Do what is right, not what is easy nor what is popular.
Don't let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It's your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. Don't let the expectations and ideas of others limit who you are. If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality — not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people. There is much more to life than following others' prescribed path. There is so much more to life than what you experience right now. You need to decide who you are for yourself. Become a whole being. Adventure.
Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.
Don't JustDon't just learn, experience.Don't just read, absorb.Don't just change, transform.Don't just relate, advocate.Don't just promise, prove.Don't just criticize, encourage.Don't just think, ponder.Don't just take, give.Don't just see, feel.Don’t just dream, do. Don't just hear, listen.Don't just talk, act.Don't just tell, show.Don't just exist, live.
Live the Life of Your DreamsWhen you start living the life of your dreams, there will always be obstacles, doubters, mistakes and setbacks along the way. But with hard work, perseverance and self-belief there is no limit to what you can achieve.
Dreams don't work unless you take action. The surest way to make your dreams come true is to live them.
One of the most spiritual things you can do is embrace your humanity. Connect with those around you today. Say, "I love you", "I'm sorry", "I appreciate you", "I'm proud of you"...whatever you're feeling. Send random texts, write a cute note, embrace your truth and share it...cause a smile today for someone else...and give plenty of hugs.
People tend to be generous when sharing their nonsense, fear, and ignorance. And while they seem quite eager to feed you their negativity, please remember that sometimes the diet we need to be on is a spiritual and emotional one. Be cautious with what you feed your mind and soul. Fuel yourself with positivity and let that fuel propel you into positive action.
Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghost of yesterday. Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people...but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us.
Stop doing what is easy or popular. Start doing what is right.
People who lack the clarity, courage, or determination to follow their own dreams will often find ways to discourage yours. When you change for the better, the people around you will be inspired to change also....but only after doing their best to make you stop. Live your truth and don't EVER stop.
How would your life be different if…You stopped worrying about things you can’t control and started focusing on the things you can? Let today be the day…You free yourself from fruitless worry, seize the day and take effective action on things you can change.
Today is a new day. Don't let your history interfere with your destiny! Let today be the day you stop being a victim of your circumstances and start taking action towards the life you want. You have the power and the time to shape your life. Break free from the poisonous victim mentality and embrace the truth of your greatness. You were not meant for a mundane or mediocre life!
Do you think we can be friends?” I asked.He stared up at the ceiling. “Probably not, but we can pretend.
Vane grabbed me. “DuLac, let’s chat.” British-speak for “Stand still while I yell at you.
There is great change to be experienced once you learn the power of letting go. Stop allowing anyone or anything to control, limit, repress, or discourage you from being your true self! Today is YOURS to shape - own it - break free from people and things that poison or dilute your spirit.
Today is a new day. It's a day you have never seen before and will never see again. Stop telling yourself the 'same crap, different day' lie! How many days has that lie stolen from you? Seize the wonder and uniqueness of today! Recognize that throughout this beautiful day, you have an incredible amount of opportunities to move your life into the direction you want it to go.
Participate in your dreams today. There are unlimited opportunities available with this new day. Take action on those wonderful dreams you've had in your mind for so long. Remember, success is something you experience when you act accordingly.
Although time seems to fly, it never travels faster than one day at a time. Each day is a new opportunity to live your life to the fullest. In each waking day, you will find scores of blessings and opportunities for positive change. Do not let your TODAY be stolen by the unchangeable past or the indefinite future! Today is a new day!
Your complaints, your drama, your victim mentality, your whining, your blaming, and all of your excuses have NEVER gotten you even a single step closer to your goals or dreams. Let go of your nonsense. Let go of the delusion that you DESERVE better and go EARN it! Today is a new day!
Today, many will choose to live free of conditions and rules governing their own happiness. Why not you? Do not let another day go by where your dedication to other people's opinions is greater than your dedication to your own emotions! Today's a new day!
To assess the quality of thoughts of people, don't listen to their words, but watch their actions.
Action is the activity of the rational soul, which abhors irrationality and must combat it or be corrupted by it. When it sees the irrationality of others, it must seek to correct it, and can do this either by teaching or engaging in public affairs itself, correcting through its practice. And the purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone, they become no more than beasts.
[T]he concern of man is not his future but his present, not the world but his soul. We must be just, we must strive, we must engage ourselves with the business of the world for our own sake, because through that, and through contemplation in equal measure, our soul is purified and brought closer to the divine. ... Thought and deed conjoined are crucial. ... The attempt must be made; the outcome is irrelevant. Right action is a pale material reflection of the divine, but reflection it is, nonetheless. Define your goal and exert reason to accomplish it by virtuous action; successs or failure is secondary.
Olivier took a deep breath, then turned and bowed in farewell. Gersonides nodded in return, then thought of something."The manuscript you brought me, by that bishop. It argues that understanding is more important than movement. That action is virtuous only if it reflects pure comprehension, and that virtue comes from the comprehension, not the action."Olivier frowned. "So?""Dear boy, I must tell you a secret.""What?""I do believe it is wrong.
We are not sheep or cows. God didn’t create fences for us or boundaries to contain our nationalities. Man did. God didn’t draw up religious barriers to separate us from each other. Man did. And on top of that, no father would like to see his children fighting or killing each other. The Creator favors the man who spreads loves over the man who spreads hate. A religious title does not make anyone more superior over another. If a kind man stands by his conscience and exhibits truth in his words and actions, he will stand by God regardless of his faith. If mankind wants to evolve, we must learn from our past mistakes. If not, our technology will evolve without us.
Where we fall are the stepping-stones for our journey.
The world is a busy place filled with many busy businesses, both the Godly and the ungodly. It means before you go on to accept any activity or event that comes into the world, you must weigh its Values, examine the Virtues, listen to Views and then you give your Verdict. Satan is not wise; he is just crafty!
The beginning is always NOW.
Your most important “want” should be the one you can control!
Agreed," I say. "It's going to be a long hour.""Maybe not that long," says Peeta." what was that you were saying just before the food arrived? Something about me ... no competition ... best thing that ever happened to you ... "" I don't remember that last part," I say, hoping it's too dim in here for the cameras to pick up my blush." Oh, that's right. That's what I was thinking," he says " Scoot over, I'm freezing.
Vane’s lips tightened to suppress a smile. “Why so hostile, love?”“You whacked me on the head with a ball!”“You deserved it.
I caught his hand. “What do you want me to do?”Leaning down, he kissed the pulse beating on my neck just above the damaged skin. “Tomorrow, I need you to die.
He’d used the amulet to read my thoughts again. I pictured smacking him in the face.
I noticed him right away. No, it wasn’t his lean, rugged face. Or the dark waves of shiny hair that hung just a little too long on his forehead. It wasn’t the slim, collarless biker jacket he wore, hugging his lean shoulders. It was the way he stood. The confident way he waited in the cafeteria line to get a slice of pizza. He didn’t saunter. He didn’t amble. He stood at the center, and let the other people buzz around him. His stance was straight and sure.
Rough palms cradled my face while my fingers gripped the pillow on either side of his. Lips, teeth, tongue, mingled together. I ate him up and didn’t let go until I had to come up for air.
Matt was almost completely naked. A tattered loincloth and an ugly chain with a yellow diamond were his only apparel.
Despite the chaos that was tearing her head apart, Tevi understood what scene Yenneg was attempting to play out, with herself as a conscripted actor. She needed to force out an explanation or denial, but no words could get past her lips. Jemeryl's presence was paralysing her, an effect far more irresistible than anything Yenneg had achieved.Tevi watched Jemeryl take another few steps forwards and then crouch down so that their eyes were no more than a foot apart. Tevi thought she would die from the shock. Yet somehow, she forced her mouth to shape the words, "Wine. Love potion."Her voice was not loud enough even to count as a whisper. Certainly nobody else in the room would have heard, yet Tevi could not control her breathing to manage anything else.At first Jemeryl showed no sign of comprehension, but then suddenly, the bewilderment on her face transformed into fury. She leapt up, her arms moving in a blurred aggressive swirl. The gesture ended with an action like hurling a ball. Blue fire erupted from Jemeryl's hands and shot towards Yenneg.The other sorcerer had obviously recognised the gesture and made an effort to protect himself. A shimmering shield sprung up before Yenneg, but it was not strong enough, and the shockwave knocked him off his feet. His shoulders slammed into the wall behind him and he crumpled to the floor. Jemeryl had been telling the truth when she claimed to vastly excel the acolytes in magical ability, not that Tevi had ever entertained doubts. Jemeryl's hands moved again, and this time Yenneg was sprawled on the floor and in no state to mount a defence. A second bolt of blue fire burst in his direction.Lightning in the form of a whip snapped across the room, intercepting Jemeryl's attack before it struck. The diverted fireball hit the wall of the summerhouse two feet from Yenneg's head and smashed through it, as if it were a stone going through wet paper.
Helen’s secretary’s phone was ringing off the hook as Clavier and I passed through the antechamber and into the hallway. Once we were outside, I rounded on him.“I’m not going to apologize. What you did to me was unconscionable, and now that Alexa is sick—” The urge to strike out at him welled up in me like a flash fire, and I braced my hand against the wall so as not to give in to the impulse. “I want access to everything. And your full cooperation. I am going to make this right, damn it, whatever it takes.”He stared at me coldly. “Save your self-righteous invectives for someone who will be moved by them.”I took a menacing step forward, despite my determination to remain poised. “Hoping for a repeat performance? You must get off on asphyxiation.” At the spark of anger in his eyes, I laughed. “The first thing that’s going to happen is that I am going to talk to Sebastian. And you are going to call whoever you need to call to make that happen. Right now.”Without waiting for a response, I turned sharply and headed for the stairwell.
I argue against purism not because I want a devastated world, the Mordor of industrial capitalism emerging as from a closely aligned alternate universe through our floating islands of plastic gradually breaking down into microbeads consumed by the scant marine life left alive after generations of overfishing, bottom scraping, and coral reef–killing ocean acidification; our human-caused, place-devastating elevated sea levels; our earth-shaking, water poisoning fracking; our toxic lakes made of the externalities of rare-earth mineral production for so-called advanced electronics; our soul-and-lifedestroying prisons; our oil spills; our children playing with bits of dirty bombs; our white phosphorus; our generations of trauma held in the body; our cancers; and I could go on. I argue against purism because it is one bad but common approach to devastation in all its forms. It is a common approach for anyone who attempts to meet and control a complex situation that is fundamentally outside our control. It is a bad approach because it shuts down precisely the field of possibility that might allow us to take better collective action against the destruction of the world in all its strange, delightful, impure frolic. Purism is a de-collectivizing, de-mobilizing, paradoxical politicsof despair. This world deserves better.
We commonly confuse love with the strong emotions most often associated with it, such as joy, attachment, lust, infatuation, pleasure, pain, fear, and hope, to name a few. But, love is not a feeling; love itself is an action. There are countless emotions and beliefs that can cause us to love. Love is the willing giving of self to another living being. Love is giving the life, time, energy, and resources that we would normally give or use for our self to someone else. Love is an action that enhances the well-being of another living being.
Our body is a sacred temple A place to connect with people. As we aren't staying any younger We might as well keep it stronger.
If you can't impress them with your argument, impress them with your actions.
By drinking, a boy acts like a man. After drinking, many a man acts like a boy.
There’s no such thing as a good or bad person: there are just people who have each been or seem to have been good or bad to you, someone, or some people, thus far.
Respect cannot be inherited, respect is the result of right actions.
Cowards say it can't be done, critics say it shouldn't have been done, creator say well done.
If your prudence stops you every time from taking an action, then you are no more prudent, you are frightened.
Fear of failure is fiction, face this fact and fear will fall.
Most of the people readily accept the principle but resist its practice.
An assembly is extra slow in taking actions.
Action achieves ambition.
Don't always use prudence for precaution, sometimes use it for progress.
One who doesn't recognise an opportunity is bigger loser than one who tries his hand at an opportunity.
Wait on the Lord" is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are, and it is not his way to give more light on the future than we need for action in the present, or to guide us more than one step at a time. When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come.
If you're waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you'll never make it.
God is going to send you someone that will rescue you. Then one day you will rescue them in return and together your story will rescue others. He has always been a God of rescues and a maker of warriors for his grace. You only need to believe that you are part of something greater than you know.
