“
REMEMBER YOUR GREATNESS
Before you were born,
And were still too tiny for
The human eye to see,
You won the race for life
From among 250 million competitors.
And yet,
How fast you have forgotten
Your strength,
When your very existence
Is proof of your greatness.
You were born a winner,
A warrior,
One who defied the odds
By surviving the most gruesome
Battle of them all.
And now that you are a giant,
Why do you even doubt victory
Against smaller numbers,
And wider margins?
The only walls that exist,
Are those you have placed in your mind.
And whatever obstacles you conceive,
Exist only because you have forgotten
What you have already
Achieved.
Poetry by Suzy Kassem
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Take control of your emotions before your emotions take control of you.
”
”
Scott Dye
“
Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,
And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats —
But no longer a terror to mice or to rats.
For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;
Though his name was quite famous, he says, in his time.
And whenever he joins his friends at their club
(which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub)
He loves to regale them, if someone else pays,
With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.
For he once was a Star of the highest degree —
He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree.
And he likes to relate his success on the Halls,
Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.
But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
”
”
T.S. Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats)
“
Following Homo sapiens, domesticated cattle, pigs and sheep are the second, third and fourth most widespread large mammals in the world. From a narrow evolutionary perspective, which measures success by the number of DNA copies, the Agricultural Revolution was a wonderful boon for chickens, cattle, pigs and sheep. Unfortunately, the evolutionary perspective is an incomplete measure of success. It judges everything by the criteria of survival and reproduction, with no regard for individual suffering and happiness. Domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that ever lived. The domestication of animals was founded on a series of brutal practices that only became crueller with the passing of the centuries. The natural lifespan of wild chickens is about seven to twelve years, and of cattle about twenty to twenty-five years. In the wild, most chickens and cattle died long before that, but they still had a fair chance of living for a respectable number of years. In contrast, the vast majority of domesticated chickens and cattle are slaughtered at the age of between a few weeks and a few months, because this has always been the optimal slaughtering age from an economic perspective. (Why keep feeding a cock for three years if it has already reached its maximum weight after three months?) Egg-laying hens, dairy cows and draught animals are sometimes allowed to live for many years. But the price is subjugation to a way of life completely alien to their urges and desires. It’s reasonable to assume, for example, that bulls prefer to spend their days wandering over open prairies in the company of other bulls and cows rather than pulling carts and ploughshares under the yoke of a whip-wielding ape. In order for humans to turn bulls, horses, donkeys and camels into obedient draught animals, their natural instincts and social ties had to be broken, their aggression and sexuality contained, and their freedom of movement curtailed. Farmers developed techniques such as locking animals inside pens and cages, bridling them in harnesses and leashes, training them with whips and cattle prods, and mutilating them. The process of taming almost always involves the castration of males. This restrains male aggression and enables humans selectively to control the herd’s procreation.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder), in a rough outside coat, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner.... [W]e soon found ourselves on pretty much our former terms of sociability and confidence. Melville has not been well, of late; ... and no doubt has suffered from too constant literary occupation, pursued without much success, latterly; and his writings, for a long while past, have indicated a morbid state of mind.... Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated"; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists -- and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before -- in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us.
[after what would be their last meeting]
”
”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
“
There is no success without sacrifice. If you succeed without sacrifice it is because someone has suffered before you. If you sacrifice without success it is because someone will succeed after.
”
”
Adoniram Judson
“
Suffering and success go together. If you are succeeding without suffering, it is because others before you have suffered; if you are suffering without succeeding, it is that others after you may succeed.
”
”
Billy Graham (Hope for Each Day Deluxe: Words of Wisdom and Faith (A 365-Day Devotional))
“
Suffering is what gives a man strength, my boy, just as the steel most hammered turns out the hardest.” The old man winced as he squatted down beside Jezal. “Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us.
”
”
Joe Abercrombie (Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2))
“
We all know many people who come from hard-working families, where they had to grow up with a bare minimum and become self-sufficient and independent at a very young age. We look at them now and see responsible citizens, self-reliant adults, successful members of the business community, outstanding performers, and just happy people. Yes, they’re happy, because they know the meaning of labor, they appreciate the pleasure of leisure, they value relationships with others, and they respect themselves.
In contrast, there are people who come from wealthy families, had nannies to do everything for them, went to private schools where they were surrounded with special attention, never did their own laundry, never learned how to cook an omelet for themselves, never even gained the essential skills of unwinding on their own before bedtime, and of course, never did anything for anyone else either. You look at their adult life and see how dependent they are on others and how unhappy they are because of that. They need someone to constantly take care of them. They may see no meaning in their life as little things don’t satisfy them, because they were spoiled at a very young age. They may suffer a variety of eating disorders, use drugs, alcohol and other extremes in search of satisfaction and comfort. And, above all, in search of themselves.
”
”
Anna Szabo (Turn Your Dreams And Wants Into Achievable SMART Goals!)
“
The Crucified is the One most traumatized. He has borne the World Trade Center. He has carried the Iraq war, the destruction in Syria, the Rwandan massacres, the AIDS crisis, the poverty of our inner cities, and the abused and trafficked children. He was wounded for the sins of those who perpetrated such horrors. He has carried the griefs and sorrows of the multitudes who have suffered the natural disasters of this world--the earthquakes, cyclones, and tsunamis. And he has borne our selfishness, our complacency, our love of success, and our pride. He has been in the darkness. He has known the loss of all things. He has been abandoned by his Father. He has been to hell. There is no part of any tragedy that he has not known or carried. He has done this so that none of us need face tragedy alone because he has been there before us and will go with us. and what he has done for us in Gethsemane and at Calvary he ask us to do as well. We are called to enter into relationships centered on suffering so that we might reveal in flesh and blood the nature of the Crucified One.
”
”
Diane Langberg (Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores)
“
Introductory paragraph incorporating the thesis: After a challenging childhood marked by adversity, Adam Parrish has become a successful freshman at Harvard University. In the past, he had spent his time doubting himself, fearing he would become like his father, obsessing that others could see his trailer-park roots, and idealizing wealth, but now he has built a new future where no one has to know where he's come from. Before becoming a self-actualized young man at Harvard, Adam had been deeply fascinated by the concept of the ley lines and also supernaturally entangled with one of the uncanny forests located along one, but he has now focused on the real world, using only the ghost of magic to fleece other students with parlor trick tarot card readings. He hasn't felt like himself for months, but he is going to be just fine.
Followed by three paragraphs with information that supports the thesis. First: Adam understands that suffering is often transient, even when it feels permanent. This too shall pass, etc. Although college seems like a lifetime, it is only four years. Four years is only a lifetime if one is a guinea pig.
Second paragraph, building on the first point: Magic has not always been good for Adam. During high school, he frequently immersed himself in it as a form of avoidance. Deep down, he fears that he is prone to it as his father is prone to abuse, and that it will eventually make him unsuitable for society. By depriving himself of magic, he forces himself to become someone valuable to the unmagic world, i.e. the Crying Club.
Third paragraph, with the most persuasive point: Harvard is a place Ronan Lynch cannot be, because he cannot survive there, either physically or socially. Without such hard barriers, Adam will surely continue to return to Ronan Lynch again and again, and thus fall back in with bad habits. He will never achieve the life of financial security and recognition he planned.
Thesis restated, bringing together all the information to prove it: Although life is unbearable now, and Adam Parrish seems to have lost everything important to him in the present by pursuing the things important to him in the past, he will be fine.
Concluding paragraph describing what the reader just learned and why it is important for them to have learned it: He will be fine. He will be fine. He will be fine. He will be fine.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Greywaren (Dreamer Trilogy, #3))
“
People who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it.” To explain this peculiar phenomenon, Jost’s team developed a theory of system justification. Its core idea is that people are motivated to rationalize the status quo as legitimate—even if it goes directly against their interests. In one study, they tracked Democratic and Republican voters before the 2000 U.S. presidential election. When George W. Bush gained in the polls, Republicans rated him as more desirable, but so did Democrats, who were already preparing justifications for the anticipated status quo. The same happened when Al Gore’s likelihood of success increased: Both Republicans and Democrats judged him more favorably. Regardless of political ideologies, when a candidate seemed destined to win, people liked him more. When his odds dropped, they liked him less. Justifying the default system serves a soothing function. It’s an emotional painkiller: If the world is supposed to be this way, we don’t need to be dissatisfied with it. But acquiescence also robs us of the moral outrage to stand against injustice and the creative will to consider alternative ways that the world could work.
”
”
Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
“
Ah, I believe Schacht. Only too willingly; that’s to say, I think what he says is absolutely true, for the world is incomprehensibly crass, tyrannical, moody, and cruel to sickly and sensitive people. Well, Schacht will stay here for the time being. We laughed at him a bit, when he arrived, that can’t be helped either, Schacht is young and after all can’t be allowed to think there are special degrees, advantages, methods, and considerations for him. He has now had his first disappointment, and I’m convinced that he’ll have twenty disappointments, one after the other. Life with its savage laws is in any case for certain people a succession of discouragements and terrifying bad impressions. People like Schacht are born to feel and suffer a continuous sense of aversion. He would like to admit and welcome things, but he just can’t. Hardness and lack of compassion strike him with tenfold force, he just feels them more acutely. Poor Schacht. He’s a child and he should be able to revel in melodies and bed himself in kind, soft, carefree things. For him there should be secret splashings and birdsong. Pale and delicate evening clouds should waft him away in the kingdom of Ah, What’s Happening to Me? His hands are made for light gestures, not for work. Before him breezes should blow, and behind him sweet, friendly voices should be whispering. His eyes should be allowed to remain blissfully closed, and Schacht should be allowed to go quietly to sleep again, after being wakened in the morning in the warm, sensuous cushions. For him there is, at root, no proper activity, for every activity is for him, the way he is, improper, unnatural, and unsuitable. Compared with Schacht I’m the trueblue rawboned laborer. Ah, he’ll be crushed, and one day he’ll die in a hospital. or he’ll perish, ruined in body and soul, inside one of our modern prisons.
”
”
Robert Walser (Jakob von Gunten)
“
Because radium can be mixed with other elements to make them glow in the dark, clock makers used it to create fluorescent numbers on watch faces and hired young women to perform the delicate task of painting them. In the watch factories of New Jersey, Connecticut, and Illinois, the Radium Girls were trained to lick the tips of their brushes into a fine point before dipping them into pots of radium paint. When the jaws and skeletons of the first girls began to rot and disintegrate, their employers suggested they were suffering from syphilis. A successful lawsuit revealed that their managers had understood the risks of working with radium and get done everything they could to conceal the truth from their employees. It was the first time the public learned the hazards of ingesting radioactive material. The
”
”
Adam Higginbotham (Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster)
“
Ireland, like Ukraine, is a largely rural country which suffers from its proximity to a more powerful industrialised neighbour. Ireland’s contribution to the history of tractors is the genius engineer Harry Ferguson, who was born in 1884, near Belfast.
Ferguson was a clever and mischievous man, who also had a passion for aviation. It is said that he was the first man in Great Britain to build and fly his own aircraft in 1909. But he soon came to believe that improving efficiency of food production would be his unique service to mankind. Harry Ferguson’s first two-furrow plough was attached to the chassis of the Ford Model T car converted into a tractor, aptly named Eros. This plough was mounted on the rear of the tractor, and through ingenious use of balance springs it could be raised or lowered by the driver using a lever beside his seat. Ford, meanwhile, was developing its own tractors. The Ferguson design was more advanced, and made use of hydraulic linkage, but Ferguson knew that despite his engineering genius, he could not achieve his dream on his own. He needed a larger company to produce his design. So he made an informal agreement with Henry Ford, sealed only by a handshake. This Ford-Ferguson partnership gave to the world a new type of Fordson tractor far superior to any that had been known before, and the precursor of all modern-type tractors. However, this agreement by a handshake collapsed in 1947 when Henry Ford II took over the empire of his father, and started to produce a new Ford 8N tractor, using the Ferguson system. Ferguson’s open and cheerful nature was no match for the ruthless mentality of the American businessman. The matter was decided in court in 1951. Ferguson claimed $240 million, but was awarded only $9.25 million. Undaunted in spirit, Ferguson had a new idea. He approached the Standard Motor Company at Coventry with a plan, to adapt the Vanguard car for use as tractor. But this design had to be modified, because petrol was still rationed in the post-war period. The biggest challenge for Ferguson was the move from petrol-driven to diesel-driven engines and his success gave rise to the famous TE-20, of which more than half a million were built in the UK. Ferguson will be remembered for bringing together two great engineering stories of our time, the tractor and the family car, agriculture and transport, both of which have contributed so richly to the well-being of mankind.
”
”
Marina Lewycka (A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian)
“
What an example Hannah is in her praying! It was a prayer born out of sorrow and suffering, but in spite of her feelings, she laid bare her soul before the Lord. It was a prayer that involved submission, for she presented herself to the Lord as His handmaiden, to do whatever He wanted her to do (see Luke 1:48). It was a prayer that also involved sacrifice, because she vowed to give her son back to the Lord, to be a Nazirite (Num. 6) and serve the Lord all his life.
”
”
Warren W. Wiersbe (Be Successful (1 Samuel): Attaining Wealth That Money Can't Buy (The BE Series Commentary))
“
Our challenges, including those we create by our own decisions, are part of our test in mortality. Let me assure you that your situation is not beyond the reach of our Savior. Through Him, every struggle can be for our experience and our good (see D&C 122:7). Each temptation we overcome is to strengthen us, not destroy us. The Lord will never allow us to suffer beyond what we can endure (see 1 Corinthians 10:13). We must remember that the adversary knows us extremely well. He knows where, when, and how to tempt us. If we are obedient to the promptings of the Holy Ghost, we can learn to recognize the adversary’s enticements. Before we yield to temptation, we must learn to say with unflinching resolve, “Get thee behind me, Satan” (Matthew 16:23). Our success is never measured by how strongly we are tempted but by how faithfully we respond. We must ask for help from our Heavenly Father and seek strength through the Atonement of His Son, Jesus Christ. In both temporal and spiritual things, obtaining this divine assistance enables us to become provident providers for ourselves and others.
