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Whenever you go on a trip to visit foreign lands or distant places, remember that they are all someone's home and backyard.
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Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
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Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human.
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Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
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You don't understand. You've never hated anybody.
No, I never have. We're allotted just so much time on earth, and I wouldn't want the Lord to see me wasting mine in any such manner.
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Truman Capote (The Thanksgiving Visitor)
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Music teaches us about lyricism in writing, a delicate turn of phrase, selectiveness with words, rhythmic passages. Most of all, music, like good writing, touches our emotions with cadences that slip in like a subtle visitor, familiar and known before.
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Suzy Davies
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He was seated on the bench now. He had his left elbow on his knee, his right arm across his lap, his shoulders hunched, his head bowed. White face, red hair: snow and fire, like something from an old tale. The book I had noticed earlier was on the bench beside him, its covers shut. Around Anluan's feet and in the birdbath, small visitors to the garden hopped and splashed and made the most of the day that was becoming fair and sunny. He did not seem to notice them. As for me, I found it difficult to take my eyes from him. There was an odd beauty in his isolation and his sadness, like that of a forlorn prince ensorcelled by a wicked enchantress, or a traveller lost forever in a world far from home.
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Juliet Marillier (Heart's Blood)
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Sometimes we bring to a struggle or cause the gifts we see most clearly, a courage, a strength, or a charm others have told us we have. But often we find more is asked of us than that, more than we intended or thought we possessed. We are asked to offer that which we thought dearest, to forgive what seemed unpardonable, to face what we feared the most and endure it. Sometimes we have to travel to the last step a path that was not of our own choosing. But I promise you this ... it will lead to a greater joy in the end. The difficulty is that the end is beyond our sight, it is a matter of faith, not of knowledge.
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Anne Perry (A Christmas Visitor)
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I am because someone dreams me; a man who sleeps and dreams and sees me acting, living and moving – and who is dreaming at this moment as I am speaking to you. When he dreams, I awake to life; when he awakes, my existence vanishes. I am a whim of his inspiration, a creation of his mind, a visitor in his nightly fantasies.
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Giovanni Papini
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Not all bad things
Are big bad things
Not all sad things
Are big sad things
Sometimes they just come and go
Just visitors
And we don’t need to be
Afraid of them
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Meg Grehan (The Deepest Breath)
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Website without visitors is like a ship lost in the horizon.
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Dr. Christopher Dayagdag
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A lot of talk inside about feelings. How feelings are like visitors with something to give you. If they knock on your door: answer. Let em in. Accept the gift. Say cheers, mate. Otherwise, they said, the feeling will go away and you won't get the gift.
I disagree. If a feeling knocks and no one answers, it'll get p[EXPLICIT]d off. It'll kick the door in, chuck the gift at you and smash your best ornaments so you don't disrespect it again. You'll be clearing up a lot more mess than you had to start with. So it's good, Maxine, to cry if you want. Remember that.
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Janice Hallett (The Twyford Code)
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Collectively they remind us that history is much more than an education process. Understanding the past is a matter of experience as well as knowledge, a striving to make spiritual, emotional, poetic, dramatic, and inspirational connections with our forebears.
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Ian Mortimer (The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century)
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When visitors come to a worship service in my own religious tradition, a great deal depends on how warmly they are welcomed and whether they feel included or excluded by what they hear during the short time they are with us. We may have exactly one shot at communicating who we are to people who know nothing about us - or who think they already know a lot about us - but who, in either case, will remember us at the embodiment of our entire tradition, the prime exemplars of our faith.
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Barbara Brown Taylor (Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others)
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It's satisfying when visitors leave with a deep respect for elephants and a new-found desire to stand up for their welfare.
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Sharon Pincott (Elephant Dawn: The Inspirational Story of Thirteen Years Living with Elephants in the African Wilderness)
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Understanding the past is a matter of experience as well as knowledge, a striving to make spiritual, emotional, poetic, dramatic, and inspirational connections with our forebears.
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Ian Mortimer (The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century)
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Humans are forever in the process of nurturing the wounds of their unworthiness – a constant visitor in the psyche – the mortally wounded heroine who lies in the forest of shadows singing for years and years.