I said, "Where's all that delivering God's supposed to do?"He snorted. "You're right, the only deliverance is the one we get for ourselves. The Lord doesn't have any hands and feet but ours.""That doesn't say much for the Lord.""It doesn't say much for us, either.
Do not hold a lazy faith. Miracles are not spontaneous events we must wait for helplessly. Miracles are an achievement—a breakthrough accomplished by those who pushed themselves beyond what was thought possible while holding a belief in a better life. Get up off your knees, and roll up your sleeves.
A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment...For imagination sets the goal ‘picture’ which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of ‘will,’ as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.
Creation is bringing potential into being, bringing inspiration into action. Inspiration and action are nothing when they are apart. Inspiration feels like a great a wondrous thing, but if it is not manifested, it is as if it never existed. Likewise, action without inspiration has no purpose. It is only when they are together as one that they are truly something.
We need to study the Word of God diligently. But we don't need to know more. We need to do more with what we know. At the end of the day, God will not say, "Well thought, Intellectual," or "Well said, Orator." There is only one commendation: "Well done, good and faithful servant!
In the Hebrew language, there is no distinction between knowing and doing. Knowing is doing and doing is knowing. In other words, if you aren't doing it, then you don't really know it...The phrase all out literally means "maximum effort."It's giving God everything you've got -- 100 percent. It's loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. It's not just worshiping God with your words. It's worshiping God with blood, sweat, and tears. It's more than sincere sentiments. It's sweat equity in kingdom causes.You cannot be the hands and feet of Jesus if you're sitting on your butt.
If it is not strong upon your heart to practice what you read, to what end do you read? To increase your own condemnation? If your light and knowledge be not turned into practice, the more knowing a man you are, the more miserable a man you will be in the day of recompense; your light and knowledge will more torment you than all the devils in hell. Your knowledge will be that rod that will eternally lash you, and that scorpion that will forever bite you, and that worm that will everlastingly gnaw you; therefore read, and labor to know that you may do--or else you are undone forever.
Every action (‘doing’) causes bondage. ‘Doing’ is not needed for Liberation. For liberation, ‘action’ of Knowledge is required. Action of ignorance [of the self] is bondage. Action done with egoism is known as ignorant-action and the action done without egoism is known as knowledge-action.
You've been given the innate power to shape your life...but you cannot just speak change, you have to LIVE change. Intent paired with action builds the bridge to success. You can't just want it; you have to do it, live it...BE it! Success isn't something you have, it's something you DO!
Freedom of Speech doesn't justify online bullying. Words have power, be careful how you use them.
I had always insisted that a good education was a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, that each enriched the other. I wanted my students to know that the accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient as long as so many people in the world have no opportunity to experience that fascination.
Act as if it was, and it will be.
Let today be the day that you become committed in being, in doing, in getting, achieving, in experiencing. Let today be the day that you are committed to being the change you wish to see and living the life you wish to live.
When you keep telling yourself that you are going to start in the future you are really telling yourself that you will never start. The future will never come. You have to get past the excuses that you are giving yourself that prevent you from starting today, right now. If you keep letting yourself tell you lies you will never find the success you are searching for.
Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance. Bestial thoughts crystallize into habits of drunkenness and sensuality, which solidify into circumstances of destitution and disease: impure thoughts of every kind crystallize into enervating and confusing habits, which solidify into distracting and adverse circumstances: thoughts of fear, doubt, and indecision crystallize into weak, unmanly, and irresolute habits, which solidify into circumstances of failure, indigence, and slavish dependence: lazy thoughts crystallize into habits of uncleanliness and dishonesty, which solidify into circumstances of foulness and beggary: hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into habits of accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of injury and persecution: selfish thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of self-seeking, which solidify into circumstances more or less distressing. On the other hand, beautiful thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of grace and kindliness, which solidify into genial and sunny circumstances: pure thoughts crystallize into habits of temperance and self-control, which solidify into circumstances of repose and peace: thoughts of courage, self-reliance, and decision crystallize into manly habits, which solidify into circumstances of success, plenty, and freedom: energetic thoughts crystallize into habits of cleanliness and industry, which solidify into circumstances of pleasantness: gentle and forgiving thoughts crystallize into habits of gentleness, which solidify into protective and preservative circumstances: loving and unselfish thoughts crystallize into habits of self-forgetfulness for others, which solidify into circumstances of sure and abiding prosperity and true riches.A particular train of thought persisted in, be it good or bad, cannot fail to produce its results on the character and circumstances. A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.
Blow out all negative attitudes and live true to your dreams. Talks less and act more. Be confident and see yourself wining even before the victory comes.
Your life will be simplified when you choose inaction when no action is required and choose action when action is required!
If only you could fully grasp how valuable, how limited and how unique every moment of your life is, you would never stand as still as a statue even a single moment because action is real living!
Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompt him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath--all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each?
Trust not tomorrow! Whatever you are planning, today is the best day to act!
Do not recite words just to prove to yourself and others that you know and love God; for he already put his breath and light inside you. Instead, put truth in your every word and action, and always let your conscience steer and guide you.
I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out.
A major consequence of being psychologically asleep is the psychological and spiritual blindness which results from it. This results in action not from conscious awareness and true intelligence but from self-righteousness, which leads individuals and society as a whole into an abysmal pit.
And when the earth began to rumble and quake, as fear and frantic set in, he ran back inside the house past his wife and children, gathering all the valuables and things he thought of importance, and ran back to his car packing away. After making two trips in and out, he waited in the car for his family to come out, in fear they darted through the darkness and pelting cold rain. When everything calmed down, and the house was intact and safe, he returned putting everything back in its place, had the kids go to bed, told his wife he loves her and turned off the light.
According to his thinking, man was not born for a particular purpose. Quite the opposite: a purpose developed only with the birth of an individual. To objectively fabricate a purpose at the outset and to apply it to a human being was to rob him at birth of freedom of action. Hence, purpose was something that the individual had to make for himself. But no one, no matter who, could freely create a purpose. This was because the purpose of one's existence was as good as announced to the universe by the course of that existence itself.Starting from this premise, Daisuke held that one's natural activities constituted one's natural purposes. A man walked because he wanted to. Then walking became his purpose. He thought because he wanted to. Then, thinking became his purpose. Just as to walk or to think for a particular purpose meant the degradation of walking and thinking, so to establish an external purpose and to act to fulfill it meant the degradation of action. Accordingly, those who used the sum of their actions as a means to an end were in effect destroying the purpose of their own existence.
We have to do what is right, not what is easy nor what is popular.
If you wait for the mango fruits to fall, you'd be wasting your time while others are learning how to climb the tree
The fundamental precept of Buddhism is Interdependence or the Law of Cause and Effect. This simply states that everything an individual experiences is derived from action through motivation. Motivation is thus the root of both action and experience.FREEDOM IN EXILE: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE DALAI LAMA
Jess thought for a moment. 'You know those films where people fight up the top of the Empire State Building or up a mountain or whatever? And there's always that bit when the baddie slips off and the hero tries to save him, but, like, the sleeve of this jacket tears off and goes over and you hear him all the way down. Aaaaaaaaagh. That's what I want to do.' 'You want to watch me plunge to my doom.' 'I'd like to know that I've made the effort. I want to show people the torn sleeve.
Favorite Quotations.I speak my mind because it hurts to bite my tongue.The worth of a book is measured by what you carry away from it. It's not over till it's over. Imagination is everything. All life is an experiment. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly.
Our freedoms are vanishing. If you do not get active to take a stand now against all that is wrong while we still can, then maybe one of your children may elect to do so in the future, when it will be far more riskier — and much, much harder.
If you think the world is full of darkness, let us see your light. If you think the world is full of wickedness, let us see your goodness. If you think people are acting wrongly, let us see your right action. If you think people don't know, let us see what you know. If you think the world is full of uncaring people let us see how you care about people. If you think life is not being fair to you, let us see how you can be fair to life. If you think people are proud, let us see your humility. We can easily find fault and we can easily see what is wrong but a positive attitude backed by a right action in a true direction is all we need to survive in peace and harmony in the arena of life
What do you need in the New Year? You need a dream; your dream needs an action; and your action needs right thinking! Without right thinking, you can have only unrealised dreams!
Don’t sit at home and wait for mango tree to bring mangoes to you wherever you are. It won’t happen. If you are truly hungry for change, go out of your comfort zone and change the world.
The body is doing the action, body’s spare-parts are doing the action and the egoism simply does the egoism of, ‘I did’! Subtle-pride of egoism is created from this doer-ship and one is living due entirely on this basis. He simply tastes the subtle-pride of doer-ship; ‘I did’, ‘I suffered this pain’, ‘I enjoyed that happiness’. The person who gets rid of this subtle-pride will get freedom. Why does one taste this sweetness of subtle-pride of doership from infinite lives? He does this because he has never before tasted the sweetness of the Soul.
Whenever He answers prayers, God usually prioritizes those by people who, instead of their mouths, have prayed with their hands and/or feet.
To know the good from the bad, study a man or woman's history of actions, not their record of intentions.
I'd gone to Central America because I didn't think politics was simply a matter of opinion. It wasn't about having the right "line," having an ideologically pure analysis. It had to be incarnate. And now I was seeing the same thing with faith. It couldn't be about wrangling over the Bible to find justification for your convictions. Like politics, faith had to be about action.
It is what it is because you let it be so.
See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
Change is hard. Logically, we know what we should do, but our feelings about doing it make our decision for us. How you feel in the moment is almost never aligned with your goals and dreams. If you only act when you feel like it, you will never get what you want.You must learn how to separate what you feel from the actions that you take.You can't control how you feel. But you can always choose how you act.
There seems to be a direct correlation between the spike in suicides by young people and the increase in cyberbullying amongst young people.
As long as [man] does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance... Wallow in it... Write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilising the seeds which [Heavenly Father] plants in a human soul... Do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm [the cause of evil] if [it is kept] out of his will... The more often he feels without acting, the less he will ever be able to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.
When you choose to act on your problems, you cease to be a victim of circumstance and become a force of change; that's when you transition to not only being a survivor, but to being a leader or hero too, and an inspiration to those still in the victim's mindset.
Whenever we find ourselves stuck, whenever we find ourselves lost or confused by the chaos of the world, we can be sure that the only way to free ourselves is to take action of some kind. Action is the only thing that ever changes anything and in a world that ever changes, it is the best way to keep ourselves in the flow of the world unfolding.
Our call to action is to be in the flow of life, accepting life as it is and as it comes. We must allow life to be life in all its impermanent grandeur. Nothing remains the same, and those who fight change, or are in denial of it, create chaos within their own lives and the lives of those they have influence over.
Without Christ a people may always have the freedom to do, but never the power to complete.
You are not really a noun; you are a verb. You are not really a person; you are a soul in action. You are your embryo, you are your baby, you are your child, you are your adult, and you are your spirit when you pass through this body through this lifetime.
Words do less than 10 things, but actions do more than 10 thousand things. Leaders don’t talk in vain; they follow with actions.
To struggle against darkness is not to blunder ignorantly; intelligence is needed to generate right action. Wisdom guides whether to act or not, and if so how. Sometimes darkness is overwhelming and intelligent action is required. Sometimes silence and inaction is required, but a silence which is the result of intelligence is different from that born of ego states such as pride, fear and laziness.
Vane grabbed me. “DuLac, let’s ch
That is what a well-guarded prayer life can reveal about us, that our trust is not in ourselves but in seeking God's strength for what we do. Prayer is not a substitute for action, but prayer undergirds action with the strength that makes the difference.
Most of those who have written about the Affects, and men’s way of living, seem to treat, not of natural things, which follow the common laws of nature, but of things that are outside nature. Indeed they seem to conceive man in nature as a dominion within a dominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather than follows, the order of nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined only by himself.
I would like to propose that the reason our actions have been so manifestly unsuccessful in steering the world away from its present collision course is that we have not, generally speaking, been basing them on any true understanding.