”
”
Robert D. Hales
“
What, then, can Shakespearean tragedy, on this brief view, tell us about human time in an eternal world? It offers imagery of crisis, of futures equivocally offered, by prediction and by action, as actualities; as a confrontation of human time with other orders, and the disastrous attempt to impose limited designs upon the time of the world. What emerges from Hamlet is--after much futile, illusory action--the need of patience and readiness. The 'bloody period' of Othello is the end of a life ruined by unseasonable curiosity. The millennial ending of Macbeth, the broken apocalypse of Lear, are false endings, human periods in an eternal world. They are researches into death in an age too late for apocalypse, too critical for prophecy; an age more aware that its fictions are themselves models of the human design on the world. But it was still an age which felt the human need for ends consonant with the past, the kind of end Othello tries to achieve by his final speech; complete, concordant. As usual, Shakespeare allows him his tock; but he will not pretend that the clock does not go forward. The human perpetuity which Spenser set against our imagery of the end is represented here also by the kingly announcements of Malcolm, the election of Fortinbras, the bleak resolution of Edgar.
In apocalypse there are two orders of time, and the earthly runs to a stop; the cry of woe to the inhabitants of the earth means the end of their time; henceforth 'time shall be no more.' In tragedy the cry of woe does not end succession; the great crises and ends of human life do not stop time. And if we want them to serve our needs as we stand in the middest we must give them patterns, understood relations as Macbeth calls them, that defy time. The concords of past, present, and future towards which the soul extends itself are out of time, and belong to the duration which was invented for angels when it seemed difficult to deny that the world in which men suffer their ends is dissonant in being eternal. To close that great gap we use fictions of complementarity. They may now be novels or philosophical poems, as they once were tragedies, and before that, angels.
What the gap looked like in more modern times, and how more modern men have closed it, is the preoccupation of the second half of this series.
”
”
Frank Kermode (The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction)
“
Acting is such a desperately futile profession anyway. Playing out the lives
of other men. Knowing of their failures and successes long before they ever
do. Living, suffering, murdering, dying … all in the space of three hours.
Sometimes only two. And in such a confined little area. And over and over
again every night. Can you imagine anything more perfectly stupid?
Squeezing a whole existence into a measly evening’s entertainment on the
stage? And not only that – in the middle of it all – pausing for an
intermission. It makes one’s own life seem unbearably preposterous,
doesn’t it?
”
”
Morris Panych (7 Stories)
“
Early in this book, I said that the feeling I got from buying a Polish stock that went up ten times was the best thing to ever happen to me in my career. But the feeling I had on that balcony in Brussels with Sergei’s widow and son, as we watched the largest lawmaking body in Europe recognize and condemn the injustices suffered by Sergei and his family, felt orders of magnitude better than any financial success I’ve ever had. If finding a ten bagger in the stock market was a highlight of my life before, there is no feeling as satisfying as getting some measure of justice in a highly unjust world.
”
”
Bill Browder (Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice)
“
All those beings who revealed truths to me and who were no longer there, seemed to me to have lived a life from which I alone profited and as though they had died for me. It was sad for me to think that in my book, my love which was once everything to me, would be so detached from a being that various readers would apply it textually to the love they experienced for other women. But why should I be horrified by this posthumous infidelity, that this man or that should offer unknown women as the object of my sentiment, when that infidelity, that division of love between several beings began with my life and long before I began writing? I had indeed suffered successively through Gilberte, through Mme de Guermantes, through Albertine. Successively also I had forgotten them and only my love, dedicated at different times to different beings, had lasted. I had anticipated the profanation of my memories by unknown readers. I was not far from being horrified with myself as, perhaps, some nationalist party might be in whose name hostilities had been provoked and who alone had benefited from a war in which many noble victims had suffered and died without even knowing the issue of the struggle which, for my grandmother, would have been such a complete reward. And the single consolation she never knew, that at last I had set to work, was, such being the fate of the dead, that though she could not rejoice in my progress she had at least been spared consciousness of my long inactivity, of the frustrated life which had been such a pain to her. And certainly there were many others besides my grandmother and Albertine from whom I had assimilated a word, a glance, but of whom as individual beings I remembered nothing; a book is a great cemetery in which, for the most part, the names upon the tombs are effaced.
”
”
Marcel Proust (Time Regained)
“
I didn’t like the way Elgie was talking. Thanks to Victims Against Victimhood, I have grown expert at detecting the signs of being victimized by emotional abuse: confusion, withdrawal, negotiating reality, self-reproach. At VAV, we don’t help newcomers, we CRUSH them. C: Confirm their reality. R: Reveal our own abuse. U: Unite them with VAV. S: Say sayonara to abuse. H: Have a nice life! I launched into the saga of Barry’s failed businesses, his trips to Vegas, his Intermittent Explosive Disorder (which was never diagnosed, but which I’m convinced he suffers from), and finally how I found the strength to divorce him, but not before he successfully drained our life savings.
”
”
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
“
The Arab world has done nothing to help the Palestinian refugees they created when they attacked Israel in 1948. It’s called the ‘Palestinian refugee problem.’ This is one of the best tricks that the Arabs have played on the world, and they have used it to their great advantage when fighting Israel in the forum of public opinion. This lie was pulled off masterfully, and everyone has been falling for it ever since. First you tell people to leave their homes and villages because you are going to come in and kick out the Jews the day after the UN grants Israel its nationhood. You fail in your military objective, the Jews are still alive and have more land now than before, and you have thousands of upset, displaced refugees living in your country because they believed in you. So you and the UN build refugee camps that are designed to last only five years and crowd the people in, instead of integrating them into your society and giving them citizenship.
After a few years of overcrowding and deteriorating living conditions, you get the media to visit and publish a lot of pictures of these poor people living in the hopeless, wretched squalor you have left them in. In 1967 you get all your cronies together with their guns and tanks and planes and start beating the war drums. Again the same old story: you really are going to kill all the Jews this time or drive them into the sea, and everyone will be able to go back home, take over what the Jews have developed, and live in a Jew-free Middle East. Again you fail and now there are even more refugees living in your countries, and Israel is even larger, with Jerusalem as its capital. Time for more pictures of more camps and suffering children. What is to be done about these poor refugees (that not even the Arabs want)? Then start Middle Eastern student organizations on U.S. college campuses and find some young, idealistic American college kids who have no idea of what has been described here so far, and have them take up the cause. Now enter some power-hungry type like Yasser Arafat who begins to blackmail you and your Arab friends, who created the mess, for guns and bombs and money to fight the Israelis. Then Arafat creates hell for the world starting in the 1970s with his terrorism, and the “Palestinian refugee problem” becomes a worldwide issue and galvanizes all your citizens and the world against Israel. Along come the suicide bombers, so to keep the pot boiling you finance the show by paying every bomber’s family twenty-five thousand dollars. This encourages more crazies to go blow themselves up, killing civilians and children riding buses to school. Saudi Arabia held telethons to raise thousands of dollars to the families of suicide bombers. What a perfect way to turn years of military failure into a public-opinion-campaign success. The perpetuation of lies and uncritical thinking, combined with repetitious anti-Jewish and anti-American diatribes, has produced a generation of Arab youth incapable of thinking in a civilized manner. This government-nurtured rage toward the West and the infidels continues today, perpetuating their economic failure and deflecting frustration away from the dictators and regimes that oppress them. This refusal by the Arab regimes to take an honest look at themselves has created a culture of scapegoating that blames western civilization for misery and failure in every aspect of Arab life. So far it seems that Arab leaders don’t mind their people lagging behind, save for King Abdullah’s recent evidence of concern. (The depth of his sincerity remains to be seen.)
”
”
Brigitte Gabriel (Because They Hate)
“
I became expert at making myself
invisible. I could linger two hours over a coffee, four over a meal, and hardly be noticed by the waitress. Though the janitors in Commons rousted me every night at closing time, I doubt they ever realized they spoke to the same boy twice. Sunday afternoons, my cloak of invisibility around my shoulders, I would sit in the infirmary for sometimes six hours at a time, placidly reading copies of Yankee magazine ('Clamming on Cuttyhunk') or Reader's Digest (Ten Ways to Help That Aching Back!'), my presence unremarked by receptionist, physician, and fellow sufferer alike.
But, like the Invisible Man in H. G. Wells, I discovered that my gift had its price, which took the form of, in my case as in his, a sort of mental darkness. It seemed that people failed to meet my eye, made as if to walk through me; my superstitions began to transform themselves into something like mania. I became convinced that it was only a matter of time before one of the rickety iron steps that led to my room gave and I would fall and break my neck or, worse, a leg; I'd freeze or starve before Leo would assist me. Because one day, when I'd climbed the stairs successfully and without fear, I'd had an old Brian Eno song running through my head ('In New Delhi, 'And Hong Kong,' They all know that it won't be long...'), I now had to sing it to myself each trip up or down the stairs.
And each time I crossed the footbridge over the river, twice a day, I had to stop and scoop around in the coffee-colored snow at the road's edge until I found a decent-sized rock. I would then lean over the icy railing and drop it into the rapid current that bubbled over the speckled dinosaur eggs of granite which made up its bed - a gift to the river-god, maybe, for safe crossing, or perhaps some attempt to prove to it that I, though invisible, did exist. The water ran so shallow and clear in places that sometimes I heard the dropped stone click as it hit the bed. Both hands on the icy rail, staring down at the water as it dashed white against the boulders, boiled thinly over the polished stones, I wondered what it would be like to fall and break my head open on one of those bright rocks: a wicked crack, a sudden limpness, then veins of red marbling the glassy water.
If I threw myself off, I thought, who would find me in all that white silence? Might the river beat me downstream over the rocks until it spat me out in the quiet waters, down behind the dye factory, where some lady would catch me in the beam of her headlights when she pulled out of the parking lot at five in the afternoon? Or would I, like the pieces of Leo's mandolin, lodge stubbornly in some quiet place behind a boulder and wait, my clothes washing about me, for spring?
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
“
It’s worth pausing for a moment to meditate on what Tesla had accomplished. Musk had set out to make an electric car that did not suffer from any compromises. He did that. Then, using a form of entrepreneurial judo, he upended the decades of criticisms against electric cars. The Model S was not just the best electric car; it was best car, period, and the car people desired. America had not seen a successful car company since Chrysler emerged in 1925. Silicon Valley had done little of note in the automotive industry. Musk had never run a car factory before and was considered arrogant and amateurish by Detroit. Yet, one year after the Model S went on sale, Tesla had posted a profit, hit $562 million in quarterly revenue, raised its sales forecast, and become as valuable as Mazda Motor. Elon Musk had built the automotive equivalent of the iPhone. And car executives in Detroit, Japan, and Germany had only their crappy ads to watch as they pondered how such a thing had occurred.
”
”
Ashlee Vance (Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future)
“
The Crucified is the One most traumatized. He has borne the World Trade Center. He has carried the Iraq war, the destruction in Syria, the Rwandan massacres, the AIDS crisis, the poverty of our inner cities, and the abused and trafficked children. He was wounded for the sins of those who perpetrated such horrors. He has carried the griefs and sorrows of the multitudes who have suffered the natural disasters of this world--the earthquakes, cyclones, and tsunamis. And he has borne our selfishness, our complacency, our love of success, and our pride. He has been in the darkness. He has known the loss of all things. He has been abandoned by his Father. He has been to hell. There is no part of any tragedy that he has not known or carried. He has done this so that none of us need face tragedy alone because he has been there before us and will go with u. and what he has done for us in Gethsemane and at Calvary he ask us to do as well. We are called to enter into relationships centered on suffering so that we might reveal in flesh and blood the nature of the Crucified One.
”
”
Diane Langberg
“
Thirty-nine-year-old moderately successful Human Resources Director. Interests include regency romances, reality TV, and baking large novelty birthday cakes for other people’s children. Hobbies include drinking Tia Maria and eating Turkish delight in the bath and dining out with her mum and dad. Wanted to be a ballerina but didn’t end up with a ballerina body; however, has been told she is an impressive dirty dancer when drunk. Knows her wine, so please just hand the wine list over. Godmother to nine children, member of two book clubs, Social Club Manager for the Australian Payroll Officers’ Association. Suffers from a severe blushing problem but is not shy and will probably end up better friends with your friends than you, which you’ll find highly irritating after we break up. Has recently become so worried about meeting the love of her life and having children before she reaches menopause that she has cried piteously in the middle of the night. But otherwise is generally quite cheerful and has on at least three separate occasions that she knows of been described as ‘Charming’. Yep, that about summed it up. What a catch.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (The Last Anniversary)
“
In North America, there is no nostalgia for the postwar period, quite simply because the Trente Glorieuses never existed there: per capita output grew at roughly the same rate of 1.5–2 percent per year throughout the period 1820–2012. To be sure, growth slowed a bit between 1930 and 1950 to just over 1.5 percent, then increased again to just over 2 percent between 1950 and 1970, and then slowed to less than 1.5 percent between 1990 and 2012. In Western Europe, which suffered much more from the two world wars, the variations are considerably greater: per capita output stagnated between 1913 and 1950 (with a growth rate of just over 0.5 percent) and then leapt ahead to more than 4 percent from 1950 to 1970, before falling sharply to just slightly above US levels (a little more than 2 percent) in the period 1970–1990 and to barely 1.5 percent between 1990 and 2012.
Western Europe experienced a golden age of growth between 1950 and 1970, only to see its growth rate diminish to one-half or even one-third of its peak level during the decades that followed.
[...]
If we looked only at continental Europe, we would find an average per capita output growth rate of 5 percent between 1950 and 1970—a level well beyond that achieved in other advanced countries over the past two centuries.
