explicit, to free will. We speak of making choices and coming to decisions. We speak of actions that depend on those decisions. We speak of the implications that these actions have on our lives and the lives of those we touch. Again, our discussion of free will does not imply that these descriptions are meaningless or need to be eliminated. These descriptions are told in the language appropriate to the human-level story. We do make choices. We do come to decisions. We do undertake actions. And those actions do have implications. All of this is real. But because the human-level story must be compatible with the reductionist account, we need to refine our language and assumptions. We need to set aside the notion that our choices and decisions and actions have their ultimate origin within each of us, that they are brought into being by our independent agencies, that they emerge from deliberations that stand beyond the reach of physical law. We need to recognize that although the sensation of free will is real, the capacity to exert free will—the capacity for the human mind to transcend the laws that control physical progression—is not. If we reinterpret “free will” to mean this sensation, then our human-level stories become compatible with the reductionist account. And together with the shift in emphasis from ultimate origin to liberated behavior, we can embrace an unassailable and far-reaching variety of human freedom.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people”-Eleanor Roosevelt

Wishes Mindfulness is nevermore a good thing, as any other accident-prone fumbler would accept. No one wants a floodlight when they're likely to stumble on their face. Moreover, I would extremely pointedly be asked- well, ordered really-that no one gave me any presents this year. It seemed like Mr. Anderson and Ayanna weren't the only ones who had decided to overlook that. I would have never had much wealth, furthermore, that had never more disturbed me. Ayanna had raised me on a kindergarten teacher's wage. Mr. Anderson wasn't getting rich at his job, either; he was the police chief here in the tiny town of Pittsburgh. My only personal revenue came from the four days a week I worked at the local Goodwill store. In a borough this small, I was blessed to have a career, after all the viruses in the world today having everything shut down. Every cent I gained went into my diminutive university endowment at SNHU online. (College transpired like nothing more than a Plan B. I was still dreaming for Plan A; however, Marcel was just so unreasonable about leaving me, mortal.) Marcel ought to have a lot of funds I didn't even want to think about how much. Cash was involved alongside oblivion to Marcel or the rest of the Barns, like Karly saying she never had anything yet walked away with it all. It was just something that swelled when you had extensive time on your hands and a sister who had an uncanny ability to predict trends in the stock market. Marcel didn't seem to explain why I objected to him spending bills on me, why it made me miserable if he brought me to an overpriced establishment in Los Angeles, why he wasn't allowed to buy me a car that could reach speeds over fifty miles an hour, approximately how? I wouldn't let him pay my university tuition (he was ridiculously enthusiastic about Plan B.) Marcel believed I was being gratuitously difficult. Although, how could I let him give me things when I had nothing to retaliate amidst? He, for some amazing incomprehensible understanding, wanted to be with me. Anything he gave me on top of that just propelled us more out of balance. As the day went on, neither Marcel nor Olivia brought my birthday up again, and I began to relax a little. Then we sat at our usual table for lunch. An unfamiliar kind of break survived at that table. The three of us, Marcel, Olivia, including myself hunkered down on the steep southerly end of the table. Now that is ‘superb’ and scarier (in Emmah's case, unquestionably.) The Natalie siblings had finished. We were gazing at them; they're so odd, Olivia and Marcel arranged not to seem quite so intimidating, and we did not sit here alone. My other compatriots, Lance, and Mikaela (who were in the uncomfortable post-breakup association phase,) Mollie and Sam (whose involvement had endured the summertime...) Tim, Kaylah, Skylar, and Sophie (though that last one didn't count in the friend category.) Completely assembled at the same table, on the other side of an interchangeable line. That line softened on sunshiny days when Marcel and Olivia continuously skipped school times before there was Karly, and then the discussion would swell out effortlessly to incorporate me.

Remember that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people.