Sometimes, we expect life to work a certain way and when it doesn’t we blame others or see it as a sign, rather than face the pain of the choices we should or shouldn’t have made. Real healing won’t begin until we stop saying, “God prevented this or that.” Often in our attempt to protect ourselves from pain, we leave things to fate and don’t take chances. Or, we don’t work hard enough to keep the blessings we are given. Maybe, we didn't recognize a blessing, until it was too late. Often, it is the lies we tell ourselves that keeps us stuck in a delusion of not being responsible for our lives. We leave it all up to God. The truth is we are not leaves blowing toward our destiny without any control. To believe this is to take away our freedom of choice and that of others. The final stage of grief is acceptance. This can’t be reached through always believing God willed the outcomes in our lives, despite our inaction or actions. To think so is to take the easy escape from our accountability. Sometimes, God has nothing to do with it. Sometimes, we just screwed up and guarded our heart from accepting it, by putting our outcome on God as the reason it turned out the way it did. Faith is a beautiful thing, but without work we can give into a mysticism of destiny that really doesn't teach us lessons or consequences for our actions. Life then becomes a distorted delusion of no accountability with God always to blame for battles we walked away from, won or loss.
Brian came in heavy at that moment on his guitar, the rapid, high-pitched squeal ranging back and forth as his fingers flew along the frets. As the intro's tempo grew more rapid, Bekka heard Derek's subtle bass line as it worked its way in. After another few seconds Will came in, slow at first, but racing along to match the others' pace. When their combined efforts seemed unable to get any heavier, David jumped into the mix.As the sound got nice and heavy, Bekka began to rock back-and-forth onstage. In front of her, hundreds of metal-lovers began to jump and gyrate to their music. She matched their movements for a moment, enjoying the connection that was being made, before stepping over to the keyboard that had been set up behind her. Sliding her microphone into an attached cradle, she assumed her position and got ready. Right on cue, all the others stopped playing, throwing the auditorium into an abrupt silence. Before the crowd could react, however, Bekka's fingers began to work the keys, issuing a rhythm that was much softer and slower than what had been built up. The audience's violent thrash-dance calmed at that moment and they began to sway in response.Bekka smiled to herself.This is what she lived for.
You can perhaps, in a number of circumstances, tell yourself that you can't have more than you have until you do better than you're doing, but by all means steer clear of its reverse, the creed of defeat, in saying that you can't do better than you're doing until you can have more than you have.
It does not matter what religion you are, so long as your conscience guides your words and actions. We are all reflections of God means we are all reflections of his image — which is LIGHT. There is only one God and that is the cosmic heart of the universe — whatever you choose to call him or her. The heart within us is what connects us to God (the heart of the universe). This super basic concept is preached in all religions. God is TRUTH and LIGHT, and only through your conscience do you connect to him. Any person who does not use their conscience is very disconnected from God. Because again, the language of light can only be decoded by the heart.
There are people who know where they want to be, and also have a roadmap in their mind, about how to get there. But something stops them! They either keep waiting for better circumstances, or simply lack the courage to give up the comfort of a secure life. For them, the pursuit of their purpose is a risky proposition. Often, those are the same people that die with the weight of regrets. Those are the people who feel unfulfilled or unworthy at the end of their journey. They bury their dreams for the sake of a safe life, without ever venturing into the world of possibilities. But the truth is that if you risk nothing for the pursuit of your passion, you risk more. An even deeper reality is that there’s never a perfect time; the most ideal and opportune time is the time when YOU choose to begin your journey. Find courage to take the first step today. Your age, your pace, or your handicap doesn’t matter. Nothing is insurmountable if you have passion and persistence – your heart knows this. You simply have to convince your mind to play along. Find your moments of courage – the times when you feel strong, able, and energized. Tap those moments to launch yourself; the world beckons!
A beautiful woman should always have at the back of her mind that her ravishing appearance is only an ephemeral quality. When she wakes up in the morning, looks into the mirror, and notices that something is fading away, she knows that the time is ripe for marriage. She should be careful of who she takes into her life because the union is gonna be everlasting.
My mind screams for me to run, but my feet are planted where they are. This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. There’s no way this is real!
So these are the fresh meat, eh?” Zuko smirked. I cringed when he said fresh meat. How demeaning. “Well, I don’t know how well all of you can fight. So I’ll find out the quickest and simplest way.” He raised a scarred arm and pointed it at all of us, “ATTACK THE FRESH MEAT!
Thomas Randall and Christopher Golden not only are inventive writers but write in a sense to grab your attention cover to cover! I absolutely advise you to read,"The Waking" series. You'll love it if you are into the movie,"The- Grudge". I'm currently working on reading the second book of the trilogy.
Don't wait, just sweat.
God does not showers blessings, he showers opportunities.
When you keep hitting walls of resistance in life, the universe is trying to tell you that you are going the wrong way. It's like driving a bumper car at an amusement park. Each time you slam into another car or the edge of the track, you are forced to change direction.
The will to dare, the will to act.
True leaders don't give consoling answers, they take constructive actions.
Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action...To remain alive, he must think.
The difference between impossible and possible is a willing heart.
Purpose drives the process by which we become what we are capable of being.
God helps them that help themselves.” When you begin to help yourself, which means to make the best of what is in yourself, you begin to attract to yourself more and more of those helpful things that may exist all about you. In other words, constructive forces attract constructive forces; positive forces attract positive forces. A growing mind attracts elements and forces that help to promote growth, and people who are determined to make more and more of themselves, are drawn more and more into circumstances through which they will find the opportunity to make more of themselves. And this law works not only in connection with the external world, but also the internal world. When you begin to make a positive determined use of those powers in yourself that are already in positive action, you draw forth into action powers within you that have been dormant, and as this process continues, you will find that you will accumulate volume, capacity and power in your mental world, until you finally become a mental giant.
The more you think of what is right, the more you tend to make every action in your mind right. The more you think of the goal you have in view, the more life and power you will call into action in working for that goal. The more you think of your ambition, the more power you will give to those faculties that can make your ambitions come true. The more you think of harmony, of health, of success, of happiness, of things that are desirable, of things that are beautiful, of things that have true worth, the more the mind will tend to build all those things in yourself, provided, of course, that all such thinking is subjective.
Every mental process, or every mental action, that takes place in our wide-awake consciousness will, if it has depth of feeling or intensity, enter the unconscious field, and after it has developed itself according to the line of its original nature, will return to the conscious side of the mind.
He reasoned, even as a young man, that traditions may linger as he walked though the oracles of time. In later years he thought his mind may one day blur, should he survive to an old age, but as he spread ink on paper, transmitted and shared with those who came after him his experiences, his own grHe reasoned, even as a young man, that traditions may linger as he walked though the oracles of time. In later years he thought his mind may one day blur, should he survive to an old age, but as he spread ink on paper, transmitted and shared with those who came after him his experiences, his own great adventures, he believed perhaps they, like he, would give way to pause to reflect on how...hard it always was to open his eyes to begin a new day. eat adventures, he believed perhaps they, like he, would give way to pause to reflect on how goddamned hard it always was to open his eyes to begin a new day.
We breathe too fast to be able to grasp things in themselves or to expose their fragility. Our panting postulates and distorts them, creates and disfigures them, and binds us to them. I bestir myself, therefore I emit a world as suspect as my speculation which justifies it; I espouse movement, which changes me into a generator of being, into an artisan of fictions, while my cosmogonic verve makes me forget that, led on by the whirlwind of acts, I am nothing but an acolyte of time, an agent of decrepit universes. (...)If we would regain our freedom, we must shake off the burden of sensation, no longer react to the world by our senses, break our bonds. For all sensation is a bond, pleasure as much as pain, joy as much as misery. The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.
Be thankful for your achievements; be thankful for your accomplishments, no matter how big or small. Be thankful for the mind to complete the accomplishments. Be thankful for your past, present, and future. And know that if you are creating success stories you will find that average is how you began, above average is then where you will stand! Lest you forget the strong develop and improve; the weak get frantic, digress and deviate.
..be able and willing to action regardless of all trauma, all the No’s, and non-supporters one could headache and pain on.
We all have a little entrepreneur inside of us. Wanting to leverage it is what gives us an entrepreneurial spirit and an entrepreneurial mind. Actually doing it makes one an entrepreneur.
if you are not a fan of great consumer service, then you are not a fan of business ultimately not making you a fan of money.
Pick the paper off the floor, throw it in the trash, study—even if you think you already know the subject, say thank you for an act of kindness, and be the support you want to receive. You want to become a master of the mundane, making it easier to be a sorcerer of success.
The situation on Earth today is too dire for us to act from habit—to reenact again and again the same kinds of solutions that brought us to our present extremity. Where does the wisdom to act in entirely new ways come from? It comes from nowhere, from the void; it comes from inaction. When we see it, we realize it was right in front of us all along. It is never far away; yet at the same time it is in a different universe—a different Story of the World.
The only way we can eliminate despots in this world, is not to be peaceful about it, for that has been the case for many people that has caused the upheaval of such tyranny, nor we should turn the other way, but we must take appropriate actions to eliminate the thriving forces of such darkness in our world.
Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far.The secret is in action - here and now.It is your behavior that blinds you to yourself.Disregard whatever you think yourself to be and act as if you were absolutely perfect- whatever your idea of perfection may be.All you need is courage.
The distance between you and your destination can be set to zero only by your courage to act and by your determination to sustain this action till the end!
Every action today will define the future.
Whatever your faith prompts you to do, begin now.
It is the possibility of the dream, which quickens my spirit to take action.
If you want to be happy you have to study people who are happy. You have to hang out with people that are happy. Life won't go in the direction you want, by simply trying to stay positive in a life you're not happy with. You have to know what you want and why you truly want it so badly. When you figure that out then you need to change your current identity, in order to fit the type of person you envision would make those dreams come true. Happiness is not reliant on the actions or inactions of other people. It is your “courage in motion” toward your dreams.
Your love is as stable as you are: It's not about how good a person makes you feel, but rather what good you can do for them.
The fact is that in order to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Every action is a losing, a letting go, a passing away from oneself of some bit of one’s own reality into the existence of others and of the world. In Jesus Christ, this character of action is not resisted, by trying to use our action to assert ourselves, extend ourselves, to impose our will and being upon situations. In Jesus Christ, this self-expending character of action is joyfully affirmed. I receive myself constantly from God’s Parenting love. But so far as some aspects of myself are at my disposal, these I receive to give away. Those who would live as Jesus did—who would act and purpose themselves as Jesus did—mean to love, i.e., they mean to expend themselves for others unto death. Their being is meant to pass away from them to others, and they make that meaning the conscious direction of their existence. Too often the love which is proclaimed in the churches suppresses this element of loss and need and death in activity. As a Christian, I often speak of love as helping others, but I ignore what this does to the person who loves. I ignore the fact that love is self-expenditure, a real expending and losing and deterioration of the self. I speak of love as if the person loving had no problems, no needs, no limits. In other words, I speak of love as if the affluent dream were true. This kind of proclamation is heard everywhere. We hear it said: 'Since you have no unanswered needs, why don’t you go out and help those other people who are in need?' But we never hear people go on and add: 'If you do this, you too will be driven into need.' And by not stating this conclusion, people give the childish impression that Christian love is some kind of cornucopia, where we can reach to everybody’s needs and problems and still have everything we need for ourselves. Believe me, there are grown-up persons who speak this kind of nonsense. And when people try to live out this illusory love, they become terrified when the self-expending begins to take its toll. Terror of relationship is [that] we eat each other. But note this very carefully: like Jesus, we too can only live to give our received selves away freely because we know our being is not thereby ended, but still and always lies in the Parenting of our God....Those who love in the name of Jesus Christ... serve the needs of others willingly, even to the point of being exposed in their own neediness.... They do not cope with their own needs. They do not anguish over how their own needs may be met by the twists and turns of their circumstances, by the whims of their society, or by the strategies of their own egos. At the center of their life—the very innermost center—they are grateful to God, because... they do not fear neediness. That is what frees them to serve the needy, to companion the needy, to become and be one of the needy.
Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act in accordance with a rational principle knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit.
What do you always think about? What do you think you can do easily? What do you find peace in your heart to do? Watch those things carefully because among them is something on which you can turn the entire environment surrounding you for your success.
When you imagine and clearly articulate your goals in writing, you access the creative energy of your right brain. Imagination and creativity allow you to find solutions to problems that were not previously available to you and give your left brain an opportunity to be receptive to new ideas.
Success has no other shortcuts apart from the ones that tell you; control thoughts, delete negativity, alternate actions and shift attitudes to become positive! Click on passion, it opens a new window for you to sign in on time!