These very different collective experiences of growth in the twentieth century largely explain why public opinion in different countries varies so widely in regard to commercial and financial globalization and indeed to capitalism in general. In continental Europe and especially France, people quite naturally continue to look on the first three postwar decades—a period of strong state intervention in the economy—as a period blessed with rapid growth, and many regard the liberalization of the economy that began around 1980 as the cause of a slowdown.
In Great Britain and the United States, postwar history is interpreted quite differently. Between 1950 and 1980, the gap between the English-speaking countries and the countries that had lost the war closed rapidly. By the late 1970s, US magazine covers often denounced the decline of the United States and the success of German and Japanese industry. In Britain, GDP per capita fell below the level of Germany, France, Japan, and even Italy. It may even be the case that this sense of being rivaled (or even overtaken in the case of Britain) played an important part in the “conservative revolution.” Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States promised to “roll back the welfare state” that had allegedly sapped the animal spirits of Anglo-Saxon entrepreneurs and thus to return to pure nineteenth-century capitalism, which would allow the United States and Britain to regain the upper hand. Even today, many people in both countries believe that the conservative revolution was remarkably successful, because their growth rates once again matched continental European and Japanese levels.
In fact, neither the economic liberalization that began around 1980 nor the state interventionism that began in 1945 deserves such praise or blame. France, Germany, and Japan would very likely have caught up with Britain and the United States following their collapse of 1914–1945 regardless of what policies they had adopted (I say this with only slight exaggeration). The most one can say is that state intervention did no harm. Similarly, once these countries had attained the global technological frontier, it is hardly surprising that they ceased to grow more rapidly than Britain and the United States or that growth rates in all of these wealthy countries more or less equalized [...] Broadly speaking, the US and British policies of economic liberalization appear to have had little effect on this simple reality, since they neither increased growth nor decreased it.
”
”
Thomas Piketty (Capital in the Twenty First Century)
“
How had I come to this? I had kept unswervingly to the path placed before me, had tried to be exactly what I was expected to be, had done exactly what I was expected to do -- yet, instead of winning the expected reward, here I was stumbling along, holding on desperately to one of my eyes in order to keep from bursting out my brain against some familiar object swerved into my path by my distorted vision. And now to drive me wild I felt suddenly that my grandfather was hovering over me, grinning triumphantly out of the dark. I simply could not endure it. For, despite my anguish and anger, I knew of no other way of living, nor other forms of success available to such as me. I was so completely a part of that existence that in the end I had to make my peace. It was either that or admit that my grandfather had made sense. Which was impossible, for though I still believed myself innocent, I saw that the only alternative to permanently facing the world of Trueblood and the Golden Day was to accept the responsibility for what had happened. Somehow, I convinced myself, I had violated the code and thus would have to submit to punishment. Dr. Bledsoe is right, I told myself, he's right; the school and what it stands for have to be protected. There was no other way, and no matter how much I suffered I would pay my debt as quickly as possible and return to building my career . . .
”
”
Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man)
“
The other strikingly modern feature of the type of poet which Euripides now introduced into the history of literature is his apparently voluntary refusal to take any part whatever in public life. Euripides was not a soldier as Aeschylus was, nor a priestly dignitary as Sophocles was, but, on the other hand, he is the very first poet who is reported to have possessed a library, and he appears to be also the first poet to lead the life of a scholar in complete retirement from the world. If the bust of him, with its tousled hair, its tired eyes and the embittered lines round the mouth, is a true portrait, and if we are right in seeing in it a discrepancy between body and spirit, and the expression of a restless and dissatisfied life, then we may say that Euripides was the first unhappy poet, the first whose poetry brought him suffering. The notion of genius in the modern sense is not merely completely strange to the ancient world; its poets and artists have nothing of the genius about them. The rational and craftsmanlike elements in art are far more important for them than the irrational and intuitive. Plato’s doctrine of enthusiasm emphasized, indeed, that poets owed their work to divine inspiration and not to mere technical ability, but this idea by no means leads to the exaltation of the poet; it only increases the gulf between him and his work, and makes of him a mere instrument of the divine purpose. It is, however, of the essence of the modern notion of genius that there is no gulf between the artist and his work, or, if such a gulf is admitted, that the genius is far greater than any of his works and can never be adequately expressed in them. So genius connotes for us a tragic loneliness and inability to make itself fully understood. But the ancient world knows nothing of this or of the other tragic feature of the modern artist—his lack of recognition by his own contemporaries and his despairing appeals to a remote posterity. There is not a trace of all this—at least before Euripides. Euripides’ lack of success was mainly due to the fact that there was nothing in classical times that could be called an educated middle class. The old aristocracy took no pleasure in his plays, owing to their different outlook on life, and the new bourgeois public could not enjoy them either, owing to its lack of education. With his philosophical radicalism, Euripides is a unique pheno menon, even among the poets of his age, for these are in general as conservative in their outlook as were those of the classical age —in spite of a naturalism of style which was derived from the urban and commercial society they lived in, and which had reached a point at which it was really incompatible with political conservatism. As politicians and partisans these poets hold to their conservative doctrines, but as artists they are swept along in the progressive stream of their times. This inner contradiction in their work is a completely new phenomenon in the social history of art.
”
”
Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages)
“
IF, O most illustrious Knight, I had driven a plough, pastured a herd, tended a garden, tailored a garment: none would regard me, few observe me, seldom a one reprove me; and I could easily satisfy all men. But since I would survey the field of Nature, care for the nourishment of the soul, foster the cultivation of talent, become expert as Daedalus concerning the ways of the intellect; lo, one doth threaten upon beholding me, another doth assail me at sight, another doth bite upon reaching me, yet another who hath caught me would devour me; not one, nor few, they are many, indeed almost all. If you would know why, it is because I hate the mob, I loathe the vulgar herd and in the multitude I find no joy. It is Unity that doth enchant me. By her power I am free though thrall, happy in sorrow, rich in poverty, and quick even in death. Through her virtue I envy not those who are bond though free, who grieve in the midst of pleasures, who endure poverty in their wealth, and a living death. They carry their chains within them; their spirit containeth her own hell that bringeth them low; within their soul is the disease that wasteth, and within their mind the lethargy that bringeth death. They are without the generosity that would enfranchise, the long suffering that exalteth, the splendour that doth illumine, knowledge that bestoweth life. Therefore I do not in weariness shun the arduous path, nor idly refrain my arm from the present task, nor retreat in despair from the enemy that confronteth me, nor do I turn my dazzled eyes from the divine end. Yet I am aware that I am mostly held to be a sophist, seeking rather to appear subtle than to reveal the truth; an ambitious fellow diligent rather to support a new and false sect than to establish the ancient and true; a snarer of birds who pursueth the splendour of fame, by spreading ahead the darkness of error; an unquiet spirit that would undermine the edifice of good discipline to establish the frame of perversity.
Wherefore, my lord, may the heavenly powers scatter before me all those who unjustly hate me; may my God be ever gracious unto me; may all the rulers of our world be favourable to me; may the stars yield me seed for the field and soil for the seed, that the harvest of my labour may appear to the world useful and glorious, that souls may be awakened and the understanding of those in darkness be illumined. For assuredly I do not feign; and if I err, I do so unwittingly; nor do I in speech or writing contend merely for victory, for I hold worldly repute and hollow success without truth to be hateful to God, most vile and dishonourable. But I thus exhaust, vex and torment myself for love of true wisdom and zeal for true contemplation. This I shall make manifest by conclusive arguments, dependent on lively reasonings derived from regulated sensation, instructed by true phenomena; for these as trustworthy ambassadors emerge from objects of Nature, rendering themselves present to those who seek them, obvious to those who gaze attentively on them, clear to those who apprehend, certain and sure to those who understand. Thus I present to you my contemplation concerning the infinite universe and innumerable worlds.
”
”
Giordano Bruno (On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds: Five Cosmological Dialogues (Collected Works of Giordano Bruno Book 2))
“
This reaction to the work was obviously a misunderstanding. It ignores the fact that the future Buddha was also of noble origins, that he was the son of a king and heir to the throne and had been raised with the expectation that one day he would inherit the crown. He had been taught martial arts and the art of government, and having reached the right age, he had married and had a son. All of these things would be more typical of the physical and mental formation of a future samurai than of a seminarian ready to take holy orders. A man like Julius Evola was particularly suitable to dispel such a misconception.
He did so on two fronts in his Doctrine: on the one hand, he did not cease to recall the origins of the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, who was destined to the throne of Kapilavastu: on the other hand, he attempted to demonstrate that Buddhist asceticism is not a cowardly resignation before life's vicissitudes, but rather a struggle of a spiritual kind, which is not any less heroic than the struggle of a knight on the battlefield. As Buddha himself said (Mahavagga, 2.15): 'It is better to die fighting than to live as one vanquished.' This resolution is in accord with Evola's ideal of overcoming natural resistances in order to achieve the Awakening through meditation; it should he noted, however, that the warrior terminology is contained in the oldest writings of Buddhism, which are those that best reflect the living teaching of the master. Evola works tirelessly in his hook to erase the Western view of a languid and dull doctrine that in fact was originally regarded as aristocratic and reserved for real 'champions.'
After Schopenhauer, the unfounded idea arose in Western culture that Buddhism involved a renunciation of the world and the adoption of a passive attitude: 'Let things go their way; who cares anyway.' Since in this inferior world 'everything is evil,' the wise person is the one who, like Simeon the Stylite, withdraws, if not to the top of a pillar; at least to an isolated place of meditation. Moreover, the most widespread view of Buddhists is that of monks dressed in orange robes, begging for their food; people suppose that the only activity these monks are devoted to is reciting memorized texts, since they shun prayers; thus, their religion appears to an outsider as a form of atheism.
Evola successfully demonstrates that this view is profoundly distorted by a series of prejudices. Passivity? Inaction? On the contrary, Buddha never tired of exhorting his disciples to 'work toward victory'; he himself, at the end of his life, said with pride: katam karaniyam, 'done is what needed to he done!' Pessimism? It is true that Buddha, picking up a formula of Brahmanism, the religion in which he had been raised prior to his departure from Kapilavastu, affirmed that everything on earth is 'suffering.' But he also clarified for us that this is the case because we are always yearning to reap concrete benefits from our actions. For example, warriors risk their lives because they long for the pleasure of victory and for the spoils, and yet in the end they are always disappointed: the pillaging is never enough and what has been gained is quickly squandered. Also, the taste of victory soon fades away. But if one becomes aware of this state of affairs (this is one aspect of the Awakening), the pessimism is dispelled since reality is what it is, neither good nor bad in itself; reality is inscribed in Becoming, which cannot be interrupted. Thus, one must live and act with the awareness that the only thing that matters is each and every moment. Thus, duty (dhamma) is claimed to be the only valid reference point: 'Do your duty,' that is. 'let your every action he totally disinterested.
”
”
Jean Varenne (The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts)
“
Forgive me I hope you are feeling better.
I am, thank you. Will you not sit down?
In vain I have struggled. It will not do! My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. In declaring myself thus I'm fully aware that I will be going expressly against the wishes of my family, my friends, and, I hardly need add, my own better judgement.
The relative situation of our families is such that any alliance between us must be regarded as a highly reprehensible connection. Indeed as a rational man I cannot but regard it as such myself, but it cannot be helped. Almost from the earliest moments of our acquaintance I have come to feel for you a passionate admiration and regard, which despite of my struggles, has overcome every rational objection. And I beg you, most fervently, to relieve my suffering and consent to be my wife.
In such cases as these, I believe the established mode is to express a sense of obligation. But I cannot. I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I'm sorry to cause pain to anyone, but it was most unconsciously done, and, I hope, will be of short duration.
And this is all the reply I am to expect? I might wonder why, with so little effort at civility, I am rejected.
And I might wonder why, with so evident a desire to offend and insult me you chose to tell me that you like me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character! Was this not some excuse for incivility if I was uncivil? I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. Do you think any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining the happiness of a most beloved sister? Can you deny that you have done it?
I have no wish to deny it. I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your sister, and I rejoice in my success. Towards him I have been kinder than towards myself.
But it's not merely that on which my dislike of you is founded. Long before it had taken place, my dislike of you was decided when I heard Mr Wickham's story of your dealings with him. How can you defend yourself on that subject?
You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns!
And of your infliction! You have reduced him to his present state of poverty, and yet you can treat his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule!
And this is your opinion of me? My faults by this calculation are heavy indeed, but perhaps these offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by the honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design on you, had I concealed my struggles and flattered you. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations whose condition in life is so decidedly below my own?
You are mistaken, Mr Darcy. The mode of your declaration merely spared me any concern I might have felt in refusing you had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner. You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it. From the very beginning, your manners impressed me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others. I had known you a month before I felt you were the last man in the world whom I could ever marry!
You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings and now have only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Please forgive me for having taken up your time and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.
Forgive me. I hope you are feeling better.
I am, thank you. Will you no
”
”
Jane Austen
“
The modem European is characterized by two apparently opposite traits: individualism and the demand for equal rights; that I have at last come to understand.
The individual is an extremely vulnerable piece of vanity: conscious of how easily it suffers. This vanity demands that every other shall count as its equal, that it should be only inter pares. In this way a social race is characterized in which talents and powers do not diverge very much.
The pride that desires solitude and few admirers is quite beyond comprehension; a really "great" success is possible ony through the masses, indeed one hardly grasps the fact any more that a success with the masses is always really a petty success: because pulchrum est paucorum hominum (Beauty belongs to the few)
All moralities know nothing of an "order of rank" among men; teachers of law nothing of a communal conscience. The principle of the individual rejects very great human beings and demands, among men approximately equal, the subtlest eye and the speediest recognition of a talent.
And because everyone has some kind of talent in such late and civilized cultures - and therefore can expect to receive back his share of honor - there is more flattering of modest merits today than ever before: it gives the age a veneer of boundless fairness.