Later, the chief character seemed to himself to be standing in a corner of a walled garden beside the hospital of two storeys, except that the plants and the pathways were those that he had seen whenever he had visited as a child the stone house where his father’s unmarried siblings lived with their parents. From beneath a certain bush in an opposite corner of the garden, some or another small creature seemed to be signalling to him. What he saw was a series of tiny flashes, and yet afterwards he used the word winking to describe the sight. He understood, in the way that he seemed to understand certain matters in his dreams, that the creature under the bush was one of a sort of beetle that had infested the garden around the stone house mentioned above. He had learned from his father’s sisters to call the beetles soldier beetles. He admired the beetles’ wing-cases, which were dark-brown with orange-yellow markings, but after he had heard from his aunts that the beetles damaged many of the plants in their garden he killed any beetle that he saw and afterwards earned praise from his aunts when he told them how many he had killed. The beetles were easy to kill, especially the many pairs that moved less nimbly because they were joined rear-to-rear. These he sought out so as to boost his tally. He did not learn until some years later that the joined pairs had been copulating. For as long as he saw the signals that he later described as winking, the chief character understood that the sender of the signals shared with him certain secret knowledge although he, the chief character, could not have said what this knowledge consisted of; for as long as he saw the signals mentioned, the chief character understood also that the sender of the signals was well disposed towards him; and soon after he had first observed the signals, the chief character understood further that the sender of the signals was God—not a symbol of God or a manifestation of God but the almighty being that he, the chief character, had addressed in his prayers during earlier years and had tried often to see in his mind. God was no more and no less than an image of a beetle with orange-yellow markings on a dark-brown wing-case in an image-corner of an image-garden in his, the chief character’s, mind. For as long as he lay in the upper room, the chief character was in a light-hearted mood. Having found himself in the presence of God, the chief character directed towards God the sort of wordless message that he seemed able to send in his dreams. The content of the message was that there should be no hard feelings between God and the chief character. The flashing or winking from the wing-case of the Beetle-god then ceased. The chief character could no longer make out the orange-yellow markings or any other details in the shade beneath the bush. He understood that he had been politely dismissed; that nothing needed to be discussed between God and himself; that he ought to leave God to attend to his own affairs while he, the chief character, went on trying to write poetry or prose fiction.

When Anthony showed me a pyramid that he used in training, with WHAT at the small part at the top, WHY in the middle, and HOW at the bottom, indicating the relative importance of the claim, their reasons, and then their method as topics of discussion, I was reminded of a deep canvassing layer cake. It became clear to me that all these people had independently discovered the principles that work best when it comes to persuasion.

Wow. Please tell me you haven't come up with a way to blame me for what happened that night." Heat flushed across her skin. Suddenly her office was too small, and she leaned back in her chair, which only brought into focus the fact that he was leaning into her. "Sorry, I forgot. Nothing is ever your fault." The smile in his eyes singed away, he straightened up again. "You're serious? You're suggesting that it is somehow my fault that you rage-fucked me? Actually, rage-fucked my thigh." The temperature in the room shot up so fast, Naina thought she was experiencing her first hot flash. Did those happen at thirty-eight? She groaned, because that thought made her feel ancient as she stared into his stupid dewy young face. She was sure her own face had gone some mortified shade. The only good news was that for once Vansh's color rose too, just as fast and fierce. Wait, had he just accused her of rage-fucking his thigh? "You are the world's most infuriating person, you know that?" For a moment Naina thought she might choke on her own incredulousness and the fact that he was not lying. "What kind of person brings that sort of thing up when someone's life's work is at stake?" "I was not the one who brought it up." He mirrored her finger-spinning action and made a circle around her face. "And don't make that face. You didn't say the words but you were thinking them. Never mind. I am actually not here to discuss our night together." "There was no night together." She pressed her hands into her face and tried to breathe into an imaginary bag. If she didn't calm down she was not going to be able to get this conversation back on track, to say nothing of the fact that she was going to pass out from the heat in here. "You were gone before the morning and I am very grateful that you brought me home and helped me when I----" "Got horny." "Threw up." They spoke simultaneously. Because the universe had decided to test how much humiliation it could stuff into one situation. Great, now he was smiling again, and she wanted to shake him even more. "Come on, Naina. Loosen up. It really wasn't that big of a deal." Relief flooded through her. Thank God. Yes, it was not. She was so glad he thought so. "You're right, people drink too much and throw up all the time.