Not long ago, I learned that if I let other people tell me how God was supposed to work in my life I would be dead. If I would have given into someone else’s version of God then I would have done nothing to improve my situation. The notion that “if it was meant to be, it will be”, is a pacifying, yet harmful quote, that many spiritualists use to soften the blow of anger. God is not passive. He is relentless, and he will build you through fire. He will put in your heart a need for answers. The intensity of what bothers your soul is often his voice trying to take you from the limited vision of mankind to the full view of the best life he would like to offer you. He is above any pastor, any bishop, any prophet, any church, any cleverly crafted sermon or multi-meaning verse. He is the master of his craft and the author of your forever. Inner peace is only found through action. Fear may darken the trail, but the light of peace stands at the end of such a journey ----waiting with truth.
Action is the only truth. Truth is the only reality. Rest is all thought - philosophy, fantasy or imagination. But, universe is not a thought. Universe is action. How does it matter what the world, society or I think what I am meant to do or what I am born to do? The truth is what I am doing and that's what makes the difference to the world; thats the only reality and that's what reflects the self that I am.
If you’re not doing what you want to do. However, you still think about it every day. This means you have not given up. Only you know what action will make it happen and thought is an action. Keep focusing on what you want to do and figure out how to turn your thoughts into reality…
Life is like butter - when things cool down it can be reshaped
The definition of a professional is one who does a job well even when they don't like it.
Adventure begins with a thought, decision and action.
Holy dreams.Holy decisions.Holy choices.Holy actions.
For peace read books, for success read books and take actions.
The best antidote to worry is action. If there is an action that will lessen the likelihood of a dreaded outcome occurring, and if that action doesn't cost too much in terms of effort or freedom, then take it. The worry about whether we remembered to close the baby gate at the top of the stairs can be stopped in an instant by checking. Then it isn't a worry anymore; it's just a brief impulse. Almost all of the worry parents feel about keeping their children safe evolves from the conflict between intuition and inaction.Your choices when worrying are clear: take action, have faith, pray, seek comfort, or keep worrying.
Education -- whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself -- consists in creating motives. To show what is beneficial, what is obligatory, what is good -- that is the task of education. Education concerns itself with the motives for effective action. For no action is ever carried out in the absence of motives capable of supplying the indispensable amount of energy for its execution.
All this simply shows us that communalism and terrorism are nothing but opposite sides of the same coin. They keep feeding on each other in a vicious cycle, resulting in a society full of violence, hatred, sorrow and intolerance. Every communal act is used as a justification for mindless acts of terrorism . Similarly , each act of terrorism is used as a justification for such horrible atrocities like genocide and ethnic cleansing. And, it is always the innocent who get killed. This is the sad truth.
To be inspired is great, but to inspire is an honor.
Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.
Ready yourselves!' Mullone heard himself say, which was strange, he thought, for he knew his men were prepared.A great cry came from beyond the walls that were punctuated by musket blasts and Mullone readied himself for the guns to leap into action. Mullone felt a tremor. The ground shook and then the first rebels poured through the gates like an oncoming tide. Mullone saw the leading man; both hands gripping a green banner, face contorted with zeal. The flag had a white cross in the centre of the green field and the initials JF below it. John Fitzstephen. Then, there were more men behind him, tens, then scores. And then time seemed to slow.The guns erupted barely twenty feet from them.Later on, Mullone would remember the great streaks of flame leap from the muzzles to lick the air and all of the charging rebels were shredded and torn apart in one terrible instant. Balls ricocheted on stone and great chunks were gouged out by the bullets. Blood sprayed on the walls as far back as the arched gateway, limbs were shorn off, and Mullone watched in horror as a bloodied head tumbled down the sloped street towards the barricade.'Jesus sweet suffering Christ!' Cahill gawped at the carnage as the echo of the big guns resonated like a giant's beating heart.Trooper O'Shea bent to one side and vomited at the sight of the twitching, bleeding and unrecognisable lumps that had once been men. A man staggered with both arms missing. Another crawled back to the gate with a shattered leg spurting blood. The stench of burnt flesh and the iron tang of blood hung ripe and nauseating in the oppressive air.One of the low wooden cabins by the wall was on fire. A blast of musketry outside the walls rattled against the stonework and a redcoat toppled backwards onto the cabin's roof as the flames fanned over the wood.'Here they come again! Ready your firelocks! Do not waste a shot!' Johnson shouted in a steady voice as the gateway became thick with more rebels. He took a deep breath. 'God forgive us,' Corporal Brennan said.'Liberty or death!' A rebel, armed with a blood-stained pitchfork, shouted over-and-over.
Placing his suitcase on the seat next to him, he unbuttoned his suit jacket, loosened up his necktie and removed his fedora. He kept his custom eye wear on and made himself comfortable, looking more like a Wall Street accountant than the cold killer he'd become...
A dark shadow rose from the depth of the watercourse. Forced to crawl out of the oceans rolling waves, it struggled against the pull of the undertow. Rising, it moved further up the white sandy beach away from the cold water. The creature collapsed onto the cool sand as the crescent moon above shone on his sleek gray skin revealing two immense leather-like wings protruding from his back. Exhaustion clouded his mind. The darkness of night was soothing, refreshing. Somehow he knew it would bring him strength and sustenance. The creature watched as a great rolling storm cloud sunk into the salty water before him and he tried to remember why he had come.
Mindless action without a real understanding of the ramifications is only likely to result in serious miscalculations or a colossal waste of time. Avoid both by using your judgment, filtered through both knowledge and experience. Use common sense and logic as a counterbalance to emotion.
If there's more that you can do, then do it. If there's not more that you can do, then be content with what you're doing. But if there is despair, the despair can only be that you can do more. Because when you're doing as much as you can do, you will not feel despair. Because despair is the gap between what you could be doing and what you are doing.
The strength of your obstacle determines the weight of your potentials. The greater your potentials, the heavier your dunamis power must be.
We are designed with a dreaming brain and a hopeful spirit; it is our nature to envision the life of our dreams. And while dreaming comes easy to us, we must never forget that it takes strength, dedication, and courageous action to bring that dream to life
I believe that life is all about perception and timing. That good things come to those who act and that life’s about more than collecting a paycheck. I believe that the only person you’re destined to become is the one that you decide to be. That if you try hard enough you can convince yourself of anything. That having patience doesn’t make you a hero nor does it make you a doormat. I believe that not showing love proves you’re weak and belittling others doesn’t make you strong. That you are never as far away from people as the miles may suggest. That life’s too short to read awful books, listen to terrible music, or be around uninspiring people. I believe that where you start has little impact on where you finish. That sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away. That you can never be overdressed or overeducated. I believe that the cure for anything is salt water; sweat, tears, or the sea. That you should never let your memories be greater than your dreams. And that you should always choose adventure.
Astray from a deep sleep chronic as I write by phonics, like insomnia I will always live the onyx night for revealing, and, upon it, still I'll steal the bright light of day right away just to keep building at speeds hypersonic.
Some people experience a life-changing sensation that transforms how they see the world after a near-death experience, but the way I see it, we’re all dying – nay, we’re all dead – and it is up to us to be our own self-necromancers to find some form of life and spirit to reanimate the corpse of a life spent wanting.
Stop believing the false hope that "if it’s meant to be” it will happen. If that were true, everyone would be content, wealthy, fit and have great relationships. You must plan, act, persevere, make better choices, know your value and never, ever accept less than you truly deserve. It's not up to chance, it's up to you.
If you refuse to accept what is, and choose to see what could be, then you set a course for yourself that makes others take notice of you, respect you, revere you. It is then that they become objects of your destiny instead of you playing a support role in theirs.
That thing you’re afraid of? That label you shy away from? That word that seems too bold? That audacious goal? The life you think you don’t deserve? Aren’t talented enough to have? Aren’t brave enough to claim? Fuck. That. Shit. None of that baggage you’ve been carrying around has a place this year. Kick to the the curb. Now. This year only has space for the bold and the audacious and the brave. Don’t try to convince me you are not those things. I know better and your excuses hold no weight here. You are brave and bold and audacious and one hell of a goddess. Always have been. Always will be. So fill every step you take with intention. Then remember that intention is worthless without action—so get a move on, sugar
Deal resistance a death blow and make sweet love to your art all night long. Put on your fishnet thigh highs and your patent leather stilettos and your special occasion lingerie. Seduce the hell out of your own creative soul. It’s time for an epic lap dance. Dance for your paint and canvas, for fingers tripping across keyboard, for the open arms of motherhood, for the layers of flavor in the meals you create. Wind your hips down for the click of the shutter, for the 3 a.m. bathroom poem, for the late night lesson planning
Take Action: Success is not guaranteed but inaction will guaranty failure.
Know, child, that the One God—He is so vast that He cannot be moved, else the Universe falls. Nor can He answer, for the very act of opening His Mouth is Movement, indeed the greatest Act of all, for it is the Word. And this is precisely why He has made an infinity of lesser gods, creating them in His own image, so that we can do the lesser things on His behalf. We are His hands and arms and feet and mouths. We are His answers to your prayers, enacted along the great Framework of Being.
Rarely did events play out as imagined, in any case. The order of future events was transient. In the same way that the past was reconfigured by selective memory, future events, too, were moving targets. One could only act on instinct, grab hold of an intuited perfect moment, and spring into action.
You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use— silence, exile, and cunning.
As long as there is life, there is a potential; and as long as there is a potential, there will be a success! You will sprout again when cut down! You will rise again even when you fall!
Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity, better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an expression which specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief.
When story and behavior are consistent, we relax; when story and behavior are inconsistent, we get tense. We have a deep psychological need for our stories and behaviors to be consistent. We need to be able to trust the story, because it's the lens through which we see reality. We will go to great lengths in the attempt to make a story that explains an action and supports or restores consistency. If we cannot make story and action fit, we either have to make a new story or change the action. ... [But] The drive for consistency and the ability to redefine abhorrent action so it fits the story are very complex issues. We have a huge ability to continue believing stories we are told are true in order to stay comfortable with actions we don't want to change, or don't feel capable of changing.
Bigotry lives not just in our words, but in our actions, thoughts, and institutions.
For action, whatever its immediate purpose, also implies relief at doing something, anything, and the joy of exertion. This is the optimism that is inherent in, and proper and indispensable to action, for without it nothing would ever be undertaken. It in no way suppresses the critical sense or clouds the judgment. On the contrary this optimism sharpens the wits, it creates a certain perspective and, at the last moment, lets in a ray of perpendicular light which illuminates all one's previous calculations, cuts and shuffles them and deals you the card of success, the winning number.
Somewhere, somehow, at some unknown intersection between prayer and work, God indwells our humble offering—God indwells us—and turns human actions into spiritual awakenings.
Plan and plant your gifts. Pray and play your role. The harvest is assured when God manifests his anointing power in your passionate actions.
Strive through your adversities like a great football striker. Concentrate on the goal post and your ability to score a great goal. Let your attention be on your strength and your distinctive dexterity that can beat the strength and oppositions of your defenders and not the height, strength or boldness of the defenders.
The keys to health and weight-loss: stress reduction, sleep, deep breathing, clean water, complete nutrition, sunshine, walking, stretching, meditation, love, community, laughter, dreams, perseverance, purpose, humility, action.
You’re not going to fight me, Captain. This is the right call. You know it.”She marched me off the bridge and into the brilliant white passageway. “You think I’m just going to trust you’ll let me go?” I asked, getting a painful nudge in the back.“You don’t have a choice.” She was right about that. “Relax. I got your back, Cale.”“You’ve got a pistol in my back is what you’ve got.”“Just like old times.”Trust her? Well, shit.
Hope is not logical. It always comes as a surprise, just when you think all hope is lost. Hope is the cousin to grief, and both take time: you can’t short-circuit grief, or emptiness, and you can’t patch it up with your bicycle tire tube kit. You have to take the next right action.
Jack sprung to his feet out of reach. "I'd prefer to finish this intact. " "My apologies,” Cabal said, grinning viciously. "l keep forgetting, you're only human." His smile softened to full amusement as Jack raised his sword in challenge."Human or not," Jack said as he slowly approached him. "I carry the advantage of unworldly knowledge. "" Is that what you're doing?" Cabal laughed; "Something unworldly?""I have a vast library of knowledge inside my head from my homeland.""What knowledge could your world offer that would be useful here?""How about a toilet?" Jack winked at Nicole.“Perhaps you should build one and leave us all in awe.” Cabal declared.“People could call them ‘Jacks’ for short.” Nicole added to the conversation.