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Louisa Punt-Fouché
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It is beyond dispute that Osiris made his worshipers dream strange things of him, and that he possessed their bodies and souls forever. There is a devilish wrath against mankind with which Osiris was for Death's sake inspired. In the cool of the evening he walked among men, and upon his head was the Crown of Upper Egypt, and his cheeks were inflated with a wind that slew. His face was veiled so that no man could see it, hut assuredly it was an old face, very old and dead and dry for the world was young when tall Osiris died.
("A Visitor From Egypt")
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Frank Belknap Long (The Mummy Walks Among Us)
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Most people on the bus seem to have no interest in looking out of the window for inspiration. They are engrossed in their phones. People constantly checking their messages seems to me rather like endlessly opening the front door just in case an unexpected visitor has turned up.
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Sandi Toksvig (Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus)
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Finally there are those who saw at once that the question was a trap. There is no answer. Instead of wasting time grappling with that trap. They decide to act. They look to their childhood and look for what filled them with enthusiasm then and disregarding the advice of their elders, devote their life to it. Because enthusiasm is the sacred fire. They slowly discover, their actions are linked to a mysterious impulse beyond human knowledge. And they bow their heads as a sign of respect for that mystery and pray that they will not be diverted from a path they do not know, a path which they have chosen to travel because of the flame burning in their hearts. They use their intuition when they can and resort to discipline when intuition fails them. They seem quite mad. And sometimes they behave like mad people. But they are not mad. They have discovered true love and will. And those two things reveal the goal and the direction that they should follow. Their will is crystalline, their love is pure and their steps determined. In moments of doubt or sadness they never forget: I am an instrument, allow me to be an instrument capable of manifesting your will. They have chosen their road, and they may understand what their goal is only when they find themselves before the unwanted visitor. That is the beauty of the person who continues onward with enthusiasm and respect for the mystery of life as his only guide. His road is beautiful, and his burden light. The goal will be large or small, it can be far away or right next door. He goes in search of it with respect and honor. He knows what each step means, and how much it costs in effort and training and intuition. He focuses not just on the goal to be reached but on everything happening around him. He often has to stop because his strength fails him. At such moments, love appears and says: You think you're heading toward a specific point, but the whole justification for the goals existence lies in your love for it. Rest a little. But as soon as you can, get up and carry on. Because ever since your goal found out that you were traveling toward it, it has been running to meet you.
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Paulo Coelho
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Let us come to the point now. It would be nice to hold on to the common belief that the UFOs are craft from a superior space-civilization, because this is a hypothesis science fiction has made widely acceptable, and because we are not altogether unprepared, scientifically and even, perhaps, militarily, to deal with such visitors. Unfortunately, however, the theory that flying saucers are material objects from outer space manned by a race originating on some other planet is not a complete answer. However strong the current belief in saucers from space, it cannot be stronger than the Celtic faith in the elves and the fairies, or the medieval belief in lutins, or the fear throughout the Christian lands, in the first centuries of our era, of demons and satyrs and fauns. Certainly, it cannot be stronger than the faith that inspired the writers of the Bible—a faith rooted in daily experiences with angelic visitation.
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Jacques F. Vallée (Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers)
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Every day when I wake up and head out for chores, I'm struck by the beauty we enjoy on our farm. Based on visitors' comments, that's a shared awareness. Not one of our doors has a skull and crossbones. We want visitors to be struck not by what we've done, but rather by how we've caressed this beautiful niche of God's creation into a productive and profoundly inspiring place.
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Joel Salatin (The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God's Creation)
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doze off, when suddenly you’re jolted awake again by the sound of fierce and awe-inspiring chanting. The voice, which is reciting the special sutra of the temple, belongs to a man who seems to be a mountain ascetic, and not a particularly impressive-looking one, who’s spread his straw coat out to sit on as he chants. It’s most moving to hear him. Then there’s the interesting scene of one of the day visitors, evidently quite a personage, who’s dressed in cotton-padded blue-grey gathered trousers and multiple layers of white robes, with a couple of young men who are apparently his sons, wearing most charming ceremonial outfits.
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Sei Shōnagon (The Pillow Book)
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It's an unholy crusade against good people everywhere, all in my name. If I had a stomach, I'd be sick to it. You see now why so many good people just give up out there? You can only take so much evil pretending to be good. You can only handle so many broken souls acting as if good people are the evil ones, before you raise your hands and claim defeat. But I want you all to understand something. There is evil happening. There are spirits from Hell demonizing. There are even wars planned, and dark judgments justified by the self-righteous fanatics. But none of that means good can't also triumph. None of that means good cannot rise up against hatred, against judgment, against the armies of Hell itself, and bring about a tidal wave of joy and love. Evil does, but good always is.