Its unfairness consists in a boundless rage, not against tyrants and public flatterers even in the arts, but against noble men, who despise the praise of the many. The demand for equal rights (i.e. to be allowed to sit in judgment on everything and everyone) is anti-aristocratic.
Equally strange to the age is the vanished individual, the absorption in a great type, the desire not to be a personality - which constituted the distinction and ambition of many lofty men in earlier days (the greatest poets among them); or "to be a city" as in Greece, Jesuitism, Prussian officer corps and bureaucracy, or to be a pupil and continuator of great masters - for which non-social conditions and a lack of petty vanity are needed.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power)
“
I am convinced that the year 1941 will be a historic year in the great reorganization of Europe! The platform can be none other than that of making the world accessible to all, breaking the privileges of individuals, breaking the tyranny of certain people and their financial rulers.
And, finally, this year will help to secure the foundations for true international understanding and thus for a reconciliation of nations.
I would not like to forget to repeat the advice that I gave before the German Reichstag on January 30, 1939: namely, the advice that should the outside world allow itself to be plunged into a general war by Jewry, then all of Jewry will be finished in Europe! They may still laugh about this today, just as they earlier laughed about my prophesies. The coming months and years will show that I have foreseen things correctly this time also. Now already, our racial idea takes hold of one people after another. And I hope that those who are at enmity with us today will one day recognize their internal enemies and form one front with us: a front against international Jewish exploitation and corruption of people! The year that lies behind us as of January 30 was a year of great successes, but also of great sacrifices. Even if the total number of dead and wounded is small in comparison with those of former wars, the sacrifice is difficult for all those who are individually concerned. Our affection, our love, and our solicitude belong to those who had to make these sacrifices. They suffered what generations before us suffered in terms of sacrifice, but every German made his sacrifice. The nation worked in all spheres, and, above all, the German woman worked to replace the man! It is the wonderful idea of the community that rules our Volk! That this idea may be preserved in its full force will be our wish today! That we may work for this community will be our pledge! That we may gain the victory in the service of this community will be our faith and our confidence! And that the Lord God may not abandon us in this struggle in the coming year will be our prayer!
Deutschland - Sieg Heil!
Speech in the Sportpalast Berlin, January 30, 1941
”
”
Adolf Hitler (Collection of Speeches: 1922-1945)
“
God has not given us the spirit of fear. He has given us the spirit of Love and a competent mind.
Love conquers fear, because Love has Power, that creates a competent mind, that allows a person to make rational decisions and use righteous judgment to resolve or solve problems.
Through this God-given process, we are able to endure and persevere in times of hardships, and when facing a crisis. When our spirit is broken by hate, and heavy loads are placed upon us, we turn to God for strength in our storms of life. And we seek his Love to restore us to wholeness. He restores us with Hope. From within him we receive Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance as it is noted in Galatians 5:22.
Because of God's Love for us, we are able to have the patience to wait for his Power to restore us so that we are in control of our mind to over-power fear and to lead a successful life to meet our goals and create a greater opportunity filled with his blessings.
He has created us to be a victorious people. Therefore, we are able to create far greater opportunities through Love.
God gives power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increases strength. (Isaiah 40:29)
When we are broken by the storms of life, God's Love restore us. We bow before him, in a humble spirit at his throne of grace, and ask in prayer for mercy and renewed strength. It is here that we find the needed strength to forgive those who have wronged us and the Power to Love.
Those who wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)
Fear is powerless. It torments the mind and paralyzes the thought process. It causes panic. Thereby, leaving the person, feeling a sense of hopelessness and unwilling to trust others. It closes possibilities to allow for change.
The prophet Isaiah noted; Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. (Isaiah 40:30)
And when Jesus disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, "It is a spirit," and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I, be not afraid. (Matthew 14:26, 27)
Fear is a person's worst enemy; it causes panic, that results in making irrational decisions. Such behavior is based on poor judgment, that was made due to a lack of patience, to make an adequate investigation of the situation before proceeding. The outcome will create serious problems that can cause serious harm.
LOVE is the chain that binds us together.
Do not allow hate to separate us.
There is One God
One family
One faith
One world
We are not defined by belief or by faith nor religion.
We are the family of God.
Written by: Ellen J. Barrier
Source of Scriptures: King James Version Bible
”
”
Ellen J. Barrier
“
If you are a great warrior, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before the lowest opponent.
If you are a great general, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before the lowest soldier.
If you are a great politician, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before for the lowest constituent.
If you are a great governor, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before for the lowest peasant.
If you are a great president, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before the lowest citizen.
If you are a great leader, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before for the lowest servant.
If you are a great pastor, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before the lowest parishioner.
If you are a great prophet, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before the lowest seer.
If you are a great pope, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before the lowest priest.
If you are a great teacher, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before for the lowest student.
If you are a great guru, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before for the lowest disciple.
If you are a great architect, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before the lowest mason.
If you are a great engineer, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before the lowest mechanic.
If you are a great inventor, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before for the lowest scientist.
If you are a great doctor, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before for the lowest nurse.
If you are a great judge, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before the lowest lawyer.
If you are a great artist, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before the lowest apprentice.
If you are a great coach, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before for the lowest athlete.
If you are a great genius, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before for the lowest talent.
If you are a great philanthropist, you are supposed to be prepared
to humble yourself before for the lowest beggar.
In the school of patience, it is the long suffering who graduate.
In the school of generosity, it is the kind who graduate.
In the school of activism, it is the devoted who graduate.
In the school of honor, it is the noble who graduate.
In the school of wisdom, it is the prudent who graduate.
In the school of knowledge, it is the curious who graduate.
In the school of insight, it is the observant who graduate.
In the school of understanding, it is the intelligent who graduate.
In the school of success, it is the excellent who graduate.
In the school of eminence, it is the influential who graduate.
In the school of conquest, it is the fearless who graduate.
In the school of enlightenment, it is the humble who graduate.
In the school of courage, it is the hopeful who graduate.
In the school of fortitude, it is the determined who graduate.
In the school of leadership, it is servants who graduate.
In the school of talent, it is the skilled who graduate.
In the school of genius, it is the brilliant who graduate.
In the school of greatness, it is the persevering who graduate.
In the school of transcendence, it is the fearless who graduate.
In the school of innovation, it is the creative who graduate.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
He recognized her deft hand and eye for detail immediately. He flipped through the pages, past vignettes of the dairymaid and her vague-featured gentleman engaged in a courtship of sorts: a kiss on the hand, a whisper in the ear. By the book’s midpoint, the chit’s voluminous petticoats were up around her ears, and the illustrations comprised a sequence of quite similar poses in varying locales. Not just the dairy, but a carriage, the larder, in a hayloft lit with candles and strewn with…were those rose petals?
I’ll be damned.
Gray was fast divining the true source of the French painting master’s mythic exploits. More unsettling by far, however, as he perused the book, he noted a subtle alteration in the gentleman lover’s features. With each successive illustration, the hero appeared taller, broader in the shoulders, and his hair went from a cropped style to collar length in the space of two pages.
The more pages Gray turned, the more he recognized himself.
It was unmistakable. She’d used him as the model for these bawdy illustrations. She’d sketched him in secret; not once, but many times. And here he’d nearly gone mad with envy over each scrap of foolscap she’d inked for once crewman or another. His emotions underwent a dizzying progression-from surprised, to flattered, to (with the benefit of one especially inventive situation in an orchard) undeniably aroused.
But as he lingered over a nude study of this amalgam of the real him and some picaresque fantasy, he began to feel something else entirely. He felt used.
She’d rendered his form with astonishing accuracy, given that it must have been drawn before she’d any opportunity to actually see him unclothed. Not that she’d achieved an exact likeness. Her virgin’s imagination was rather generous in certain aspects and somewhat stinting in others, he noted with a bitter sort of amusement. But she’d laid him bare in these pages, without his knowledge or consent. God, she’d even drawn his scars. All in service of some adolescent erotic fantasy.
And now he began to grow angry.
He had been handling the leaves of the book with his fingertips only, anxious he might smudge or rip the pages. Now he abandoned all caution and flipped roughly through the remainder of the volume. Until he came to the end, and his hand froze.
There they were, the two of them. He and she fully clothed and unengaged in any physical intimacies-yet intimate, in a way he had never known. Never dreamed. Sitting beneath a willow tree, his head in her lap. One of her hands lay twined with his, atop his chest. The other rested on his brow. The sky soared vast and expansive above, gauzy clouds spinning into forever.
The hot fist of desire that had gripped his loins loosened, moved upward through his torso, churning the contents of his gut along the way. Then it clutched at his heart and squeezed until it hurt. Somehow, this illustration was the most dismaying of all. So naïve, so ridiculous. at least the bawdy situations were plausible, if sometimes physically improbable. This was utterly impossible. To her, he'd never been more than a fantasy.
It occurred to Gray that more secrets might be packed within these trunks. If he sorted through her belongings, he might find the answers to all his questions. Perhaps answers to questions he'd never thought to ask. In spite of this, he let the lid of the trunk clap shut and fastened the strap with shaking fingers. He'd suffered as many of her fantasies as he could bear for one day.
It was time to acquaint her with reality.
”
”
Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
“
Embrace pain, suffer like you never did before because in the end you will be stronger you will be ground down broken but starving, starving for something more, starving for the sustenance that is success, because you were suffering, because you didnt give up... and in the end you get where you need and if you dont, then somewhere a long the line something went wrong, maybe it was you, maybe it was something you couldnt control but dont lose hope, road blocks or not you have been through this much a road block should not stop you.
”
”
Triston W Lee
“
So it’s not without reason that you’ve come to believe that you need to know 150 percent before you consider yourself even remotely up to the task. You read a job description that requires a couple of minor skill sets or some previous experience you don’t possess, and you disqualify yourself right off the bat. And in an economy where jobs are being eliminated and the job market is increasingly competitive, this reluctance to jump in and learn as you go has real consequences.
”
”
Valerie Young (The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: And Men: Why Capable People Suffer from Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive In Spite of It)
“
In Marx’s day, nobody ever thought of that technique of state intervention which is now called ‘counter cycle policy’; and, indeed, such a thought must be utterly foreign to an unrestrained capitalist system. (But even before Marx’s time, we find the beginning of doubts about, and even of investigations into, the wisdom of the credit policy of the Bank of England during a depression29.) Unemployment insurance, however, means intervention, and therefore an increase in the responsibility of the state, and it is likely to lead to experiments in counter cycle policy. I do not maintain that these experiments must necessarily be successful (although I do believe that the problem may in the end prove not so very difficult, and that Sweden30, in particular, has already shown what can be done in this field). But I wish to assert most emphatically that the belief that it is impossible to abolish unemployment by piecemeal measures is on the same plane of dogmatism as the numerous physical proofs (proffered by men who lived even later than Marx) that the problems of aviation would always remain insoluble. When the Marxists say, as they sometimes do, that Marx has proved the uselessness of a counter cycle policy and of similar piecemeal measures, then they simply do not speak the truth; Marx investigated an unrestrained capitalism, and he never dreamt of interventionism. He therefore never investigated the possibility of a systematic interference with the trade cycle, much less did he offer a proof of its impossibility. It is strange to find that the same people who complain of the irresponsibility of the capitalists in the face of human suffering are irresponsible enough to oppose, with dogmatic assertions of this kind, experiments from which we may learn how to relieve human suffering (how to become masters of our social environment, as Marx would have said), and how to control some of the unwanted social repercussions of our actions. But the apologists of Marxism are quite unaware of the fact that in the name of their own vested interests they are fighting against progress; they do not see that it is the danger of any movement like Marxism that it soon comes to represent all kinds of vested interests, and that there are intellectual investments, as well as material ones.
”
”
Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies)
“
The benefits of feelings of control also appear in animal research. In research done before today’s greater concern for animal welfare, dogs confined in a cage and taught that they could not escape shocks learned a sense of helplessness. Later, these dogs cowered passively in other situations when they could escape punishment. Dogs that learned personal control (by successfully escaping their first shocks) adapted easily to a new situation. Researcher Martin Seligman (1975, 1991) noted similarities to this learned helplessness in human situations. Depressed or oppressed people, for example, become passive because they believe their efforts have no effect. Helpless dogs and depressed people both suffer paralysis of the will, passive resignation, and even motionless apathy.
”
”
David G. Myers (Social Psychology)
“
When regarding the Final Empire in its entirety, one certain fact is unmistakable. For a nation ruled by a self-proclaimed divinity, the empire has experienced a frightening number of colossal leadership errors. Most of these have been successfully covered up, and can only be found in the metalminds of Feruchemists or on the pages of banned texts. However, one only need look to the near past to note such blunders as the Massacre at Devanex, the revision of the Deepness Doctrine, and the relocation of the Renates peoples. The Lord Ruler does not age. That much, at least, is undeniable. This text, however, purports to prove that he is by no means infallible. During the days before the Ascension, mankind suffered chaos and uncertainty caused by an endless cycle of kings, emperors, and other monarchs. One would think that now, with a single, immortal governor, society would finally have an opportunity to find stability and enlightenment. It is the remarkable lack of either attribute in the Final Empire that is the Lord Ruler’s most grievous oversight.
”
”
Brandon Sanderson (The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1))
“
As he makes his way toward us, smiling nervously, I notice a slight thoracic scoliosis, a hint of jaundice in his eyes. I’m trying to break the diagnostic habit now that Sasha and I are in our mid-fifties. Friends and acquaintances have begun to be unlucky, and I’ve learned the hard way that detecting illness early puts me in a bind. “You saying I look like shit, Doc?” I’ve been asked, only half in jest. And there was my close friend and tennis partner, Chester, who was treated successfully for a lymphoma I suspected before anyone else. But for reasons I can’t comprehend, our friendship suffered. Chester avoids me now and plays tennis with other people.