A mere motivator sees potentials in people and tells them to take actions. A true leader sees the same potentials in the same people and influences them to optimize them under his God-lead inspirations.
Do you have any idea how mad you sound?’‘Indeed I do. I have in moments of doubt considered the question of my sanity.’ (...)‘And?’‘Then I consider what a piece of work is man. How defective in reason, how mean his facilities, how ugly in form and movement, in action how like a devil, in apprehension how like a cow. The beauty of the world? The paragon of animals? To me the quintessence of dust.
Think of the end when you begin! Though the end may not be all that certain, you are sure of getting something, mostly and surprisingly, above the target in the end! Bind yourself to Persistence and tenacity, courage and vigor, Wisdom and faith, and dare unrelentingly! Sometimes it is never okay to feel okay at all. Some shall continue to feel okay until they meet what would tell them what they could have done whilst feeling okay! So it was in the days of the Fig tree. It thought portraying its flourishing leaves would have pleased Jesus Christ but Jesus needed a fruit! We are all having flourishing leaves (life,) but think of the fruits we must bear (living) when it is time to bear them, in season and out of season! May enough be enough and when you feel you have had enough, may you be pushed by enough to go beyond enough and dare to live a distinctive footprint! It all begins with a step and ends with a step! Start your day with vigor and an utmost tenacity and end your day with something! Be poised to do something distinctive each day for that is all life is about! Life is an adventurous journey and you cannot forever skip mistakes but if you make a mistake, learn from the mistake, do something with the mistake and avoid that mistake happening again and you least did made a mistake! You only took a different root than the usual to your final destination. The meaning we have given to words is what makes words have meaning! Breathe whilst you have breath and do something with the air you breathe whilst you have breath!
Give it a little more trial, a little more risk, a little more pushing up and a little more stretching out. Stretch it more and let all your ideal length be seen. Your maximum self can only be known if you stretch hard till you can't do it any longer!
People who have fully prepared always save time. Albert Einstein was right to teach that if he is given six hours to chop down a tree, he would spend the first four sharpening the axes. When you are done with your action plans, work will be easier!
Don’t stretch your neck to see who is not doing it; you can do it better! Don’t turn to watch whoever is watching you; everybody is busily watching over his own actions at hand! Go, make your own real; do at the right time. The right time is now; so do it now!
If it must be enjoyed, then it must be done. And if it must be done, then it must be done well. If it is done well, it is enjoyed well.
Was this a betrayal, or was it an act of courage? Perhaps both. Neither one involves forethought: such things take place in an instant, in an eyeblink. This can only be because they have been rehearsed by us already, over and over, in silence and darkness; in such silence, such darkness, that we are ignorant of them ourselves. Blind but sure-footed, we step forward as if into a remembered dance.
I meant to text quickly, but it took five attempts to type with my thumbs. Ever since the time I accidently told Wick I'd stopped for cocaine instead of coffee and when Mel, my best friend, asked me to get a penis instead of a penis I lost my faith in technology and proofread all my messages
As soon as I stepped onto the train, I knew why Shifters and Weres shunned the contraptions like E.coli avoided antibacterial agents on a petri dish. It smelled. Badly. A putrid mix of old man, sweaty socks, and cigarettes. My nose hairs didn't shrivel; they curled into the fetal position before they withered and died, leaving my nasal passage a dry, barren wasteland no longer capable of being harmed by the olfactory assault.
Kundalini means, according to Zeena ‘She Who is Hidden,’ and points to the dormant goddess in every human being’s body. While the kundalini force is found in muladharachakra, she hypnotizes humans, like maya herself, and renders them slaves to the illusory. Kundalini can only awaken people if she travels up along the spine.'--About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger 'Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,' University of Stockholm, 2004
Nothing could be easier than disturbing a status quo instituted by others; the real work of the sinistercurrent is to break the rules we rigidly establish for ourselves.”-Zeena Schreck for "Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity," University of Stockholm, Malin Fitger 2004
Zeena Schreck believes that the right-hand path and the left-hand path have traditionally had the same end goal; it is only the method that is different and the fact that adepts on the left-hand path seek liberation in this life.--About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger 'Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,' University of Stockholm, 2004
Zeena believes that the breaking of taboos creates access to blocked energy that is let loose in a forceful way. The left-hand path is about consciously breaking with a ‘sleepwalker orthodoxy’ to be able to act as a fully awaken and conscious individual. In her book, George Orwell (1984) is quoted: “Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” At the same time she notes that the left-hand path is the ‘way of action’. It is not about intellectual contemplation, or worse, just reading about action.'About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger from: Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its backgroundand role within new Western religiosity, University of Stockholm, 2004
In Demons of the Flesh, Zeena describes how Shiva and Shakti are actually ‘two sides of the same deity’. The goal of the initiate on the left-hand path is to become ‘this bisexual twin godhead’ and activate a state of perceptual sexual ecstasy within one's own consciousness. Zeena points out that a corresponding symbolism is found in the western hermeticism in the idea of ‘the inner androgyne.’--About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger 'Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,' University of Stockholm, 2004
Zeena Schreck believes that the right-hand path and the left-hand path have traditionally had the same end goal; it is only the method that is different and the fact that adepts on the lefthandpath seek liberation in this life.--About Zeena Schreck by Malin Fitger 'Contemporary notions of Kundalini, its background and role within new Western religiosity,' University of Stockholm, 2004
This magical universe is so faithful in waiting for us to get out of our own way. No matter how long you have gone astray, when you take action, the universe moves to support the act. Move in the direction of your goals and watch the magic flow.
Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing 'we' can do -- but who is that 'we'? -- and nothing 'they' can do either -- and who are 'they' -- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.
Grimm always used rabbits, on account of a grudge he had with the Easter Bunny. I’d had a pet rabbit when I was little, and the first time I saw an augury I think I managed to throw up and faint at the same time. After that, Grimm had it done without me. Not that it mattered. After six years in this business, I’d gut Thumper himself for an ounce of Glitter.
I firmly believe that life is made up of moments. Some are significant, and some are disposable. Some sit at the edge of your awareness and taunt you when you're trying to sleep, and others fade into the background noise of life. But every moment, no matter how small, has the potential to create or destroy you.
Has it ever occurred to you that the last thought before your falling asleep at night becomes the first thought on waking up in the morning? All night long, while you remain asleep, the thought stays within you in a seed form. And so, that which is the last thing at night becomes first in the morning. At the moment of your death all your desires will come together and become a seed. That very seed will consequently be the new life in the womb. You start fresh from where you left off.Whatsoever you are is of your own making. Don’t blame others. As a matter of fact, there is no one whom you can blame. Basically it is the cumulative effect of your own actions. Whatsoever you are – beautiful or ugly, happy or unhappy, man or a woman – it is all a result of your actions. You are the architect of your life. Don’t blame on your stars – you’ll be simply fooling yourself. This way you are dumping the responsibility on to someone else.No need to say God has sent you – don’t dump the responsibility on God. That’s just a strategy to avoid your own responsibility. You alone are the cause for being imprisoned in this body. One who understands perfectly that he himself is responsible for being in this world, a transformation takes place in his life.
Our every action has consequences. Thoughts have consequences. Since actions start from thoughts I guess I can say technically that thoughts in general have consequences. In our thoughts we make dreams. So if I think I can do it, then my actions will be "I CAN" and I am able to do it. So the result or the consequence will be "I did it!".
Just jump, make that call, take the next step and say NO, I'm done, that's it! As long as you entertain fearful thoughts, you’ll continue to feel the pain. So, just take some kind of action now. Even if you feel that fear while you’re taking action, have faith and just keep going. I guarantee you’ll break through the fear and you’ll realize how easy it was….
Believe it; 25 years from now or less, you will be voted for or appointed by the actions you are taking today! Guess what the vote will mean. Will it be an election for you to occupy the edifice of failure or to be the administrator in the kingdom of success? Rise up and optimize your potentials!
Action separates the heroes from the cowards, the achievers from the complainers, the successful from the mere dreamers, the happy from the envious; it separates those who rise to the challenge of their goals from the haters who cower in the shadow of stagnancy.
The journey of success requires a map for effective navigation. Establish a destination by defining what you want. Once you have a destination, take physical action by making choices that move you towards that destination.
Do not question your ability or worthiness. God is a universe of purpose-driven balance. If you have been called to action, it is because you have it within you to rise to the challenge of your calling. Now, RISE to it!
Success isn't something you have, it's something you do. Don't be fooled into taking shortcuts, they always lead to a dead-end. Instead, establish a goal, make a plan, and take purposeful action. Those who experience success are those who live it; those who earn it.
Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.
Success-minded people make a decision to achieve a goal and never have to make that decision again. They will be faced with a choice or some new circumstances to deal with, but the decision to achieve the goal is not in question. They have only to make adjustments along the way.
Success-minded people tend to be successful, confident, and friendly because they act successful, confident and friendly. People feel comfortable around positive people because positive people feel comfortable with themselves.
The brain is a wonderful thing. It will always give you an answer to the questions you ask. The problem comes from the questions you ask yourself. Your brain will only answer exactly what it is asked.
Each person has the potential to be good and productive, yet I also know that many people never begin to tap their true potential. It is human nature to surrender to the lowest common denominator. We must purposely strive to move ahead and achieve.
Lack of self-confidence is, more often than not, simple laziness. We feel confused and uncertain because we do not know. But instead of making the effort to investigate, we procrastinate and worry. We tell ourselves we can't instead of learning how we can. If we used the mental energy we expend in worry and fear to get out and find out about what we do not know, we would see our self-confidence grow. Lack of self-confidence is not overcome by faith, but by action. It is a lack, not of certainty, but of effort. Too often we are certain that we can't before we give ourselves a fair chance.
Secret elisions within families are suddenly revealed by self-execution, and just as quickly sheeted with excuses, blame, and counter-blame. But sense is made of the world only through relationship between action and reaction, symptom and cause. No change is possible without analysis of accountability.
I don't believe in failure. Whenever you take action and do something, irrespective of the outcome, you have succeeded by simply doing and trying. The universe rewards action. So believe in yourself and do whatever it is you want to do.
Rushing into action, you fail.Trying to grasp things, you lose them.Forcing a project to completion,you ruin what was almost ripe.Therefore the Master takes actionby letting things take their course.He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning.He has nothing,thus has nothing to lose.What he desires is non-desire;what he learns is to unlearn.He simply reminds peopleof who they have always been.He cares about nothing but the Tao.Thus he can care for all things.
With great abilities come great responsibilities; great power comes with great assignments.With great age comes great reasoning; great actions come great experience.With great battles come great victories; great trees come with great tap roots.However, if a little faith can move great mountains, what then will a great faith do? Mysterious things... I guess
Affectation is really a question of heart motive. Growing into a persona is an essential part of maturing. Anything you might choose to do is going to contribute to one persona or another. People will only call attention to it if it is markedly different from the course you were apparently on before.
I cadged a complimentary green matchbook with a gold bird icon from the Bell canning jar. Later we'd use the matches to light our spliffs. My fingertips tapped the stem to the gizmo that dinged a bell. Nobody came out. Wrong signal, so I did two bell rings. No response prompted me to tap out a series of bell rings.
He sidestepped down the alley and into another one connected to a small garage, where a raccoon with matching black eyes just like his own halted in mid-step next to a trash can.They stared at each other, not moving or making a sound.'There there, friend. I am not here to interrupt your nightly activity just as you are not here to interrupt mine.'They continued their separate ways, who would be caught and who would not remained a mystery.
The single biggest thing I’ve done to improve my relationship with others, was to improve the relationship I have with myself. I became lovable when I was able to love myself. No one can love you, if you don’t love you. Accept, nurture and love yourself as you are. You’ll be amazed how much it will also change how others perceive you.
He’s focused on something—or someone—over her shoulder.The harmonious warbling of the rainforest morphs into organized disarray, as if a primitive maestro has thrown conducting to the wind and let Mother Nature take over. Birds trill a warning as the breeze rustles the plant life. Wings flutter overhead. A crescendo of stridulation changes tempo, the insects seemingly performing a sonata as the rhythm shifts yet again.“What—who is it?” Summer asks in a strained whisper.His gaze lands on her, his brows furrowing. “The Forsaken.