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Sean Patrick Brennan (The Papal Visitor)
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How I loved the municipal libraries of South Croydon. They were not child-friendly places; in fact, they were not friendly at all, to anyone. They were large, dark, wood-panelled rooms full of books, in which visitors were expected to be silent, and the only sound was the clicking of school shoes on polished parquet floor. The larger building in the town had its own children's library, accessible at one end of the hall via an imposing door, but what lay behind that door was not a children's library as we might understand it today, full of scatter cushions and toys and strategies of appeasement; it revealed simply a smaller, replica wood-panelled room full of books. And this - the shared expectation of respect, the solemnity, the shelves crammed end-to-end with books, no face-outs or yawning gaps - is what I loved about these places and what I found inspiring. The balance of power lay with the books, not the public. This would never be permitted today.
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Andy Miller
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My husband, Death, is a people-person. He introduces himself to everyone; however, he targets my’ repeat visitors and hard workers. He pays employees by the currency of carnal pleasure but when they reach the top of our pay chart, he takes them to our mansion; the grave.
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Stephen and Tiffany Domena
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Bloody battle and homecoming embrace, lightning-studded skies and Arcadian pastures, riddles, mirrors, smoke, illusion, the love of a woman, the wrath of the gods. Life is drama, a tragedy and comedy both, and we the actors. A trite observation, one decidedly inspired by some other man's muses. Yet for all the horrors and triumphs of the stage, I have found that the arts of Dionysus offer little to compare with the struggles and achievements, the lives and deaths of real men, or at least of men of thought and action, men who renounce the apathy and ignorance of those who pas through life as if they were mere temporary visitors, gawking occasionally but for the most part simply following the meaty desires of their bellies and loins.
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Michael Curtis Ford (The Ten Thousand: A Novel of Ancient Greece)
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A story bank can also help website visitors find the most helpful stories. Skype, for example, has put stories into 15 compartments including acting, art/design, beauty, education and food. And Skype for Business has its own set of over 130 signature stories that can be searched by industry, product or language.
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David A. Aaker (Creating Signature Stories: Strategic Messaging that Persuades, Energizes and Inspires)
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Theo Fitzgerald," she said, still trying to shake off the night's uninvited visitor. "I mean, really!" The shake turned into yet another shiver, the sort usually inspired by a particularly wicked mouthful of very rich, supersmooth, utterly sinful ice cream.
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Sarah-Kate Lynch (The Wedding Bees)
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"Find out more" interactives
"Find out more" interactives appeal to visitors of all levels of interest—from those who just want to grasp the big picture to those who wish to dig deeper.
Gaming interactives
Gaming interactives appeal to those who learn by doing rather than being shown or told (sometimes referred to ask kinaesthetic learners). These do not need to be digital—many of the best game-based interactives are mechanical and kinetic.
They are often a great way of helping visitors to see how dry content can be applied to more exciting scenarios.
Environmental interactives
Environmental interactives are immersive interactive experiences, often on a large scale, intended to connect with users in an emotional and awe-inspiring way by carrying a powerful, overarching message. Often, these pieces feel closer to art installations than interactives
The main outcome of the interactive is often a sensory impression, rather than an intense learning experience.
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Philip Hughes (Exhibition Design)
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The services Henry and Sandra were so taken with were not evangelistic events; they were regular services designed for the praise of God and the strengthening of believers. There were Bible readings, songs, prayers, creeds and preaching-all the things that have always been part of church gatherings. Henry and Sandra were eavesdroppers, as it were. And this, I think, is part of the power of services like these. Visitors to church can easily feel threatened if they suspect the whole event is pitched at them. But when they feel the freedom simply to observe what Christians do-praying to the Lord, giving thanks to him, listening to his Word-visitors are often more at ease, less defensive and more open to the things they hear. They are more attentive to our “praises” of him who called us out of darkness into his marvellous light. I still think there is a place for the evangelistic church service and even for the so-called seeker service. I also think it is important to consider making small adjustments to our gatherings to make them more comprehensible to the uninitiated. However, I want to stress in the strongest terms that visitor-focused services are not an evangelistic necessity. Normal church meetings conducted exceptionally well will not only inspire the regulars; they will draw in visitors and, through the powerful vehicle of our corporate praise, promote the gospel to them. The burden is on us-whether we are laypeople or leaders-to do everything we can to enhance what goes on in our services and to invite our friends and family to eavesdrop on what we do.