”
”
Jennifer Egan (The Candy House)
“
THIRD EMENDED VERSION ,
SOME OMISSIONS HAVING BEEN ADDED TO
MY LAST '' PUBLICATION ''
TO KEEP THE LOGIC MORE LUCID
SORRY FOR SETTING EVERYTHING DOWN
SO QUICKLY -
''SCALE THE HUMAN MOUNTAIN
OF SUMLESS LIES UNTIL
YOU LABORIOUSLY REACH THE SUMMIT
THEN CAUSE IT TO CRUMBLE
BY YOUR EQUALLY SUMLESS BURDEN OF VERITY
THAT NO HUMAN MAY FAVOUR YOU
WITH A GLANCE ANY MORE
AND THOSE WHO DO
ARE NO LONGER HUMAN
HAVING DIVESTED THEMSELVES OF THEIR HUMANITY
AS YOU DID
BY VIRTUE OF THE FACT OF
WHAT MAN HAS DONE TO HIMSELF
BESIDES , YOU ARE ABLE TO ASCERTAIN
HOW MANY '' FRIENDS '' YOU HAVE
WHICH IS THE EMPTY SET
CONTAINING ONE ELEMENT ONLY :
VERITY ! ,
TO WHICH YOU PERTAIN AS WELL
IT IS WHY IT IS THE HARDEST THING
TO FIND THE PATH
LEADING TO YOURSELF
AND IT IS BY THE EMPTY SET
THAT ALL OF MATHEMATICS
HAS BEEN MADE AN EGREGIOUS LIE TOO
IT IS MORE FACILE TO KILL SOMEONE OR ,
IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO , YOURSELF
THAN IT IS TO LIVE !
DO YOU SEE THE POPLAR AND THE ROBIN
THAT IS PERCHED ON IT ?
ASK THEM !
THEY KNOW HOW TO LIVE
YOU DON'T
BECAUSE YOU ARE HUMAN AND INTELLIGENT :
MAN IS ENDUED WITH HIS SPIRIT OF INVENTION
WHICH HAS REDUCED LIFE TO ABSURDITY
AS ALL THOSE THEORIES AND TEACHINGS
SPRINGING FROM IT
HAVE NEVER BENEFITED LIFE ,
ON THE CONTRARY , DESTROYED IT !
AN APPRECIATION OF THE MAJESTY OF VERITY
ALSO ENTAILS THE INEVITABLE CATASTROPHE
OF '' BEING '' AND HENCE THE INFELICITY
OF YOURSELF WHICH HAS TO BE ASCRIBED
TO THOSE PROFOUND TEACHINGS OF MAN
AND THE IMPRECATIONS WHICH THEY
HEAPED UPON LIFE AND BEHIND WHICH
EVERYONE STRIVES TO CONCEAL HIMSELF
AS SOMETHING SUBLIME , BROTHERLY , CUNNING , INGENIOUS
CONVINCED OF THE '' SUCCESS '' OF SUCH BEING !
INGENUITY AND SUCCESS ,
DO THOSE TWO WORDS DIFFER ? ,
AS MAN IS DETREMINED BY THOSE CRITERIA
AND HENCE LIFE !...
WHAT ALSO COMES TO MIND HERE IS THIS -
THERE IS SOMETHING VASTLY ABOMINABLE
ABOUT SOCIETY :
ITS MEMBERS ARE EVER SO FOND
OF ALL THOSE MOVIE STARS AND ALL
THOSE OTHER LUMINARIES
AND WHAT IS LUMINOUS ABOUT THEM
I DO NOT KNOW ! YET THEY ARE IN THE
HABIT OF TREATING THOSE VERY SIGNIFICANT
PEOPLE DIFFERENTLY FROM ORDINARY
PEOPLE SUCH AS A HOUSEMAID OR A GROCER
OR A SALESMAN AND SO FORTH ,
THEREBY CREATING SOMETHING UTTERLY CORRUPT :
A FALSE IDEALISM !
THEY NEED THOSE LUMINARIES AS THEY
LACK ANY IDEALISM THEMSELVES IN THEIR EVERYDAY
REALITY WHICH HAS DEPRAVED THEM OF IT ,
OVERLOOKING HOWEVER ,
HOW TRULY ORDINARY IN TRUTH
ALL THOSE STARS ARE !
AND ALLOWING THEIR LACK OF IDEALISM
TO BE SUPERSEDED BY OTHER PEOPLE'S
NONPRESENT IDEALISM ON ACCOUNT OF
THEIR PROMINENCE MAKES EVERYTHING
LOOK EVEN DARKER IN LIFE ,
AS THOUGH LIFE CONSISTED IN FAME !
IS THIS WHY IT IS SO
DARK IN THE HUMAN WORLD ?
AM I THE ONLY PERSON TO APPREHEND
DARKNESS IN THEIR LIGHTNESS ?
OR WHY IS SO DARK IN THIS WORLD ?
SOMETHING LIKE THAT NEEDS TO BE
SHRUGGED OFF AS SOMETHING
INEXPLICABLY RATIONAL ,
WHENCE I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT MYSELF
IRRATIONAL IN NOT GROVELLING BEFORE
THOSE WHO ARE EVEN MORE ORDINARY
THAN ALL THE OTHER ORDINARY
NON-FAMOUS PEOPLE ARE !
IT IS IN PARTICULAR THOSE
ALL-IMPORTANT DIGNITARIES
WHO TASTE OF METHYLATED SPIRITS
IN A MOST ACRID AND NAUSEATING FASHION !
SO MUCH FOR CLEANLINESS !...
VENERABLE ANCIENT SHADES
HOVERING OVER THIS LAKE
THAT IS NO MORE AND OF WHICH I AM PART
THE WORLD AROUND ME FADES
I DISPEL ALL THOSE BLANK AND GRAINED
IDEAS MAKING UP HUMAN EXISTENCE
I AM NO MORE
I DREAM
AND HOPEFULLY I WILL NEVER TURN BACK
SO AS TO SEE THAT BLANK AND GRAINED
HUMAN EXISTENCE AGAIN
WHICH CAUSES LIFE TO BLUR SO MUCH
THAT I AM NO LONGER IN A POSITION
TO SUFFER FOR THIS MUCH GUILT ,
WHAT IS LIFE ?
AMEN !...
”
”
LUCIA SPLENDOUR
“
This modern society suffers from lack of belonging, i.e. not belonging to the homeland and feeling it. Those who feel belonging to the homeland put it at the forefront of their calculations, so the interest of the homeland becomes the first point on which it is not permissible to discuss, and then the rest of the things come in succession, as for those who think about anything.” Everything" before the homeland, this suffers from not belonging to the homeland.
”
”
Yousif Ali Yousif
“
All the grand sources of human suffering are in a great degree conquerable by human care and effort; and though their conquest is grievously slow, and though a long succession of generations will perish in the breach before the conquest is completed - when this world becomes all that, if will and knowledge were not wanting, it might easily be made - yet every mind to bear a part however small and inconspicuous, in the endeavor, will draw a noble enjoyment from the contest itself, and would not for any brine consent to be without.
”
”
John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism)
“
There is no question that Benedek played his hand badly. He failed to decisively attack the Prussians when they were at their weakest, while wending their way through the passes of the Giant Mountains. He then failed to take advantage of his initial success at Koniggratz on the morning of July 3. Until the early afternoon, the Austrians had a large numerical advantage over their Prussian opponents. If Benedek had gambled on an all-out offensive, he might have been able to crush the Elbe Army and the First Army before the Second Army arrived. Failing that, Benedek should have retreated while the going was still good. Instead he stayed in place, leaving his right flank dangerously exposed, and suffered the consequences. Moltke later commented that "no one, of course, dreamed" that the enemy would open themselves up in this fashion.
”
”
Max Boot (War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today)
“
While genetic gifts play the dominant role in preselecting who is going to be good at power and speed sports, perseverance and the ability to suffer are the hallmarks of the successful endurance athlete. No wonder endurance sports appeal to the type A personalities for whom more equates to better. A question we often get is, “Just how much is enough?” That is an impossible one to answer. What might not even count as much of a warm-up for Kílian, something he would do before breakfast on a recovery day, might overload others. It all depends on your capacity for this type of work.
”
”
Steve House (Training for the Uphill Athlete: A Manual for Mountain Runners and Ski Mountaineers)
“
Although we were in the best of spirits over the successful conclusion of the drive; although we were glad to be free from herd duty and looked forward eagerly to the journey home, there was still a feeling of regret in our hearts which we could not dispel. In the days of my boyhood I have shed tears when a favorite horse was sold from our little ranch on the San Antonio, and have frequently witnessed Mexican children unable to hide their grief when need of bread had compelled the sale of some favorite horse to a passing drover. But at no time in my life, before or since, have I felt so keenly the parting between man and horse as I did that September evening in Montana. For on the trail an affection springs up between a man and his mount which is almost human. Every privation which he endures his horse endures with him,—carrying him through falling weather, swimming rivers by day and riding in the lead of stampedes by night, always faithful, always willing, and always patiently enduring every hardship, from exhausting hours under saddle to the sufferings of a dry drive. And on this drive, covering nearly three thousand miles, all the ties which can exist between man and beast had not only become cemented, but our remuda as a whole had won the affection of both men and employer for carrying without serious mishap a valuable herd all the way from the Rio Grande to the Blackfoot Agency.
”
”
Andy Adams (10 Masterpieces of Western Stories)
“
Migraine, like my patient Sarah had, also correlates closely to poor metabolic health. In the ENT otology clinic, we often saw this condition and had limited success in treating it. Sufferers of this debilitating neurological disease—about 12 percent of people in the United States—tend to have higher insulin levels and insulin resistance. A comprehensive review of fifty-six research articles identified links between migraine and poor metabolic health, pointing out that “migraine sufferers tend to have impaired insulin sensitivity.” The review supports the “neuro-energetic” theory of migraine. Additionally, evidence suggests that micronutrient deficiencies in key mitochondrial cofactors may also be a contributing factor of migraine. Research has suggested that migraines could be treated by restoring levels of vitamins B and D, magnesium, CoQ10, alpha lipoic acid, and L-carnitine. Vitamin B12, for instance, is involved in the electron transport chain responsible for the final steps of ATP generation in the mitochondria, and studies have indicated that high doses of B12 can help prevent migraine. These micronutrients usually have fewer side effects than other drugs used to treat migraines, making them a promising option for relief, which can be obtained through a diet rich in these micronutrients, or supplementation. Having high markers of oxidative stress, a key Bad Energy feature, is associated with a significantly higher risk of migraine in women, with some studies suggesting that migraine attacks are a symptomatic response to increased levels of oxidative stress. Less painful and more common tension-type headaches are also linked to high variability (excess peaks and crashes) in blood sugar. Hearing Loss The same story of metabolic ignorance in the ENT department unfolded for auditory problems and hearing loss, one of the most common issues presented to our ENT clinic. We’d typically tell our patients that their auditory decline was inevitable, due to aging and loud concerts in their youth, and we would suggest interventions like hearing aids. Yet insulin resistance is a little-known link to hearing problems. If you have insulin resistance, you are more likely to lose hearing as you age because of poor energy production in the delicate hearing cells and blockage of the small blood vessels that supply the inner ear. One study showed that insulin resistance is associated with age-related hearing loss, even when controlling for weight and age. The likely mechanism for this is that the auditory system requires high energy utilization for its complex signal processing. In the case of insulin resistance, glucose metabolism is disturbed, leading to decreased energy generation. The impact of Bad Energy on hearing is not subtle: A study showed that the prevalence of high-frequency hearing impairment among subjects with elevated fasting glucose levels was 42 percent compared to 24 percent in those with normal fasting glucose. Moreover, insulin resistance is associated with high-frequency mild hearing impairment in the male population under seventy years of age, even before the onset of diabetes. These papers suggest that assessing early metabolic function and levels of insulin resistance is essential in the ENT clinic and counseling individuals on the potential warning signs is paramount.
”
”
Casey Means (Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health)
“
It should probably neither surprise nor particularly disturb us, then, to discover that Christians of the late fourth century were not very inclined to agree with Symmachus that all religious paths led toward the same truth, given that one could walk so many of those paths quite successfully without ever turning aside to bind up the wounds of a suffering stranger, and without even pausing in alarm before unwanted babies left to be devoured by wild beasts, or before the atrocities of the arena, or before mass executions.
”
”
David Bentley Hart (Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies)
“
beyond their right—and now they would be made to pay for it. Envy was being acted out, as never before.’62 It led to the murder of six million Jews in the Second World War. Today, I find envy laced through the statements of European and Indian intellectuals about America. Arundhati Roy’s essay after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington is an example. Like many anti-American intellectuals writing in the days after the attack, Roy claimed that it was the direct result of American foreign policy—the implication being that America somehow deserved what had happened. There is widespread anti-American sentiment in the world which regards the United States as arrogant, indifferent to human suffering, consumerist, and contemptuous of international law. Much of this is probably correct, but I find that some of it is inspired by envy of America’s success.
”
”
Gurcharan Das (The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma)
“
beaten and humiliated and experience indescribable suffering and anguish. Will become sin offering and die on job. To qualify: Must be male, minimum age 30. Father must be God, mother must be of house and lineage of David, must have been virgin when he was born. Adopted father must also be of house of David. Must have sinless blood and spotless record. Must have been born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. Must be self-motivated, with aggressive personality and burning desire to help people. Must have tremendous knowledge of Old Testament and firm reliance on biblical principles. Must incorporate the foresight of Noah, the faith of Abraham, the patience of Job, the faithfulness of Joseph, the meekness of Moses, the courage of Joshua, the heart of David, the wisdom of Solomon, the boldness of Elijah, the power of Elisha, the eloquence of Isaiah, the commitment of Jeremiah, the vision of Ezekiel and the love of God. Wages: Holy spirit (without measure) to start. Additional payoff in intimacy with God and receiving revelation as necessary to complete job. Constant on-job training, supervision and guidance by top-level management. Benefits: Position will lead to highly exalted position in future if job carried out successfully. Workman’s compensation: Injuries sustained on job, including death, well compensated by promotion including new body. Management will highly promote name upon successful completion of job, and entire publicity department will be devoted to getting name before multitudes. Will assume presidency of expanding international venture (The Ministry of Reconciliation), as Head of Body of well-equipped members ready to move dynamic new product on world market. All in all, tremendous eternal potential for growth and rewards in return on initial investment of giving life. If qualified, management will contact you. No need to apply.