And as her voice carried in the darkness, he wasn’t sure where the borders between her story and his dream were. But he saw no more nightmares; he dreamed of a noble Sky Ghost and his little daughter, which he taught everything she needed to become a better warrior than he was.
Langley bred a certain type of person with great intention. The human resources department required nearly as sophisticated of analysts as the foreign intelligence department. Apply the massive computing technology of the CIA to hiring, along with the naive appeal of the exciting, though perhaps not so lucrative life of a spy, and any headhunter would be jealous of the results.
Why are you in my room?”“Because I can be.”“You shouldn’t be.”“Save it, Rochester. You broke my nose.”“Does it hurt?”He lifted a hand toward his face and dropped it. “You could say that.”“Good.”He nudged a tray on the floor with his boot. It had oatmeal, toast, and orange juice on it. “Hungry?”Honor’s stomach growled. “No.”Ryder’s lips turned up in a fleeting sadistic smile. He kicked the tray across the room. It hit the wall and overturned. “Good.
People who are different are considered ineffective. People who can’t hide their shortcomings are not considered a threat. A lot of spies rely on being unobtrusive, but we flat out flaunt the fact that we’re different, and those we try to get information from put us on an even lower level than the ones they don’t notice. They don’t believe we’re even capable of being a threat, and they misstep more than they might with someone they simply don’t know.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.
I don’t know if I can.”I splayed my hand on the bulkhead beside Fran's shoulder and looked her in those pretty green eyes. “It’s easier if you don’t think about it. Shut it away, think about something else. Drink, fuck, do what you gotta do. Bury it so damn deep, it can’t touch you. And before long, you’ll forget what you were worried about.”Her lips turned down at the corners. She closed her eyes and sighed. “Is that what you do?”“It works.” Or it had. Until recently. Until One somehow made me look at myself though her eyes. Now I had shit going on in my head, like not wanting to let her down. Not wanting to let any of them down. Like this life and my place in it might actually mean something. That kinda thinking would get a man killed. ~ Caleb
It was in a swampy village on the lagoon river behind the Turner Peninsula that Pollock's first encounter with the Porroh man occurred. The women of that country are famous for their good looks - they are Gallinas with a dash of European blood that dates from the days of Vasco da Gama and the English slave-traders, and the Porroh man, too, was possibly inspired by a faint Caucasian taint in his composition. (It's a curious thing to think that some of us may have distant cousins eating men on Sherboro Island or raiding with the Sofas.) At any rate, the Porroh man stabbed the woman to the heart as though he had been a mere low-class Italian, and very narrowly missed Pollock. But Pollock, using his revolver to parry the lightning stab which was aimed at his deltoid muscle, sent the iron dagger flying, and, firing, hit the man in the hand.He fired again and missed, knocking a sudden window out of the wall of the hut. The Porroh man stooped in the doorway, glancing under his arm at Pollock. Pollock caught a glimpse of his inverted face in the sunlight, and then the Englishman was alone, sick and trembling with the excitement of the affair, in the twilight of the place. It had all happened in less time than it takes to read about it.("Pollock And The Porroh Man")
Ahmity reached out and created a ball of light in his hand sending it down past Jack and into the cave. He called out to Jack, “It will move as you command.”Jack frowned feeling a bit ridiculous talking to a ball of light and said, “Go three feet inside the cave and hover.” The ball floated quickly to the cave entrance and past the rushing water to hover just inside the cave entrance. “Move further in another 5 feet.” There was a large shadow to the right. “Move right 10 feet.” Jack commanded and the ball floated into a side tunnel and disappeared. Jack said, “Return to Ahmity.”The ball slowly accompanied Jack back up the cliff. When he reached the top Ahmity helped him up over the edge and waited for his report. Jack wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, “I could see a tunnel in the side of the cave about 10 feet inside the entrance. It’s large enough for the trolls pass through.”Ahmity shook his head and said, “If the trolls traveled back to the Netherworld from here then it’s possible the beasts escaped the same way.”Jack sighed and glanced back at the school then said, “Well there’s no way to know for sure unless we take a short trip down a black hole.”Coming soon--Vengeance's Fire
You look like you’ve been on a month-long bender. Have you?”“No, Ken, I have not. I’ve just had a long week.” Walked the streets of a city bathed in blood and stood amid a hundred thousand corpses. Negotiated a three-way peace treaty among opposing factions of a warring alien species who’d previously held me captive. Bullied the Metigen leadership into doing my bidding. Found out we’re not the real humans, and the real humans are currently enslaving the real universe. Oh, and I think I’m addicted to my ship. How was your week? “Nothing a shower and some food won’t fix.
Victor spread his hands and beamed. “There’s a truckload of supplies sitting on a dock in Madera. We got food, medicine, and machines ready to roll. All we need is a pigheaded truck driver with giant cojones and no brains to ram the stuff past the blockade and save the day.” The pilot leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “Naturally, I thought of Abel Yeager.
When you fear nothing, you have nothing to fear
Kato and the Fountain of Wrinkles – where wrinkles meet Tinseltown. For famous pug actor Kato Rhyan, acting isn't about fame, it's a part of him buried deep within his soul; and he's not about to let anything stand in his way of becoming the first animal to win an Oscar for Best Actor, even if it means taking on a role that requires a wrinkly dog's worst nightmare -- Botox injections. Dr. Carrington looked as though the wind had been knocked out of her. “Why would anyone ever want to go back to wrinkles?” she stammered.“Well, obviously, we only agreed to do this because of the role. His face needs to be smooth for the fur extensions. But come on, you didn’t really expect him to want to stay wrinkle-free. Honestly, he’s a pug. They’re supposed to be wrinkly.”“I mean, I know it can be done, but no one has ever asked me to do it before. Plus, I have a reputation to uphold. This is Beverly Hills. The last thing I need is the reputation that I can’t keep my wrinkles straight.” Rhys Ella, Kato and the Fountain of Wrinkles, 2014.
There’s someone here.”“I know.” She said, “Where’s Scott?” “I’m not sure,” He said, “I thought you were going to wait outside with Nichole and Matt.”“We decided to come in.”“You mean they’re in here too?”“Yes.”“Okay…” He said calmly, “You stay here.”She nodded as he turned to go.“Oh, and Carrie.”“Yes?”“Could you actually listen to me this time?” He asked with a faint smile on his face.
Now, Mr. Antonio. I understand that there are people who are close to you who want me dead.”“No, mija. They don’t want you dead.”“Then explain this.” I handed him the picture.He chuckled again.“No, they don’t want you dead. That would be too easy. They want revenge.”Cold sweat broke out all over me, but I kept my face calm. I looked at him straight in the eye.“Well, then they are going to be quite disappointed, aren’t they?” I flashed my teeth at him.“Senorita, you might want to warn Senor Smith, you see, my nephew he doesn’t like to share, and if he sees another man after you, he’ll get very, eh, aggressive.” The silver fox looked at me and winked.“Oh, he won’t have to worry.” I said as I was walking out the door. “I doubt he will be alive long enough to know Agent Smith.”Then I slammed the door.
The pity in Matt’s eyes was almost too much to bear but she found herself unable to turn away. She had only seen that look once and that was when he almost lost Nichole. The sparkle in his eye burned out as if it was nothing more than a dying ember leaving his brown eyes dark and cold. Like Scott’s.
So much better for you to long for what you can never have, than to get it and have to face the reality of it. I assure you, when you realize the reality of this situation, there wont be a hole deep enough for you to climb into to hide the mortification you're going to feel. - Eric to Camile in Pawn of Innocence.
Approaching the trail, he broke through the thicket a short distance ahead of the Empath. Causing the Empaths horse to startle as the surprised rider jerked on the reins. Cap was equally surprised to find a young girl before him instead of an older, experienced male Empath. Cap brought his horse to a quick halt. The young girl pulled a small knife from her boot and cautioned him. "I don't know where you came from, but I'm not easy prey.” Her voice shook slightly with fear as she raised the knife.Not sure how to proceed, they stared silently at each other. Cap had always believed that Empaths didn't carry weapons. This pretty, chestnut haired girl couldn't be more than 18 years old. Her long straight tresses covered the spot on her jacket where the Empathic Emblem was usually worn, causing Cap to doubt she was the one he sought. Not wanting to frighten her any more than he already had, Cap tried to explain. "I'm Commander Caplin Taylor. I’m looking for an Empath that is headed for the Western Hunting Lodge.”"My name is Kendra; I am the Empath you seek.” She answered cautiously, still holding the blade. A noise from the brush drew her attention as a small rodent pounced out, trying to evade an unseen predator. Cap was just close enough to lurch forward and snatch the dirk from her hand. Her head jerked back in alarm."Bosen May has been mauled by a Sraeb, his shoulder is a mass of pulp." Cap spoke quickly not wanting to hesitate any longer.That was all Kendra needed to hear. She pushed her horse past him and headed quickly down the trail."Wait!" Cap called after her, turning his horse around. Reining in the horse, she turned back to face him annoyed by the delay. "Are you a good horseman?" Cap asked, as he stuffed her dirk in his jacket."I've been in the saddle since I was a child." She answered, abruptly."Okay so just a few years then?" Cap's rebuke angered her. Jerking the horse back toward the trail, she ignored him."Wait, I'm sorry!" Cap called after her. "It's just that I know a quicker way, if you can handle some rough terrain.""Let’s go then." Kendra replied, gruffly, turning back to face him. Without another word, Cap dove back into the brush and the girl followed.
The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.
I'm moving and not moving at all. I'm like the moon underneath the waves that ever go on rolling and rocking. It is not, "I am doing this," but rather, an inner realization that "this is happening through me," or "it is doing this for me." The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action.
Simon stopped listening. He realised he'd had enough. Enough of the theories, enough of the mystery, enough of the bullshit. Enough of the soldiers and guns and MI5. Enough of bugs in phones and in people he cared about. Enough of not being cared about back. Enough of uncertainty and lies and civilisation, collapsing or not. Enough of is part in it, his place, his role; the character of Simon Parfitt and all the baggage it entailed.
Now the screams were awful to hear as men burned like candles all along the deck. Black smoke billowed over the sea. Argurios could not believe what he was watching. At least fifty helpless men were dying in agony. One man managed to free himself and leap into the sea. Amazingly, when he surfaced the flames were still consuming him.All along the beach there was silence as the stunned crowd watched the magical fires burning the galley and it's crew.
The vainglory of wishing to understand is dangerous, immoral and, above all, old-fashioned. The modern way – perhaps the final way - is to say: Go forward, without knowing why, as quickly as possible, towards an unknown goal! To act and think are opposites which identify one only in the Absolute. To accomplish all one's movements – of the head, the arms, the legs – without ever quite attaining the status of a puppet, but with a certainty that gives one a feeling of rightness: that is what is nowadays held up as the ideal. Be citizens of Universal activity! Forget to be conscious of ourselves! The blind horse gallops without hesitation, not knowing where it is going, not caring where it has been: so let up put out our eyes!
It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.
I darted away from Geir and jmped through the gaping hole in the wall Will's body had made. The settling dust choked me, but I made it through and ran to Will. He was struggling to his feet, leaning heavily on his sword as the point dug into the cold ground. When I reached him, I dropped my swords and wrapped my arms around his chest."I've got you," I said, helping him lift his torso the rest of the way up. I heard a sickening snap in his chest as he groaned, and I knew something was broken. He buried his face into my shoulder and growled in pain.
Ivar grabbed hold of my shoulders, swung me into a strung-up fishing net, and then smashed me into a set of shelves. Clutter rained down on me, and I fought my way to the surface, clawing free of the net. Ivar's fingers curled around my shirt and lifted me until I was eye level with her."I'm going to enjoy killing you," she sneered. "And when you come back, I'll enjoy killing you again. If the Enshi doesn't eat your soul, I'll gladly eat your heart."Instead of replying, I stabbed her in the gut with a Khopesh. Her eyes bulged and she dropped me. I pulled the flaming sword out and slashed, but she caught my wrist before my blade could catch her skin, and she hissed, pulling her lips back viciously."Wrong move." Her flesh healed shut with only an ugly marbled scar left behind. She lashed her black power at me, striking me across the chest like a whip, and I staggered back. I shook off the blow and saw her lunge for me through the smoky remains of her attack. My own power detonated in a deafening explosion of white and collided with her. It blew her through the cabin, and she crashed through the wall and flew back out on the other side of the deck in a storm of fiberglass and steel.