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John Dickson (The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission: Promoting the Gospel with More Than Our Lips)
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It’ll be a day in which you tell us how to make Pixar better,” John said. “We’ll do no work that day. No visitors will be allowed. Everyone must attend.
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
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The disadvantage of being (relatively) bilingual is that you are neither this nor that. You don't fully belong. We spent nine months in Hungary in 1989 watching the state collapse around us and, under those circumstances, it became clear that I wasn't truly Hungarian, but an observer – a visitor with privileges, who could be useful but not of the language or its poetry. In England, the rest of the time, a foreign-born poet is of the language until he isn't; the point at which he hits the thick glass of English Words, where he will be deemed never quite to understand cricket or, say, John Betjeman, because these things are not in his DNA.
That may or may not be true. But there you are, with the exquisite zoology of both languages, slightly detached from the soil you tread on, and maybe you see some things that the soil-born cannot. Maybe you can see them at certain angles. And you can make a certain poetry out of this, if only because poetry only appears at the point at which language is both familiar and strange.
Language and what happens is not the same thing although we are almost always lulled into thinking that it is. Great poems continue to appear fresh because they remind us of that gap while, at the same time, appearing to heal it.
Philip Larkin thought a thing could not be both a window and a fenêtre at the same time. In fact it is neither. It is, as any Hungarian would tell you, an ablak. And between the three words for the same thing there is a kind of shimmering. It is the light shining through the window.
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Georges Szrites
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What is this plan, then? What does the great ceiling really mean? To understand it fully, we have to experience it the way that Michelangelo created it and meant it to be interpreted: step by step, layer by layer. It is important to keep in mind that originally all visitors to the chapel entered through the front door, to experience the sanctuary as an organic whole, first seeing the entire length of the hall from the portal and then slowly immersing themselves in the imagery, step by step. Michelangelo’s purpose was twofold: On the one hand, the impact of the large-scale all-encompassing view served as powerful inspiration; one could not help but be overwhelmed, both visually and emotionally. But there is another function—a brilliant technique to conceal the deeper and more dangerous messages in his work. Michelangelo put so many different ingredients into the mix that the average viewer is distracted, unsettled, and ultimately disoriented.
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Benjamin Blech (The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo's Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican)
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The tendency to view the diversity of forms as bothersome illusions (maya) to be transcended is a common trap in certain nondual teachings. There is often a desire to move beyond the inconvenient multiplicity of parts back to the oneness of pure awareness. However, this practice of discarding the relative in favour of the absolute only leads to further separation and more walls dividing self from Self. Rather than escaping our parts, we can become curious about their unique vantage points. This presents opportunities for connection and appreciating our shared essence. Completely discarding maya overlooks the value of this multiplicity in allowing the absolute to fully know and express itself. The parts are not obstacles to be overcome, but rather vehicles on the path—the teachers in the schoolhouse we call life. What's in the way, is the way. As Rumi's 'Guest House' poem expresses, each part has come for a reason, bringing gifts to share. Rather than rejecting these 'visitors,' we can open the door wide to welcome their presence. By listening to their wisdom with curiosity and compassion, we can deepen our understanding and connection to the whole.
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Laura Patryas (Awaken To Love: Reclaiming Wholeness through Embodied Nonduality with Jungian Wisdom, Psychosynthesis & Internal Family Systems)
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The sea is an underwater museum still awaiting its visitors.
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Philippe Diolé
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The fate of the books and all their vast numbers, is epitomized in the greatest library in the ancient world, a library located not in Italy but in Alexandria, the capital of Egypt and the commercial hub of the Eastern Mediterranean. The city had many tourist attractions, including an impressive theater and red light district. But visitors always took note of something quite exceptional, in the center of the city, at the lavish site known as "the museum" most of the intellectual inherits of Greek, Latin, Babylonian, Egyptian and Jewish cultures ad been assembled at enormous costs and carefully archived for researched. Starting as early as 300BCE, the Ptolemaic Kings who ruled Alexandria had the inspired idea of luring leading scholars, scientists and poets to their city by offering them life appointments at their museum...The recipients of this largess established remarkably high intellectual standards. Euclid developed his geometry in Alexandria, Archimedes discovered Pi and laid the foundation of calculus.