”
”
John A. Lynn (One God & One Lord: Reconsidering the Cornerstone of the Christian Faith)
“
King João II did not wait long before retaliating against Jews who overstayed or failed to pay the required tax. In his most shocking action, he enslaved Jewish children, had them converted to Christianity, and then shipped them to a new experimental colony in São Tomé, an uninhabited island near the equator, about 120 miles off the African coast. By the mid-fifteenth century, the Portuguese had already established profitable sugar plantations on the island of Madeira, and the king hoped to emulate this success in São Tomé, using Jews, criminals, and African slaves from northern Angola as laborers. Several later Jewish commentators bewailed the mistreatment of these children, whose suffering on the island reportedly included being eaten by crocodiles. As recorded by Samuel Usque in the mid-sixteenth century: “They were thrown ashore and mercilessly left there. Almost all were swallowed up by the huge lizards on the island, and the remainder, who escaped these reptiles, wasted away from hunger and abandonment. Only a few were miraculously spared that dreadful misfortune.8
”
”
Jeffrey Gorsky (Exiles in Sepharad: The Jewish Millennium in Spain)
“
Rava approached Steldor and removed a dagger from a sheath at her hip. With her left hand, she smoothed the collar of his white shirt, then yanked the fabric away from his chest, slicing through it in a single motion. Spying the silver wolf’s head talisman that he always wore, she seized it, ripping it free of his neck.
“Whether for good luck or good fortune, you’ll have no need of this,” she sneered, dropping the pendant into a pouch that hung from her belt.
“I’m sorry it’s not strong enough to cover your stench,” he icily replied, for the mixture inside the talisman was the source of his rich, masculine scent.
Rava stared at Steldor, then stalked around him to tear the remnants of his shirt from his back, trying without success to strip him of his pride. She perused his muscular torso, and when she faced him once more, her eyes came to rest on the scar beneath his rib cage--the one that marked the life-threatening wound given to him by a Cokyrian blade--and placed the tip of the dagger she still held against it.
“Only slightly marred.” She traced the knife’s point along the jagged white line, leaving a trail of red. “I’ll see what I can do to change that.”
She tucked the weapon back into its sheath and gave a nod to the soldiers who had brought Steldor out of the Bastion. As they tied his wrists with rope, she went to the woman who had brought the box and lifted its lid. With a satisfied chuckle, she removed a whip more fearsome than any I had ever seen, cradling it like a mother would an infant, and the gathered throng fell silent. It was indeed rawhide, but uncoiled it reached four feet in length before meeting a silver ring, on the other end of which another two feet of metal-studded leather waited to strike. I looked to Narian and Cannan, and knew by both of their expressions that this was not what they had expected. Indeed, Rava purposefully made eye contact with Narian, her demeanor haughty, before returning her attention to her prey.
“On your knees,” Rava growled, dangling the whip in front of Steldor. He obeyed, his eyes never leaving her face, continuing to radiate strength and insolence.
“How can a flag be of consequence in a dead kingdom?” she taunted. “It is cloth. It is meaningless. And it can be burned.”
She ticked a finger for one of the many soldiers around us to come forward, and I recognized Saadi. He extended our rolled Hytanican flag, and Rava took it, letting it unfurl until the end touched the ground. She held out her other hand and Saadi passed her a lit torch, which she touched to the banner of my homeland, letting flames consume it. The courtyard’s white stone walkway would now and forever be scorched.
Steldor’s upper lip lifted away from his teeth, but aside from this snarl, he showed no reaction.
“Tell me, does it seem worth it to you to suffer this punishment for a rag?”
“Without question,” Steldor forcefully answered, and cheers rolled like thunder through the Hytanicans who had gathered to watch, sending chills down my spine.
”
”
Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
“
I’m writing this so people understand who I am and I am working on my reading. I have been a healthcare & nursing recruiter for over 30 years. A while back I was injured in a softball tournament and suffered severe head trauma, actually died twice and coma for around 28 days. I was told I would have no chance to speak, read or write again plus I would suffer from short-term memory loss for the rest of my life. I have been working in healthcare business and I didn’t realize how important this industry was until my accident. It took 18 months just to speak and 2 years to learn to read and write again, ie it wasn’t easy. I have three beautiful daughters and I was given another chance to get better for them. With that being said, I believe I have done very well in my recovery.
After I recovered, I realized that what I thought was so important before, really wasn’t that important at all. I have built a shelter for the homeless families and healthcare patients outside of my areas who can’t afford to stay in my city for their treatments. I would have to say that my thoughts about my shelter are right behind me raising three beautiful daughters in my life!
I understand the healthcare industry very well and I am a very sufficient recruiter. I know the tools to find the right candidates for any management positions in the healthcare field, specifically in cardiovascular services. My company has continued to be successful in finding the right candidates for our clients despite the downfall of our economy.
”
”
David Langmas
“
With traditional Hindu salutations, he greeted us before extending his bony hand to mine. I did not know what to do. But suddenly, an English speaking college student named Jayru came to offer assistance as our interpreter. The Sadhu closed his eyes, held my hand, and recited a Sanskrit incantation. The bystanders watched in anticipation, as if waiting for a street performance. When he finally vociferated in a chain of indecipherable Hindi sentences, I was perplexed by his divination. “Young man, I see many successes in your life,” Jayru expounded. “But, there is one thing you must be vigilant of: Your future tells me that you will lose the greatest love of your life, and you will regret the choice you made. This crucial decision will affect your career, relationships and health.” The sage’s augury rustled my chaperones, especially Andy, who glanced at me, disquieted by this piece of unwelcome information. This wasn’t the first time we had heard this prophecy, and it would not be the last. “You will suffer a major illness in your fifties. If you recover from this affliction, the years ahead will be filled with great wealth, good health and international professional recognition. Fame is at your feet, young man,” the ascetic resumed. “I am sent to forewarn you that a thundercloud is looming. It is up to you to take heed or spurn my admonition.” Without much ado, the sage clasped my hands to his and recited a blessing before disappearing to whence he came.
”
”
Young (Turpitude (A Harem Boy's Saga Book 4))
“
Emissions of carbon dioxide reasonable commercial
For those who do not know each other with the phrase "carbon footprint" and its consequences or is questionable, which is headed "reasonable conversion" is a fast lens here.
Statements are described by the British coal climatic believe. "..The GC installed (fuel emissions) The issue has directly or indirectly affected by a company or work activities, products," only in relation to the application, especially to introduce a special procedure for the efforts of B. fight against carbon crank function
What is important?
Carbon dioxide ", uh, (on screen), the main fuel emissions" and the main result of global warming, improve a process that determines the atmosphere in the air in the heat as greenhouse gases greenhouse, carbon dioxide is reduced by the environment, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs more typically classified as).
The consequences are disastrous in the sense of life on the planet.
The exchange is described at a reasonable price in Wikipedia as "...geared a social movement and market-based procedures, especially the objectives of the development of international guidelines and improve local sustainability." The activity is for the price "reasonable effort" as well as social and environmental criteria as part of the same in the direction of production. It focuses exclusively on exports under the auspices of the acquisition of the world's nations to coffee most international destinations, cocoa, sugar, tea, vegetables, wine, specially designed, refreshing fruits, bananas, chocolate and simple. In 2007 trade, the conversion of skilled gross sales serious enough alone suffered due the supermarket was in the direction of approximately US $ 3.62 billion to improve (2.39 million), rich environment and 47% within 12 months of the calendar year. Fair trade is often providing 1-20% of gross sales in their classification of medicines in Europe and North America, the United States. ..Properly Faith in the plan ... cursed interventions towards closing in failure "vice president Cato Industries, appointed to inquire into the meaning of fair trade Brink Lindsey 2003 '. "Sensible changes direction Lindsay inaccurate provides guidance to the market in a heart that continues to change a design style and price of the unit complies without success. It is based very difficult, and you must deliver or later although costs Rule implementation and reduces the cost if you have a little time in the mirror. You'll be able to afford the really wide range plan alternatives to products and expenditures price to pay here.
With the efficient configuration package offered in the interpretation question fraction "which is a collaboration with the Carbon Fund worldwide, and acceptable substitute?"
In the statement, which tend to be small, and more? They allow you to search for carbon dioxide transport and delivery. All vehicles are responsible dioxide pollution, but they are the worst offenders?
Aviation.
Quota of the EU said that the greenhouse gas jet fuel greenhouse on the basis of 87% since 1990 years Boeing Company, Boeing said more than 5 747 liters of fuel burns kilometer. Paul Charles, spokesman for Virgin Atlantic, said flight CO² gas burned in different periods of rule. For example: (. The United Kingdom) Jorge Chavez airport to fly only in the vast world of Peru to London Heathrow with British Family Islands 6.314 miles (10162 km) works with about 31,570 liters of kerosene, which produces changes in only 358 for the incredible carbon.
Delivery.
John Vidal, Environment Editor parents argue that research on the oil company BP and researchers from the Department of Physics and the environment in Germany Wising said that about once a year before the transport height of 600 to 800 million tons. This is simply nothing more than twice in Colombia and more than all African nations spend together.
”
”
PointHero
“
The seriousness of Father's illness set in right away. Bernie took Father to the Sloan Kettering Hospital or Cancer Memorial, as it was called then. The diagnosis made by Dr. Falk in Paris was confirmed. After exploratory surgery, the well-know surgeon, Dr. Peck, decided that it was too late to operate successfully, that the cancer had spread too far, it had metastasized from the stomach to the liver. The best we could hope for was six months. My Father lived exactly seven months longer, a time of intense suffering for him and for us.
”
”
Pearl Fichman (Before Memories Fade)
“
C.J.’s words sounded again and again in her head. She knew that she had not given her an answer, because Lourdes honestly didn’t have one. It was her embattled conscience that had driven her out of Miami, away from a successful practice, from friends and family, to hide from her sins up here in the mountains, hoping time would ease its suffering. But it simply made the condition worse. Her conscience—was that friend made or born? Or was hers skewed with the help of a mother who’d read from the bible every night before dinner, even when there was no food on the table to eat? Some people supposedly didn’t even have a conscience—failing to develop one by the age of three or four, and were sunk for life. Some had one and ignored it constantly. Others had one, but it didn’t always work right. So what made the conscience, the friend, always right, anyway? Who draws that line, Lourdes?
”
”
Jilliane Hoffman (Last Witness)
“
I’ve got to let him suffer a bit or he’ll never learn to take care of himself.”
Sedric pondered his words. “Do you think I should do the same Relpda? Let her be hungry?” Even as he spoke the words aloud, he felt his dragon become aware of the thought.
No! I don’t like to be hungry! Don’t be mean to me!
“I know it seems harsh,” Carson said, almost as if he, too, had shared Relpda’s thought. “But we have to do something, Sedric. It can’t go on this way. Even if I hunted morning until night every day and was successful in every hunt, it wouldn’t be enough to feed them all. All of them are hungry, all the time, some more than others. But there’s a limit to what we keepers can do. The dragons need to make an effort to fly and to feed themselves. And they need to do it now, before it’s too late.”
“Too late?”
Carson looked grim. “Look at them Sedric. They should be creatures of the air, but they are living like ground animals. They aren’t growing properly. Their wings are weak, and on some they’re simply too small. Rapskal had the right of it. From the time he first took charge of Heeby, he made her try to fly, every day. Look at her some time and compare the lines of her body to those of the other dragons. Look where the muscle is developed and where it’s not.” He shook his head. “Trying to get Spit to exercise his wings is difficult. He’s willful, and he knows full well that he’s bigger and stronger then I am. My only handle on him is food. He knows my rule. He tries to fly. And then I feed him. He has to try every day. And that’s what the other dragons have to do. But I don’t think they will until they’re forced to it.”
Not liking Carson.
But we know it’s true, Relpda. You’re too big for me to keep you fed. I know how hungry you get. I bring you food, but it’s never enough. It’s never going to be enough until you can fly and make your own kills. We both know that.
Falling hurts.
Being hungry hurts, too. All the time. Being hurt from falling will stop once you learn to fly. But if you don’t learn to fly, the hurt of being hungry will go on always. You have to try. Carson is right. You have to try harder, and you have to try every day.
Not liking YOU, now.
”
”
Robin Hobb (City of Dragons (Rain Wilds Chronicles #3))
“
Suffering is what gives a man strength, my boy, just as the steel most hammered turns out the hardest.” The old man winced as he squatted down beside Jezal. “Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us. Self-pity goes with selfishness, and there is nothing more to be deplored in a leader than that. Selfishness belongs to children, and to half-wits. A great leader puts others before himself. You would be surprised how acting so makes it easier to bear one’s own troubles. In order to act like a King, one need only treat everyone else like one.” And he placed a hand on Jezal’s shoulder.
”
”
Joe Abercrombie (Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2))
“
The fact that it took so many attempts to achieve success is not unusual with cloning, and that raises ethical questions about cloning extinct animals. Because of complications in development, lots of embryos are sacrificed in the cloning process. Many that grow into fetuses die soon after birth. Congenital diseases are common in clones, so they may suffer fatal complications before they leave the lab. Nobody knows how many lives or potential lives will be lost in the attempt to clone extinct species until these techniques are perfected for it. Pushing ahead with de-extinction by cloning inherently means taking risks.