It is terribly important to realize that the leap of faith is not so much a leap of thought as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see then we will act; in matters of faith it is first we must do then we will know, first we will be and then we will see. One must, in short, dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.
Is this seat taken?" The deep, gravelly voice jolted Noelle from her blood-thirsty thoughts. When she laid eyes on the man it belonged to her breath caught in her throat. She blinked, wondering if maybe she'd dreamed him, but then he flashed her a captivating grin and she realized that he must be real - her mind wasn't capable of conjuring up a smile this heart-stoppingly gorgeous. A pair of vivid blue eyes watched her expectantly as she searched for her voice. "There are lots of other seats available," she finally replied, gesturing to the deserted tables all around them. He shrugged. "I don't want to sit anywhere but here." She moistened her suddenly dry lips. "Why?" "Because none of those other seats are across from you," he said simply.
…There are times when something is asked of us, and we find we must do it. There is no calculation involved, no measure of the necessity of the thing itself, the action that must be performed. There is simply an acknowledgment that we will do the thing in question, and then the thing is done, often at considerable personal cost. ""What goes into these decisions? What tiny factors, invisible, in the jutting edges of personality and circumstance, contribute to this inevitability?
America is a leap of the imagination. From its beginning, people had only a persistent idea of what a good country should be. The idea involved freedom, equality, justice, and the pursuit of happiness; nowadays most of us probably could not describe it a lot more clearly than that. The truth is, it always has been a bit of a guess. No one has ever known for sure whether a country based on such an idea is really possible, but again and again, we have leaped toward the idea and hoped. What SuAnne Big Crow demonstrated in the Lead high school gym is that making the leap is the whole point. The idea does not truly live unless it is expressed by an act; the country does not live unless we make the leap from our tribe or focus group or gated community or demographic, and land on the shaky platform of that idea of a good country which all kinds of different people share.This leap is made in public, and it's made for free. It's not a product or a service that anyone will pay you for. You do it for reasons unexplainable by economics--for ambition, out of conviction, for the heck of it, in playfulness, for love. It's done in public spaces, face-to-face, where anyone is free to go. It's not done on television, on the Internet, or over the telephone; our electronic systems can only tell us if the leap made elsewhere has succeeded or failed. The places you'll see it are high school gyms, city sidewalks, the subway, bus stations, public parks, parking lots, and wherever people gather during natural disasters. In those places and others like them, the leaps that continue to invent and knit the country continue to be made. When the leap fails, it looks like the L.A. riots, or Sherman's March through Georgia. When it succeeds, it looks like the New York City Bicentennial Celebration in July 1976 or the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963. On that scale, whether it succeeds or fails, it's always something to see. The leap requires physical presence and physical risk. But the payoff--in terms of dreams realized, of understanding, of people getting along--can be so glorious as to make the risk seem minuscule.
Hope you didn't bring any spiders into the van with you,' Simon put in. 'Hey, I'm thinking we could take you back outside and hose you down, just to make sure. You'd definitely smell better if we did, which, I mean, bonus.' Jeremy scraped both hands through his hair again, then beat them clean against his thighs. 'Believe me, Simon, if we had access to a garden hose, I'd be the first to turn it on myself. I feel foul.''Hate to break it to you, Archer, but that feeling is not lying to you,' Simon said with mild relish.
Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, it's an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie.
Since Mom wasn't exactly the most useful person in the world, one lesson I learned at an early age was how to get things done, and this was a source of both amazement and concern for Mom, who considered my behavior unladylike but also counted on me. "I never knew a girl to have such gumption," she'd say. "But I'm not too sure it's a good thing.
Cesar is not a philosophical man. His life has been one long flight from reflection. At least he is clever enough not to expose the poverty of his general ideas; he never permits the conversation to move toward philosophical principles. Men of his type so dread all deliberation that they glory in the practice of the instantaneous decision. They think they are saving themselves from irresolution; in reality they are sparing themselves the contemplation of all the consequences of their acts. Moreover, in this way they can rejoice in the illusion of never having made a mistake; for act follows so swiftly on act that it is impossible to reconstruct the past and say that an alternative decision would have been better. They can pretend that every act was forced on them under emergency and that every decision was mothered by necessity
Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand-from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: 'How can I be good?' and 'How can I do something good?' Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: 'What is the will of God?
The action of a thing is the same as the naming of it - is, in fact, the real name. The trees creak and they are saying, 'trees creak through the long night.' The long night - what is it? Trees creaking. There wasn't anything that tied life's moments together, except life. And when it was gone?
Common man does not speculate about the great problems. With regard to them he relies upon other people's authority, he behaves as "every decent fellow must behave,'' he is like a sheep in the herd. It is precisely this intellectual inertia that characterizes a man as a common man. Yet the common man does choose. He chooses to adopt traditional patterns or patterns adopted by other people because he is convinced that this procedure is best fitted to achieve his own welfare. And he is ready to change his ideology and consequently his mode of action whenever he becomes convinced that this would better serve his own interests.
You are not who you say you are but rather what you do. Look at what it is that you do. If you don't like what you see: decide what you would like to see instead. Make those changes. Realize your potential. Harness your power. Seize every opportunity and do what it is that allows you to be true to yourself. Don't deny yourself your path. Only you can decide. Only you have that power. Only you are living your life.
You aren't battling your ability to stick to a diet, execute a business plan, repair a broken marriage and rebuild your life, hit your goals, or win over a bad manager- you are battling your feelings about doing it. You are more than capable of doing the work to change anything for the better, despite how you feel. Feelings are merely suggestions, ones you can ignore. To change you must do the same, you must ignore how you feel, and just do it anyway.
Take full responsibility of yourself, of your actions and of your inaction. It is only when you can truly and honestly face yourself that you can make any changes for the better. If you had a hand in it then you also have a hand in what you do going forward. Act on what you can do. Don't fret or stress over that which you can't control. Don't assign your responsibility as blame to others. Don't allow others to assign their responsibility as blame on to you. Be fair with yourself and others. Focus on positive momentum. Don't speak cruelly to yourself. Don't berate yourself. What is done is done. Focus instead on what you can do now, in this moment, moving forward. Empower yourself into change and betterment. It is up to you to advocate for your highest potential. That is the work you must do.
The idea that you are not good enough and that people will not like you is something that has been ingrained into your mind over many years. You have hundreds of experiences that you can call up as evidence of the fact that people will not like you -- and that things will not turn out well. These ideas are incredibly convincing. They compel us to hesitate, to shy away, and to avoid the situations -- and people -- that we find frightening. This sets up a reinforcing cycle, where we avoid reaching out, don't get good responses from others as a result, and then gain further evidence that we are not worthy. In order to truly overcome your social anxiety at a deep, gut level, you must repeatedly take bold action. It is only through trying something new, and with a different perspective, that you learn to see the world and the people around you in a different light.
He had always been a middle-of-the-road sort. He had never submitted word for word to anyone's command, but neither had he passionately rebelled against anyone's advice. Depending upon the interpretation, this was the posture of a schemer or the strategy of a born vacillator. If he himself had been confronted with either of these charges, he could not have avoided wondering if they might not be true. But in large part, this was to be attributed neither to artifice nor to vacillation but rather to the flexibility of his vision, which allowed him to look in both directions at once. To this day, it was precisely this capacity that had always dampened his determination to advance singlemindedly toward a particular goal. It was not unusual for him to stand paralyzed in the midst of a situation. His posture of upholding the status quo was not the result of poverty of thought, but the product of lucid judgment; but he had never understood this truth about himself until he acted upon his beliefs with inviolable courage. The situation with Michiyo was precisely a case in point.
The truth is, that in all cases a certain number at least seems to be necessary to secure the benefits of free consultation and discussion, and to guard against too easy a combination for improper purposes; as, on the other hand, the number ought at most to be kept within a certain limit, in order to avoid the confusion and intemperance of a multitude. In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.
What makes an action positive or negative? Not how it looks, not whether it is big or small, but it is the positive or negative motivation that is behind it. No matter how many teachings that you have heard, to be motivated by ordinary concerns, such as a desire for greatness, fame or whatever, is not the way of the true Dharma.
Let those who sit know that this world is not a waiting room; it is an arena to struggle, an arena for action! Let the inactive remember that we were born to act, not to sit!
Socrates famously said that the unconsidered life is not worth living. He meant that a life lived without forethought or principle is a life so vulnerable to chance, and so dependent on the choices and actions of others, that it is of little real value to the person living it. He further meant that a life well lived is one which has goals, and integrity, which is chosen and directed by the one who lives it, to the fullest extent possible to a human agent caught in the webs of society and history.
... A few centuries earlier... humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons, we have largely altered that... Man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous - that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.
A well-constituted human being, a ‘happy one’, must perform certain actions and instinctively shrinks from other actions, he transports the order of which he is the physiological representative into his relations with other human beings and with things. In a formula: his virtue is the consequence of his happiness…Everything good is instinct—and consequently easy, necessary, free. Effort is an objection.
Crowds don’t think; they act; they don’t produce ideas, they produce actions!
I always knew a good man should do no bad deeds, but it never occurred to me that a good man must do good deeds. He cannot just sit back and do nothing. He cannot just relax and let things happen around him. He must act or his faith is meaningless, mere words or thoughts.
We are the sum of our actions, and of our inactions, yes, that is easy enough to understand. What comes harder is finding ourselves the sum of our emotions, which flicker, altered by experience, by the things we cannot bear to tell ourselves, by the trouble we accrue, the flattening and tamping down as we learn how not to be hurt. As we learn protection and the easiest means of protection.
We have made our tasks infinitely more difficult because we failed to do yesterday what we are glad to do today. To delay longer will make the war more protracted and increase the sacrifices for victory. Let us stop asking ourselves if it is necessary to do more now. Let us ask ourselves what more we can do today, so we have less to sacrifice tomorrow.
Doubt, fear and helplessness will always try to flourish when we are in a holding pattern for too long. The best defense – is to just do something. Anything positive! Something healthy! Get moving! Get busy! Often, this is the only way to calm the inner storm. Even more often, this is the only way the best course of action will finally find us ready to unveil itself to us.
Action disconcerts us, partly because of our physical incompetence, but mainly because it offends our moral sensibility. We consider it immoral to act. It seems to us that every thought is debased when expressed in words, which transform the thought into the property of others, making it understandable to anyone who can understand it.
It has taken my whole life thus far to see how being brave enough to hold on to a question, brave enough to never stop looking for answers, and brave enough to take action even when I didn’t know the right answer, was as brave as I needed to be to succeed and to succeed with love.
I would like to show that we can become so much more through awareness. That is why I speak of conscious evolution. If we understand ourselves, how we think and react, why we do things... Then we can work out how to think more constructively, act more usefully, do things more easily, become more of the person we really want to be deep down inside.
Politics is action and all action is but a flaw in the perfection of inaction, which is peace, just as all being is but a flaw in the perfection of nonbeing. Which is God. For if God is perfection and the only perfection is in nonbeing, then God is nonbeing. Then God is nothing. Nothing can give no basis for the criticism of Thing in its thingness. Then where do you get anything to say? Then where do you get off?
The razor hung between his shoulder-blades from a loop of cotton string round his neck inside his shirt. The same motion of the hand which brought the razor forward over his shoulder flipped the blade open and freed it from the cord, the blade opening on until the back edge of it lay across the knuckles of his fist, his thumb pressing the handle into his closing fingers, so that in the second before the half-drawn pistol exploded he actually struck at the white man's throat not with the blade but with a sweeping blow of his fist, following through in the same motion so that not even the first jet of blood touched his hand or arm.
Men believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time. Bobby Shaftoe learned most of his practical knowledge – how to fix a car, butcher a deer, throw a spiral, talk to a lady, kill a Nip – from the latter type of man. For them, trying to do anything by talking is like trying to pound in a nail with a screwdriver. Sometimes you can see the desperation spread over such a man’s face as he listens to himself speak.
Every scrape, site, range and page; every game, download, hack, song, movie and virrie on the Web. Everything on your phone. Everything on your 'puta. Even the content directories of your cupboards. Almost every system has been brute-forced; passwords cracked, firewalls breached. Nothing has been left untouched.