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Stephen Greenblatt (The Swerve: How the World Became Modern)
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She (Antonia) smiled back at him. "It's still Christmas," she said very quietly. "We must not forget or ignore that. Without Christmas, there would be no hope. And I need hope: wild unreasonable, against all the logic that man can have, things only God can do.
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Anne Perry (A Christmas Visitor)
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A warlord’s home should inspire fear in all who lay eyes on it. The walls should induce shivers; the entryway should instill abject terror. Visions of the welcome mat should haunt visitors in their nightmares.
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Christopher Healy (The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle (The League of Princes, #2))
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D. H. Lawrence, Malcolm Lowry, and Aldous Huxley—all visitors, inspired in their writing by their immersion in Oaxaca—would recognize
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Paul Theroux (On The Plain Of Snakes: A Mexican Journey)
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We are common visitor of earth and our life is about 60 to 80 years.
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Sujit Kumar Mishra
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Once Guerra’s audiences learn about the brands that inspired Walnut Hill, they are more likely to understand the reason behind strategies like the “15–5” rule: At 15 feet from a patient or a visitor, an employee should make eye contact. At 5 feet the employee should greet and say hello to the patient or, if the patient looks confused, ask if he or she needs help. Guerra explains that the hospital adopted the strategy from studying hospitality techniques at hotel chains like the JW Marriott.
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Carmine Gallo (The Storyteller's Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On and Others Don't)
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Art’s inspiration can be raw and painful. It can be a sort of sickness. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art once had to remove a sculpture by Ed Kienholz because visitors would vomit when they saw the work. Philosopher Richard Wollheim made three trips to Germany to view the Isenheim Altarpiece, Matthias Grünewald’s sixteenth-century masterwork, but each time he looked at the canvas, he found it unbearable
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Ulrich Boser (The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft)
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by refusing to repeat it, much to the despair of their record companies. Both wrote gorgeous sci-fi ballads blatantly inspired by 2001—“Space Oddity” and “After the Gold Rush.” Both did classic songs about imperialism that name-checked Marlon Brando—“China Girl” and “Pocahontas.” Both were prodigiously prolific even when they were trying to eat Peru through their nostrils. They were mutual fans, though they floundered when they tried to copy each other (Trans and Tin Machine). Both sang their fears of losing their youth when they were still basically kids; both aged mysteriously well. Neither ever did anything remotely sane. But there’s a key difference: Bowie liked working with smart people, whereas Young always liked working with . . . well, let’s go ahead and call them “not quite as smart as Neil Young” people. Young made his most famous music with two backing groups—the awesomely inept Crazy Horse and the expensively addled CSN—whose collective IQ barely leaves room temperature. He knows they’re not going to challenge him with ideas of their own, so he knows how to use them—brilliantly in the first case, lucratively in the second. But Bowie never made any of his memorable music that way—he always preferred collaborating with (and stealing from) artists who knew tricks he didn’t know, well educated in musical worlds where he was just a visitor. Just look at the guitarists he worked with: Carlos Alomar from James Brown’s band vs. Robert Fripp from King Crimson. Stevie Ray Vaughan from Texas vs. Mick Ronson from Hull. Adrian Belew from Kentucky vs. Earl Slick from Brooklyn. Nile Rodgers. Peter Frampton. Ricky Gardiner, who played all that fantastic fuzz guitar on Low (and who made the mistake of demanding a raise, which is why he dropped out of the story so fast). Together, Young and Bowie laid claim to a jilted generation left high and dry by the dashed hippie dreams. “The
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Rob Sheffield (On Bowie)
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Was death so common a visitor in these parts that people expected it, maybe even welcomed it as the only true savior from their pain? Or had they, like her, closed off their hearts to the pain in order to continue on?
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Jody Hedlund (A Reluctant Bride (The Bride Ships, #1))
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Just because something is tough or difficult, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible. The challenge is what makes something wonderful when you finally overcome your obstacles. The sense of success that comes when working hard over time is much better than achieving a simple task. Don’t be afraid of a challenge when it can make you a better person in the end.
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Alexander Davidson (The Visitor's Choice: A Search to Make Things Right (David Wilson, #1))
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When I have no visitors over weekends, I remain the whole day in my pyjamas and eat samp.
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Jennifer Crwys Williams (In the words of Nelson Mandela: A little pocketbook)