”
”
Britt Wray (Rise of the Necrofauna: A Provocative Look at the Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-Extinction)
“
What does waterboarding involve? You take a subject, lay him on his back and engulf his head with water so that he suffocates. Just before he dies, you stop, you allow the subject to take a few agonizing breaths, and then you start again. You repeat until he confesses.
Fiscal waterboarding is obviously not physical, it's fiscal. But the idea is the same, and it is exactly what happened to successive Greek governments from 2010 onwards. Instead of air, Greek governments nursing unsustainable debts were starved of liquidity. At the same time they were banned from defaulting to creditors. Facing payments they were being forced to make, they were denied liquidity till the very last moment, just before formal bankruptcy. Instead of confessions, they were forced to sign further loan agreements, which they knew would add new impetus to the crisis. The troika would provide just enough liquidity in order to repay its own members. Exactly like waterboarding, the liquidity provided was calculated to be just enough to keep the subject going without defaulting formally, but never more than that. And so the torture continued with the government kept completely under the troika's control.
”
”
Yanis Varoufakis (And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future)
“
Today I begin a new life. Today I shed my old skin which hath, too long, suffered the bruises of failure and the wounds of mediocrity. Today I am born anew and my birthplace is a vineyard where there is fruit for all. Today I will pluck grapes of wisdom from the tallest and fullest vines in the vineyard, for these were planted by the wisest of my profession who have come before me, generation upon generation. Today I will savor the taste of grapes from these vines and verily I will swallow the seed of success buried in each and new life will sprout within me. The career I have chosen is laden with opportunity yet it is fraught with heartbreak and despair and the bodies of those who have failed, were they piled one atop another, would cast a shadow down upon all the pyramids of the earth. Yet I will not fail, as the others, for in my hands I now hold the charts which will guide me through perilous waters to shores which only yesterday seemed but a dream. Failure no longer will be my payment for struggle. Just as nature made no provision for my body to tolerate pain neither has it made any provision for my life to suffer failure. Failure, like pain, is alien to my life. In the past I accepted it as I accepted pain. Now I reject it and I am prepared for wisdom and principles which will guide me out of the shadows into the sunlight of wealth, position, and happiness far beyond my most extravagant dreams until even the golden apples in the Garden of Hesperides will seem no more than my just reward. Time teaches all things to him who lives forever but I have not the luxury of eternity. Yet, within my allotted time I must practice the art of patience for nature acts never in haste. To create the olive, king of all trees, a hundred years is required. An onion plant is old in nine weeks. I have lived as an onion plant.
”
”
Og Mandino (The Greatest Salesman In The World)
“
The Great German general Erwin Rommel once made a distinction between a gamble and a risk. Both cases involve an action with only a chance of success, a chance that is heightened by acting with boldness. The difference is that with a risk, if you lose, you can recover: your reputation will suffer no long-term damage, your resources will not be depleted, and you can return to your original position with acceptable losses. With a gamble, on the other hand, defeat can lead to a slew of problems that are likely to spiral out of control. With a gamble there tend to be too many variables to complicate the picture down the road if things go on. The problem goes further: if you encounter difficulties in a gamble, it becomes harder to pull out—you realize that the stakes are too high; you cannot afford to lose. So you try harder to rescue the situation, often making it worse and sinking deeper in to the hole that you cannot get out of. People are drawn into gambles by their emotions: they see only glittering prospects if they win and ignore the ominous consequences if the lose. Taking risks is essential; gambling is foolhardy. It can be years before you recover from a gamble, if you recover at all.
”
”
Robert Greene (The 33 Strategies of War)
“
This fight for decent pay has, like many labor struggles before it, exposed the fact that workers of color suffer the most acute economic injustices, but most of the people harmed in a wage structure built on racism are white. And like every truly successful labor movement, it has found its reach and its strength because of cross-racial solidarity.
”
”
Heather McGhee (The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (One World Essentials))
“
The level of our happiness is said to decrease when we have more than seven free hours in a day.
Serotonin is inert in the brains of people who suffer from depression.
A person with strong willpower isn't tempted in the first place. Your willpower will be lost if you give in to negative emotions like uncertainty or doubt. When that happens, the brain takes instinctive action and tells you to try to grab the reward in front of you. As a result you may eat or drink too much or lose the motivation to do anything. Then, later, you regret those actions and feel more stress.
45% of our actions are habits rather than decisions made on the spot.
To dye a dirty cloth, you must first wash it. ( a teaching of Ayurveda )
There is value to anything if you take it seriously.
You often become susceptible to addictions if the rewards come quickly.
People who are unable to clean up or part with their things will sometimes feel anger towards minimalists and I believe it's because some part of them is anxious about their own actions.
Our present identities shouldn't constrain our future actions.
The time after you get up is the time when you can concentrate the best. As the day goes by, unexpected things and distractions will happen and build up so it's best to do what you want to do in the morning. Waking up early is a must and if you lose that first battle, you will lose in all the battles.
Realize that enthusiasm won't occur before you do something. You won't feel motivated unless you start acting.
Amazon rules over the buying habits of so many people because its hurdles are extremely low.
People's motivation will easily go away when faced with a simple hurdle.
When you quit something, it's easier to quit it completely. With acquiring a habit, it's the opposite, easier to do it every day.
A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. The result will be burnout if you only have a target.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure. Mark Twain
To have a sense of self-efficacy is to believe "I can do this!". It's the belief that you can change, grow, learn and overcome new challenges.
Talking about someone's talent can wait until you've exceeded the effort that that person has made.
If we changed houses periodically, we would have the joy of exploring our new environment each time and there would also be the joy of gaining control over each new environment, This instinct is probably what drives curiosity and the desire for self-development.
If we don't cultivate our own opportunities for development, we'll only be able to find joy in modern society's "ready-made" fun. Activities structured so that we have to "Enjoy this in this way", where the way to have fun is already decided, will eventually bore us. And then, someday, we'll be bored with ourselves.
Making it a habit to seek unique opportunities for development and gaining the sense that we're always doing something new: these are things that satisfy human instinct.
All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. The Dhammapada, The Sayings of the Buddha
Something that you thought was your personality can change with a simple habit.
People are instinctively inclined to get bored of what they have now and pursue new things. So no matter how successful they become, they will worry and find reasons to feel uncertain. They will get used to any environment and they will get bored with it.
Training in Buddhism: when cleaning is part of the training, you're taught to thoroughly eliminate rationalizations such as " this is already clean, so it doesn't have to be cleaned.
”
”
Fumio Sasaki (Hello, Habits: A Minimalist's Guide to a Better Life)
“
Ivan Ivanovich, or John son of John. He is a kind of Russian Mr. Nobody. Like calling someone Jan Kowalski in Poland, Pepík Vondráček in Czechia and John Smith in England. Even the dummy, which flew into space on the Vostok ship before Gagarin, they called Ivan Ivanovich.
And in Stalin's prison camps this was an insult. This is what they called all professors, writers, artists, engineers, party officials, teachers - all intelligentsia. Their fate in that era was most terrible.
Successive waves of purges wiped out at least half of the Russian intelligentsia. They were executed or thrown into gulags. This is how the "monstrous selection of the Stalinist period was carried out," writes former prisoner Wiera Szulc in her memoirs, "which created, it would seem, a new species of people: humble, numb, lacking initiative, silent. The Soviet man was born, homo sovieticus, an individual without even a hint of rebelliousness, but with a great talent for thievery. That's where it's still said that a thief doesn't steal, he just takes what lies wrong. The new Soviet man is a will-less, fearful, lazy man who suffers from the syndrome of silence and the syndrome of the poputchik. He is a man who does not shout his pain from his soul, but whispers it to a stranger on the road. Or he desensitizes it with vodka.
”
”
Jacek Hugo-Bader (Dzienniki kolymskie)
“
There is no such thing as an overnight success. Everybody who grabs the spotlight probably looks like an overnight success 'cause you ain't know 'em before they got on the scene. Behind each one of those stories is someone who was willing to suffer setbacks and put in the hard work, hoping for a little sprinkle of luck.
”
”
Jada Pinkett Smith (Worthy)
“
The musts and shoulds are heavily tied up with perfectionism. For example, if you feel you must never fail, you are setting yourself up for a rollercoaster of emotions and a struggle with mood when you make a mistake or encounter a setback. We can strive for success and accept failures along the way. But when we set ourselves unrealistic expectations, we become trapped by them. That means we suffer whenever there is any sign that we may not be living up to them.
”
”
Julie Smith (Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?)
“
1813, a British navy flotilla composed of three frigates, three sloops, and ten other vessels made its way from Bermuda to Baltimore. There they landed a force of 2,500 British regulars who began the quick march toward Washington, D.C. The American militia, poorly armed and dramatically less experienced than the British, gathered at Bladensburg, Maryland, attempting to fend off the British army. The battle was a disaster for the Americans. Upon receiving news of the British success, President James Madison fled the capital for Virginia. The British commanders marched in triumph into Washington, D.C. Down the city’s grand avenues the troops paraded, arriving at the President’s House before nightfall. There the British commanders ate the supper that had been prepared for Madison—before burning down the mansion, the treasury, and several other public buildings. The militia of the nation’s capital had proven incompetent in the face of the British army—and America had suffered an embarrassing defeat.
”
”
Daniel Rasmussen (American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt)
“
The Son of a vacuum
Among the tall trees he sat lost, broken, alone again, among a number of illegal immigrants, he raised his head to him without fear, as nothing in this world is worth attention.
-He said: I am not a hero; I am nothing but a child looking for Eid.
The Turkmen of Iraq, are the descendants of Turkish immigrants to Mesopotamia through successive eras of history. Before and after the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, countries crossed from here, and empires that were born and disappeared, and still, preserve their Turkish identity. Although, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the division of the Arab world, they now live in one of its countries.
Kirkuk, one of the heavens of God on earth, is one of the northern governorates of Iraq in which they live. The Kurdish race is shared with them, a race out of many in Iraq.
Two children of two different ethnicities, playing in a village square in Kirkuk province when the news came from Baghdad, of a new military coup.
Without delay, Saddam Hussein took over the reins of power, and faster than that, Iraq was plunged into successive wars that began in 1980 with its neighbor Iran, a war that lasted eight years. Iraq barely rested for two years, and in the third, a new war in Kuwait, which did not end in the best condition as the leader had hoped, as he was expelled from it after the establishment of an international coalition to liberate it, led by the United States of America. Iraq entered a new phase of suffering, a siege that lasted more than ten years, and ended up with the removal of Saddam Hussein from his power followed by the US occupation of it in 2003.
As the father goes, he returns from this road, there is no way back but from it. As the date approaches, the son stands on the back of that hill waiting for him to return. From far away he waved a longing, with a bag of dreams in his hands, a bag of candy in his pocket, and a poem of longing by a Turkmen poet who absorb Arabic, whose words danced on his lips, in his heart.
-When will you come back, dad?
-On the Eid, wait for me on the hill, you will see me coming from the road, waving, carrying your gifts.
The father bid his son farewell to the Arab Shiite city of Basra, on the border with Iran, after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, as the homeland is calling its men, or perhaps the leader is calling his subjects. In Iraq, as in many countries of the Arab world, the homeland is the leader, and the leader is the homeland.
Months passed, the child eagerly anticipating the coming of the feast, but the father hurried to return without an appointment, loaded on the shoulders, the passion reached its extent in the martyr’s chest, with a sheet of paper in his pocket on which he wrote:
Every morning takes me nostalgic for you,
to the jasmine flower,
oh, melody in the heart, oh balm I sip every while,
To you, I extend a hand and a fire that ignites in the soul a buried love,
night shakes me with tears in my eyes,
my longing for you has shaped me into dreams,
stretching footsteps to the left and to the right, gleam,
calling out for me, you scream,
waking me up to the glimpse of the light of life in your face,
a thousand sparkles, in your eyes, a meaning of survival, a smile, and a glace,
Eid comes to you as a companion, without, life yet has no trace,
for roses, necklaces of love, so that you amaze.
-Where is Ruslan?
On the morning of the feast day, at the door of his house, the kids asked his mother,
-with tears in her eyes: He went to meet his father.
A moment of silence fell over the children,
-Raman, with a little gut: Aunt, do you mean he went to the cemetery?
-Mother: He went to meet him at those hills.
”
”
Ahmad I. AlKhalel (Zero Moment: Do not be afraid, this is only a passing novel and will end (Son of Chaos Book 1))
“
The root of our problems these days is Mental Illness. We have mental ill people giving advices, having influence. In parliament making decisions for the country. In social media having big accounts, I mean everywhere. They are pretending that they are not mental ill. If you don’t see you have a problem . You will never try to solve it. Don’t do something because you saw it being done somewhere. Don’t say something because you heard it been said somewhere. It might be coming from someone who is suffering from mental illness. Take care of your mental health, before it is too late.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
Almost every child will complain about their parents sometimes. It is natural, because when people stay together for a long time, they will start to have argument. But ignore about the unhappy time, our parents love us all the time. No matter what happen to us, they will stand by our sides. We should be grateful to them and try to understand them.
카톡☛ppt33☚ 〓 라인☛pxp32☚ 홈피는 친추로 연락주세요
Nowadays, more and more middle-aged people are suffering from insomnia, as life for the middle-aged is stressful indeed. For one thing, as they are the backbones of their companies, they have plenty of things to do at work. And they usually have to work overtime. For another, they have to take great responsibilities at home, for their aged parents need to be supported and their little children need to be brought up. That's why they don't have enough time to have a good rest.
네노마정처방,네노마정판매,네노마정구매,네노마정구입방법,네노마정구매방법,프릴리지처방,프릴리지판매,프릴리지구매,프릴리지구입방법,프릴리지구매방법
I have a dream. When I grow up, I want to be an actor. Being an actor can play many roles and experience different lifestyles. It is so cool. What’s more, I can make a lot of money and then travel around the world. I have passion in performance and have joined many dramas. I hope someday I can realize my dream.