I need to get the *&%! out of here.” Look around. Are you surrounded by a real threat? If yes, please do get out of there quickly. If not—and this is obviously the most probable outcome—stay. Let it come. Decide to no longer let your life be dictated by the panic attacks. From now on, you no longer run from them. The anxiety and panic attacks don’t get to decide when you leave, what experiences you miss, how low or high the quality of your life is. You do! If the panic attack comes, you take it with you. You’ll smother it with so much acceptance and love, it will eventually grow tired of accompanying you! Besides the “whatever happens it’s OK,” it’s also beneficial to say, “Bring it on. I’m going to stay, and I want to see what happens. Let’s find out if it really is as bad as my negative voice wants me to believe.” This is powerful, and I’ve discussed it in detail before. What you’re feeling during a panic attack is already the pinnacle of what anxiety has in store. It cannot get worse; you’re already there. Furthermore, a full-blown panic attack can only last a couple of minutes. The adrenaline you’re feeling will be taken back up by organs like your liver; it will pass! Even if you stay. Do you know what the benefit of leaving is? Why does your anxiety often calm down when you do leave? Once you reach your safe place, you’ll probably think it’s over. You’re saved. As a result, your anxiety will drop. Can you see why? It’s because you told yourself so! You calmed yourself down by telling yourself you’re safe. The physical danger, in that safe place, is as small as it was in the place you were previously in. So why not stay there and calm your mind and body down there, on the spot? It works just as well. And the added benefit is that you won’t have to keep avoiding that location in the future. At first, it will take you five to twenty minutes to calm down, which is a bit more than if you sought out the exit and left. But the long-term consequences are so much better since you communicate to your mind and body that you no longer fear the fear. And that’s always the best choice to make.

start with your mindset The ability to push out of our comfort zone relies on the belief that we can. In Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, psychologist Carol Dweck discusses how our mindset is what allows us to be successful or holds us back. With a fixed mindset, we believe our qualities or capabilities are fixed. When confronted with a challenge, we tend to give up easily. In a growth mindset, however, we believe we can continually grow and see challenges as opportunities to do so. We are open to failure and see it as part of the learning process, allowing us to try, try again until we succeed. Maintain a growth mindset by shifting thoughts of “I can’t” to “I can.

And being part of a book club gives you further intellectual stimulation because the books read are discussed and analyzed by the group.

If we observe Buddha’s teaching, he has addressed this problem in a superb way. If you have to speak always ask yourself ✓Is it true? ✓Is it necessary? ✓Is it kind? First and foremost, avoid talking about others when they are not with you. By doing this we will stop 90% of gossiping. Second, when another person comes to us telling us about a third person then ask them the same 3 questions ✓Is it 100% true? ✓Is it necessary? ✓Is it good or bad? This method is also referred to as triple filter technique. If we pushed these questions to the other person then he/she will not continue the discussion. But one warning is that if we follow this method in the beginning people might not like your way and they may even stop talking to you temporarily and you may become hot topic for discussion. “Once they stop talking to you, they start talking about you”. Let others talk about us; let’s not involve our self in talking negatively about others. Great minds discuss ideas, average mind discuss events and small mind discuss people. At the same time we will start thinking of our great ideas and goals and take action to achieve them.

Great minds discuss ideas, average mind discuss events, and small mind discuss people.

There's a famous line from Eleanor Roosevelt that goes, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Small minds discuss people, average minds discuss things, but great minds discuss ideas?

Tiff’s allowing her kids the luxury of watching television brought to mind a dinner Pete, the kids, and I went to with a few other couples and their kids. We were at a restaurant where the service was friendly but slow, and after five minutes, all of our kids were growing restless. My husband and I reached for our iPhones, because years earlier we’d decided (or at least accepted) that we’d let our children play on screens while they waited for food in restaurants. Another couple, for reasons of civility or table manners or brain development, had a no-screens-at-the-table policy in effect, so instead they reached for the piles of toys they’d carried with them, in big tote bags brimming with markers and Play-Doh and Disney figurines. They poured these nondigital diversions onto the table, turning the place settings into an elevated rec room. Another couple at the table disapproved of both of these choices. They wanted their children to sit nicely and participate in the conversation. Mostly this meant their kids flopped around and played with the saltshakers and kicked each other’s knees. The one childless couple at the table grimaced at all of us. I could see them silently interrogating each other, trying to understand how it was possible that all six of their friends were such ineffectual parents. Everyone was tense and unhappy. Everyone felt watched and judged. Everyone was wondering who was doing it the right way. But worst of all, worse than the atmosphere of guardedness and anxiety, was the fact that no one was acknowledging any of it. This, it turns out, is the most important rule of parenting as a competitive sport: Nobody ever, no matter what, admits to competing. We smile and nod and hold our judgments until we get home from the restaurant. We say things like, “There’s no single right way.” We say these things as we sip our drinks, and only when we get home do we say to our partner or the nearest person who will listen, “What the fuck are they doing with those kids?” Nothing is acknowledged. Nothing is discussed. And on and on the parenting game goes; it’s hard to win while pretending not to play.

That same year [2001], young anthropology professor Cathy Small went undercover as "Rebekah Nathan, undergraduate student" and lived in a first-year form at Northern Arizona University. She was repeating the study of anthropologist Michael Moffatt, who in 1977 had attempted to pass himself off as an undergraduate at Rutgers. Like him, she found virtually no evidence that students derived intellectual benefit from classes. They skipped more frequently than she had expected: in the one large course for which she had solid data, barely half came to class on any given day. The students in her dorm, moreover, almost never discussed academic issues — in class or outside of it. Small's 'most sobering' insight was 'how little intellectual life' mattered to students.

him leap now, bargain and knives forgotten. Fip fluted a farewell, and Blade absently lifted a hand in response, his attention focused on the leashed energy all but vibrating through Ichys. She said nothing while they cleared the maze of stalls and merchants, and still nothing as they made their way through the twisting halls of Whispering Fear’s den. Once they’d reached Ichys’s alcove, she shoved him down on their shared nest of cushions and fabric, and closed them inside. He was fairly sure this meant neither attack, nor that he’d been found out, nor that she’d simply needed to mate, and so he waited, watching the surge of nerves and emotions ripple through her. “The simplest way to join a clan is by being taken as a mate,” she said, pacing in the small space, her eyes fixed on his. “I would hardly call it simple, if done properly,” he demurred, wondering if she was about to ask him something formal. Wondering what he would say if she did. “No jokes.” She waved at him impatiently, paced two more paths through the alcove, then came to a stop and took a breath. “I’m pregnant.” Shock struck, his every claw briefly extended, ears flattened in confusion. He stared back at her for several long moments, not a single thought moving through his usually busy mind. Then he realized the import, and moved, launching across the room, stopping just short of her, and winding his body around hers. “I did it all to secure a life with Whispering Fear,” he said in her ear, taking the buffet of her front leg against his head as his due for such a ridiculous comment. He wanted, more than anything, to tell his dama, and to see Susa’s face brighten in that Human way it had when they had unbearably good news. The inability to do so, to not even discuss Susa with Ichys, made him want to leave the room, find Dirrys, and bury his claws

As she approached the library, she felt her heartbeat quicken uncomfortably. Squaring her shoulders, she crossed the threshold. Devon appeared to be browsing over a row of books, reaching up to straighten a trio of volumes that had fallen sideways. “My lord,” Kathleen said quietly. Devon turned, his gaze finding hers at once. He was stunningly handsome, dressed in a dark suit of clothes that had been tailored in the new looser-fitting fashion, the coat, waistcoat, and trousers all made of matching fabric. The informal cut of the suit did nothing to soften the hard lines of his body. For a moment Kathleen couldn’t help remembering the feel of his arms around her, his solid chest beneath her cheek. Heat swept over her face. Devon bowed, his face inscrutable. He appeared relaxed at first glance, but a closer look revealed faint shadows beneath his eyes, and finespun tension beneath his calm veneer. “I hope you’re well this morning,” he said quietly. Her blush deepened uncomfortably. “Yes, thank you.” She curtsied and wove her fingers together in a stiff knot. “You wished to discuss something before you depart?” “Yes, regarding the estate, I’ve come to some conclusions--” “I do hope--” she began, and broke off. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to--” “Go on.” Kathleen dropped her gaze to her clenched hands as she spoke. “My lord, if you decide to dismiss any of the servants…or indeed all of them…I hope you take into account that some have served the Ravenels for their entire lives. Perhaps you might consider giving small parting sums to the oldest ones who have little hope of securing other employment.” “I’ll bear it in mind.” She could feel him looking at her, his gaze as tangible as the heat of sunlight. The mahogany bracket clock on the mantel measured out the silence with delicate ticks. His voice was soft. “You’re nervous with me.

Remember, great minds discuss ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people. Talking about people involves criticizing, gossiping, or spreading rumours about individuals, often without any constructive purpose or benefit. In contrast, talking about events involves simply recounting what has happened, not necessarily in a way that contributes positively to our lives. On the other hand, focusing on discussing ideas rather than events or people can lead to greater personal and professional success and more meaningful and productive conversations and relationships.

Great minds discuss ideas Average Minds discuss events Small minds discuss people

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.