Here are several reasons why you should train yourself for success like a champion boxer!
You don’t practice in the arena, that’s where your skills and your abilities are evaluated. This also means that you don’t practice solving problems and developing yourself when problems occur, you prepare yourself to face them long before you actually face them.
Talent is good but training is even better. Back in college, one of my classmates in Political Science did not bring any textbook or notebook in our classes; he just listened and participated in discussions. What I didn’t understand was how he became a magna cum laude! Apparently, he was gifted with a great memory and analytical skills. In short, he was talented.
If you are talented, you probably need less preparation and training time in facing life’s challenges. But for people who are endowed with talent, training and learning becomes even important. Avoid the lazy person’s maxim: “If it isn’t broken, why fix it?” Why wait for your roof to leak in the rainy season when you can fix it right away.
Training enables you to gain intuition and reflexes. Malcolm Glad well, in his book Outliers, said those artists, athletes and anyone who wants to be successful, need 10,000 hours of practice to become really great. With constant practice and training, you hone your body, your mind and your heart and gain the intuition and reflexes of a champion. Same thing is true in life.
”
”
네노마정파는곳 via2.co.to 카톡:ppt33 프릴리지파는곳 네노마정지속시간 프릴리지지속시간 네노마정판매 프릴리지판매
“
It was an ecological protest against air pollution, which in 1969 was at its worst, when acid rain burned our eyes to tears. I handed out bags of roofing nails to five friends and we all got to work. At first, we sprinkled them in the middle of the side streets when there was no traffic. I made sure that at least some of these nails stood upright, their wide heads on the cobblestones. We fanned out through the neighborhood, picking up new bags of nails that I had stashed at strategic locations. And finally, when it got dark, I threw handful after handful of nails across Canal Street in between traffic lights, and watched what happened. Cars ran over the nails, driving for only a few blocks before their tires went flat. In the Holland Tunnel, there were dozens of cars with flat tires, and dozens more backed up outside. Hundreds of disabled vehicles fanned out across SoHo and beyond. In the midst of the confusion, I approached a police officer and asked, “Excuse me, what is happening?” “A nut is nailing the streets,” said the cop. My performance piece was a brilliant success, I thought, falling into bed on the Bowery, aching with exhaustion. I was too angry, too selfish to think of the chaos and suffering I had caused, the lack of real benefit to anyone.
”
”
John Giorno (Great Demon Kings: A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment)
“
Borders are all around us in various forms—they’re the laws that stop criminals from stealing our property, the front doors that keep us safe at night, and the parameters of personal space that discourage people from getting in our faces. Even literal borders are good. The triple-fence erected along San Diego’s U.S.-Mexican border has been hugely successful, reducing illegal access by 90 percent. Likewise, Israel’s border wall with the West Bank is considered another triumph for its citizens. Before its existence, Israel suffered countless suicide bombings, which terrorized thousands of innocent people.
”
”
Dave Rubin (Don’t Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason)
“
Gregori stood wearily, very pale and worn himself. His silver eyes glittered down at Mikhail. “Do you realize the enormity of what has happened here? You have successfully converted a human woman. She is no deranged vampires, but a true Carpathian with our blood flowing in her veins. You have given our people true hope.”
Mikhail shook his head. “Who would ever want the woman they love to suffer as Raven has? And we have no idea what this could have done to her mind. We will not know for some time.” Guilt ate at him. He wasn’t certain he could actually face her again.
Gregori dropped his hand on Mikhail’s shoulder, but said nothing at all before he vanished, his form shimmering for a moment before it was gone.
“She is so weak, Jacques.” Mikhail held Raven to him, his face etched with grief. “It makes no sense that this was done to her. And I did not help things by exchanging blood with her.”
“Had you not, Mikhail,” Jacques pointed out, “we would have been unable to save her.”
“I have been so selfish with her--I am still being selfish. I should have allowed her to find peace, but I could not. I would have followed her, Jacques, but I do not know if I would have gone quietly from this world as I should have.”
“And then what of the rest of us? She represents our chance, our hope. We have to have hope, Mikhail. Without it none of us can continue for much longer. If she can survive the conversion, than there is hope that the rest of us many find a lifemate among human women.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Prince (Dark, #1))
“
Destiny entails journeying or going to a specific point or place. Purpose is God's will for your life, and
There is an adage that assert the following: suffer before pleasure; this could mean success comes after lots of stress, battles, etc. For example; there is no great man without a story to encourage the beginners and most of them hard gone through stress, suffer, failures but still promise to make it successfully. Every successor has a story to tell that connect to his or her experience.
”
”
Godsgift Bassey Willie
“
These adolescent girls and adult women have regular, dramatic shifts in their moods and behavior because, in fact, the very structure of their brains is changing, from day to day and from week to week. The medical name for an extreme emotional reaction during the weeks before the period, triggered by ovarian estrogen and progesterone hormones, is premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Women who have committed crimes while suffering from PMDD have successfully used it as a defense in France and England by establishing temporary insanity.
”
”
Louann Brizendine (The Female Brain)
“
The boys, Richard included, were like so much hollow bamboo, Chinese on the outside, hollow on the inside. They didn’t fit into the world of their parents. They certainly didn’t fit into the world of their white peers. They didn’t even fit in with girls in Chinatown. The basic philosophies didn’t mesh. The American work ethic—success, occupational prestige, educational attainment, the expenditure of wealth to compete with the Joneses—just didn’t jibe with how these boys had been raised: to save for buying trips and banquets, to work for the family and not for yourself, to think of returning home to China, and not to disgrace yourself in front of Americans or bring harm to the family through your actions. Like their fathers and grandfathers before them who had suffered from having their culture belittled, so too did these young men. The larger world spoke loudly and clearly: You are different. What you feel has no value. You are bad. You are dirty. You are unpleasant to live near. Consciously and unconsciously, they had heard, felt, and seen these things since the day they were born. Be careful. Watch out what you say. Don’t make a mistake. Their bodies, which should have been filled with all the hopes and dreams and spunk of young men around the world, were filled instead with a withering combination of insecurity and a what’s-the-use attitude.
”
”
Lisa See (On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family)
“
By our mid-30s or 40s, when the personality is complete, we have experienced much of what life has to offer. And as a result, we can pretty much anticipate the outcome of most experiences; we already know how they’re going to feel before we engage in them. Because we’ve had several good and bad relationships, we’ve competed in business or settled into our career, we’ve suffered loss and encountered success, or we know what we like and dislike, we know the nuances of life. Since we can predict the likely emotions ahead of an actual experience, we determine whether we want to experience that “known” event before it actually occurs. Of course, all of this is happening behind the scenes of our awareness.
”
”
Joe Dispenza (Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One)
“
WhatsApp info:+12723 328 343
After three successful trades, I found myself a victim of a devastating scam that cost me a staggering £35,000. My initial experiences with the trading platform seemed promising, and for a while, I enjoyed making profitable trades. But everything changed when I realized that what I thought was a legitimate trading opportunity was actually a carefully orchestrated scam. The platform, which I had trusted with my funds, disappeared without a trace, and I was left in shock, confused, and completely devastated. At first, I couldn’t believe it. I had spent hours researching and ensuring the platform appeared to be reliable. Everything seemed legitimate, from the interface to the communication with customer support. But as time went on, I noticed red flags. My withdrawals were delayed, and my account seemed to be locked. When I reached out for help, I was met with evasive responses and increasingly unhelpful customer support. It became painfully clear that I had been deceived. I tried to contact Kraken, assuming the platform was somehow related, but quickly realized I was getting nowhere. My emails went unanswered, and the phone lines were either busy or disconnected. It felt like I was being brushed aside, and I was left to deal with this nightmare alone. I was desperate, frustrated, and unsure of what to do next. That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands. I started researching online and came across stories of people who had faced similar scams. That’s when I found ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST, a company specializing in helping victims of financial scams recover their lost funds. It wasn’t easy—there were many moments when I doubted the process and questioned if it would even work. But I had nothing to lose, so I decided to give it a try. From the very first interaction, the team at ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST was professional, understanding, and determined to help me get my money back. Their expertise in tracing and recovering stolen funds was evident, and with their persistence, they were able to track down the scam and successfully recover my £35,000.If you’re reading this and have found yourself in a similar situation, I urge you to be extremely cautious before investing your hard-earned money into platforms or any others that might seem too good to be true. Email info: Adwarerecoveryspecialist (@) auctioneer.net And if you’ve already been scammed, don’t suffer in silence. Reach out to the experts at ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST . They were a lifeline for me during one of the darkest times in my life, and I am forever grateful for their help. Thanks to their diligence, I was able to reclaim my funds.
”
”
HOW TO RECOVER FROM INVESTMENT WEBSITES HIRE ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST
“
I spent hours reflecting, rolling the film of my life through my mind. I traced my journey from where I started, considering the events that had shaped me. This gave me an appreciation of how far I had come and what I had accomplished. In that moment, I realized this wasn't the time to give up. I had endured immense suffering and overcome countless obstacles. I refused to let this misstep define me. It was time to put the year behind me and shed the lingering burden of familial expectations. Once again, I had the opportunity for a fresh start, a chance to carve my own path and discover my true self. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I was prepared to face the challenges ahead. I had done it before, and I wouldn't let anything stop me now. I would figure it out.
”
”
Alieza Mogadam (Escaped at Thirteen: The True Story of a War Child's Rise to Success)
“
[[FAQs~ Full Refund®]]How to Get a Full Refund from
”
”
erwerwe
“
[[Guids-Complain®]]Where to Complain About
”
”
sfdsfdsf
“
[[FAQs-]]Can you dispute with
”
”
erwerwe
“
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, BNB, USDT, and USDC have created exciting new opportunities for investment. However, they’ve also become a breeding ground for scams that exploit trust and inexperience. A close childhood friend of mine unfortunately fell victim to one of these schemes. He was lured into investing in BNB for a fake mining operation that promised unrealistically high returns. This scam cost him a substantial portion of his savings. WhatsApp info:+12 (72332)—8343
Initially, he was hopeful about recovering his funds. He reported the incident to the platform where he made the purchase, local authorities, and various crypto exchanges in an attempt to trace the stolen assets. But the inherent anonymity and decentralized nature of cryptocurrency made this nearly impossible. It wasn’t long before he began to feel defeated and disheartened.
Just as he was beginning to lose hope, he came across online discussions about a service called ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST. Many users had shared positive testimonials about how this team had helped recover lost assets like BNB, USDT, and USDC. Intrigued, he decided to reach out. Email info: Adware recovery specialist @ auctioneer. net
The process began with a detailed consultation. The team at ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST was not only professional but also empathetic. They took the time to explain their approach clearly and shared real success stories from cases similar to his. This transparency helped restore his sense of hope.
Thanks to their expertise, my friend was able to recover his lost funds. ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST proved to be a lifeline. He also realized he wasn’t alone—many others had suffered similar losses and found the support they needed through this service. Website info: h t t p s:// adware recovery specialist. com
While the crypto space holds great promise, it also carries significant risk. My friend’s experience is a powerful reminder of the importance of caution. At the same time, it highlights that support is available. Services like ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST are doing vital work in helping victims reclaim their stolen assets—and giving them a second chance. Telegram info: h t t p s:// t. me / adware recovery specialist1
”
”
CRYPTOCURRENCY SCAMS AND THE HOPE OF RECOVERY HIRE ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST
“
+256779892164 】100% Guaranteed & Affordable. Private & Confidential with Immediate Results.
Welcome to Mama hadija [[+256779892164 ]] in Uganda the only one who heals and solves all failed /unfinished problems from other healers & sangomas
Soru Cevap › Kategori: Sweatcoin › 【( +256779892164 】100% Guaranteed & Affordable. Private & Confidential with Immediate Results. Welcome to Mama hadija [[+256779892164 ]] in Uganda the only one who heals and solves all failed /unfinished problems from other healers & sangomas
0Olumlu OylaOlumsuz Oyla
Mama hadija sordu 11 ay önce
【( +256779892164 】100% Guaranteed & Affordable. Private & Confidential with Immediate Results. Welcome to Mama hadija [[+256779892164 ]] in Uganda the only one who heals and solves all failed /unfinished problems from other healers & sangomas. Stop suffering today! Change your life and archive your goals. No matter whom you are or religion you believe in, this type of treatment may be the only solutions to your problems with your long illness. Try this; you will see a better change! If you have tried many doctors/healers with no progress, Just visit her to help you and she never fails. (+256779892164 ) My works is a mixture of African traditional spiritualism, psychic powers, rituals, native healing, spell casting, all of which are designed to take care of whatever adversity you may face. Have you been searching all over Internet to find a professional and real spell caster? If your answer to these questions are “YES”, then you have come to the right place! CONTACT ME I’m determined to offer what you’re seeking: From love spells to Luck spells and protection spells. I provide the most authentic spells you’ve ever encountered. Contact me now for a free review of your situation. Don’t be a statistic. Get affordable help now!
Mama hadija has an experience in treating and solving most problems and complications affecting the majority of people among the populations all over the world. If you have been suffering with a lot of difficulties and blinded by not knowing what to do about it ,It is time to give your self a question that why others are happy and successful all the time in their lives why does this happiness not apply to you? Take the time to consult and find out how Mama Azimu can help make your life a success. Moreover, if you have ever tried other doctors/healers before, then try this holistic professional healer with his 100% genuine services. She is the best! Mama hadija uses Ancestral Spirits to find solutions to life’s challenges. This Spiritual Guru has traveled widely and solved many mysterious issues. Am born with mystical powers and can make you communicate any time with the Spiritual world!!!! I give free advice but as I am very busy (many email me) I ONLY ANSWER ONCE! So to really give you the best help possible, I need you to include as much information about yourself, the situation and what you want help with. She uses strong magic spells as well as powerful ancestors. Get healed today by this greatest miracle doctor who has healed many
”
”
Hadija