Because in life, knowledge is only part of the battle. WITHOUT ACTION, KNOWLEDGE IS OFTEN MEANINGLESS. As Aristotle put it, to be excellent we cannot simply think or feel excellent, we must act excellently. Yet the action required to follow through on what we know is often the hardest part.
The fundamental difference between an instinctive response and an emotion is this: An instinctive response is the body’s direct response to some external situation. An emotion, on the other hand, is the body’s response to thought. Indirectly, an emotion can also be a response to an actual situation or event, but it will be a response to the event seen through the filter of a mental interpretation, the future of thought, that is to say, through the mental concepts of good and bad, like and dislike, me and mine.
I had had a feeling of freedom because of the sudden change in my life. By comparison to what had come before, I felt immensely free. But then, once I became used to that freedom, even small tasks became more difficult. I placed constraints on myself, and filled the hours of the day. Or perhaps it was even more complicated than that. Sometimes I did exactly what I wanted to do all day—I lay on the sofa and read a book, or I typed up an old diary—and then the most terrifying sort of despair would descend on me: the very freedom I was enjoying seemed to say that what I did in my day was arbitrary, and that therefore my whole life and how I spent it was arbitrary.
The wolf blood, Arya remembered now. I'll be as strong as Robb, I said I would. She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. 'I am a direwolf, and done with the wooden teeth.
The surgical resident interested in learning trauma will bypass a residency at a quiet community hospital for a residency at a fast-paced Level 1 trauma center treating a high volume of trauma patients. A Level 1 trauma center residency is far more rigorous—and not particularly glamorous—but the intensive culture of a dedicated trauma center will cultivate the decisive judgment and action required of a surgeon specializing in trauma. By choice or by chance, we must actively test our limits to know our capabilities.
Everyday, in our quest to grab the new, the trendy, the coolest stuff, we forget to use the old and our daily lives become stuck in the vicious cycle, chasing after stuff without working the old. Today, pause, slow down, take time, revisit those lessons, materials and take the necessary baby-steps. It pays. Go, make it happen!
Napoleon the greatest of the conquerors, is a sufficient proof that great men of action are criminals, and, therefore not geniuses. One can understand him by thinking of the tremendous intensity with which he tried to escape from himself.
Studying the rule of law won't make a great litigator. It is the act of trying cases in real courtrooms with real plaintiffs and defendants and judges and juries, week after week and year after year that develops lawyers into top trial attorneys. ― Marian Deegan
We didn't come to the world just to entertain, we came to play remarkable roles, and our reward is to see you doing more than us.
Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.
The hit-woman opened the door. No dead body on the floor. Thank God.I heard an unearthly roar and then Jordan charged Liz from where she’d been hiding beside the door. She tackled her to the floor and stabbed her through the wrist with a small switchblade. The hit-woman shrieked and let go of the gun, allowing Jordan precious seconds to bat it across the room. She landed a couple hard punches to the assassin’s nose, bloodying it, before the other woman got the upper hand.She grabbed a handful of Jordan’s ponytail and slammed her head into the edge of the coffee table. Jordan cried out, but didn’t let go of the knife. She withdrew it and held it against the assassin’s throat, shouting, “Move again and I’ll kill you, puta!”Liz panted madly, but stayed put. Jordan glanced up at me. “You okay?”“Alive,” I said through a grimace. “Not okay.”“Good enough.” She returned her gaze to the woman pinned beneath her and glared. “The police are on their way. And not the nice, human police. Angels. Get any ideas about trying to kill me again and you won’t even get to deal with them.”“I’ve been in jail before,” Liz said, attempting to recapture her former arrogance. “I’ll get over it.”Jordan leaned down a few inches, lowering her voice. “Really? How’d you like to return without your tongue?”Liz’s eyes went wide, as did mine. “You wouldn’t dare.”“You shot my best friend. Multiple times. Lex talionis.”“You can’t kill me. You’re not a policewoman. You’re just a girl.”“No. I’m a Seer. You and the rest of your friends had better learn the difference between a sheep and a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Until then…”She lifted her fist and punched Liz hard in the temple. The assassin went out like a light. “Vaya con dios, bitch.
FOXFIRE NEVER SAYS NEVER! By the time the kidnapped turquoise-and-chrome car overturns--turns and turns and turns!--in a snow-drifted field north of Tydeman's Corners Legs Sadovsky will have driven eleven miles from Eddy's Smoke Shop on Fairfax Avenue, six wild miles with the Highway Patrol cop in pursuit bearing up swiftly when the highway is clear and the girls are hysterical with excitement squealing and clutching one another thrown from side to side as Legs grimaces sighting the bridge ahead, it's one of those old-fashioned nightmare bridges with a steep narrow ramp, narrow floor made of planks but there's no time for hesitation Legs isn't going to use the brakes, she's shrewd, reasoning too that the cop will have to slow down, the fucker'll be cautious thus she'll have several seconds advantage won't she?--several seconds can make quite a difference in a contest like this so the Buick's rushing up the ramp, onto the bridge, the front wheels strike and spin and seem at first to be lifting in decorous surprise Oh! oh but astonishingly the car holds, it's a heavy machine of power that seems almost intelligent until flying off the bridge hitting a patch of slick part-melted ice the car swerves, now the rear wheels appear to be lifting, there's a moment when all effort ceases, all gravity ceases, the Buick a vessel of screams as it lifts, floats, it's being flung into space how weightless! Maddy's eyes are open now, she'll remember all her life this Now, now how without consequence! as the car hits the earth again, yet rebounds as if still weightless, turning, spinning, a machine bearing flesh, bones, girls' breaths plunging and sliding and rolling and skittering like a giant hard-shelled insect on its back, now righting itself again, now again on its back, crunching hard, snow shooting through the broken windows and the roof collapsing inward as if crushed by a giant hand upside-down and the motor still gunning as if it's frantic to escape, they're buried in a cocoon of bluish white and there's a sound of whimpering, panting,sobbing, a dog's puppyish yipping and a strong smell of urine and Legs is crying breathlessly half in anger half in exultation, caught there behind the wheel unable to turn, to look around, to see, "Nobody's dead--right?" Nobody's dead.
The next second a great blast of hot light erupted over Toad and Jed, but they didn't stop. Toad was trying to punch every bit of Jed that he could reach. There was a great howling of fright and a heavy-booted foot nearly missed Toad's fingers. Jed knocked Toad off him and rose to his feet. He swung his foot back, readying to kick. With a roar, Hazel flew at Jed. Her sharp claws latched onto his back, piercing through the leather vest. Jed roared in pain. His hands scrabbled for Hazel, but she flew in the air, beating her wings against his face. With a bellow, he turned on his heel and raced out of the pub.
A creature--a frightfully, awful creature--was mere feet from her. Its eyes were enormous, the size of goose eggs and milky white. Its gray, slippery skin was stretched taut upon its face. Its mouth was wide and full of needle teeth. Its hands rested on the rock, hands that were webbed and huge with each finger ending in a sharp, curved nail. It was as tall as a human man, yet oddly shrunken and hunched.
By doing ordinary actions efficiently you will become the best among ordinary, but you will not be an extraordinary.
If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think. There was nothing to think about. He did not remember. Nothing had ever happened. What did he do? Can you imagine anything more absurd than an infinite intelligence in infinite nothing wasting an eternity?
Napoleon, the greatest of the conquerors, is a sufficient proof that great men of action are criminals, and therefore, not geniuses. One can understand him by thinking of the tremendous intensity with which he tried to escape from himself. There is this element in all the conquerors, great or small. Just because he had great gifts, greater than those of any emperor before him, he had greater difficulty in stifling the disapproving voice within him. The motive of his ambition was the craving to stifle his better self.
Are you throwing darts at the challenges in your life? Hoping something sticks? Try using a laser instead! Choose the biggest challenge you have and take action as focused and precise as a laser. Darts can go anywhere, lasers only go where you aim them...
I had to ask myself why I'm continuing to engage in behavior I knew hurt. What was my payoff? Did it confirm my belief I was not enough? Did I think I needed to suffer? Did I think I could save him? Why not save myself instead? What a miserable realization that I knew all of this yet failed to take action.
We have to accept that any action we take might promote an equal and opposite reaction that we do not want. We have to realize that even the most noble actions or most obviously correct course can have its dark side that we cannot control or reason our way out of. The fighter of the "just war" must understand that her actions will result in the deaths of other humans; many of whom may be innocent. The pacifist who refuses all war must realize that his inaction might likewise result in the deaths of the innocent. There are no actions without contradiction—and yet we must act, for not to act is also a contradictory action with both positive and negative effects.
In the play of living we engage in three fundamental forms of action. We begin things, we continue to be engaged in things, and we bring things to an end. We are each obligated to be capable of fulfilling these three forms of action relative to every condition in our experience. To suffer disability relative to any of these three forms of action relative to any condition in our experience is to accumulate a tendency relative to that condition. Such is the way we develop our conventional "karmas." By virtue of such accumulations we are obliged to suffer repetitions of circumstances, in this life and from life to life, until we overcome the liability in our active relationship to each condition that binds us.In the manifest process of existence, we and all other functions in the play are under the same lawful obligation to create, sustain, and destroy conditions or patterns that arise. The inhibition or suppression of the ability to create conditions (or to realize that conditions are your creation and responsibility) is reflected as "tamas," or rigidity, inertia, indolence, and laziness. The inhibition or suppression of the ability to sustain (or to realize that the maintenance of conditions is your responsibility) is reflected as "rajas," or unsteadiness of life and attention, and negative and random excitation or emotion. The inhibition or suppression of the ability to destroy or become free of conditions (or to realize that the cessation of conditions is your responsibility) is reflected as artificial "sattwa," sentimentality, romance, sorrow, bondage to subjectivity, and no comprehension of the mystery of death.
When we feel like giving up, like we are beyond help, we must remember that we are never beyond hope. Holding on to hope has always motivated me to keep trying. I have found this hope by connecting with others. I’ve found it not only in individuals who have dealt with eating disorders but also in people who have battled addictions and those who have survived abuse, cancer, and broken hearts. I have found much-needed hope in my passions and dreams for the future. I’ve found it in prayer. Real hope combined with real actions has always pulled me through difficult times. Real hope combined with doing nothing has never pulled me through. In other words, sitting around and simply hoping that things will change won’t pick you up after a fall. Hope only gives you strength when you use it as a tool to move forward. Taking real action with a hopeful mind will pull you off the ground that eighth time and beyond.
What I’ve come to realize I that I don’t like action for action’s sake. Mindless explosions, super close ups of combat and gore, and unnecessary effects make me zone out incredibly fast.What I do love is a fight that is well choreographed and in which I actually care about the outcome. And hopefully not riddled with cliches.Even more so, I have had a long, deep-seated appreciation for watching chicks kick ass. Watching some lone-wolf-type hero beat the crap out of the bad guys is okay, but watching a BAMF femme do it is 10000% times better.
Men and women who had worn suits for decades traded punches powerful enough to crush elephant skulls, dodged and deflected attacks too fast for the eye to follow, and died suddenly, often before the crowd registered the killing blow.Victors and dead men were separated by a blink of the eye.
You will find that people will always have opinions about your decisions. Don’t take it personally, it’s simply because they're not courageous enough to take action in their own lives. Be a leader in your life and pay no mind to those who lack the courage to do the same in theirs.
You were not meant for a life of mediocrity! Stop letting the regret of yesterday and the insecurity of tomorrow steal your today. Live this day! Do not allow your spirit to be softened or your happiness to be limited by a day you cannot have back or a day that does not yet exist. Take charge! Seize this day and allow upon this fertile day to be planted the seeds of your happiness and success.
Life is not about control or making things happen in the ways we think they should happen. In fact, it's rather arrogant for us to be on this planet that's been here for so long and expect to be able to control life on it. If we want to see changes, then our task is to set things in motion, not to micromanage and make them happen in the ways we think they should. If we have something that is possessing us, such as alcohol or our television sets or our cell phones, then it could be time to let it go and move on with our lives. If we're holding on to resentment and anger, we're simply raising our own stress levels and blood pressure, but we're not contributing anything positive to the situation--and it's time to let it go.
In life, it is important that we act fast. If you don't act fast and act now, someone else will do exactly what you have thought of doing. Someone else would have fired while you were spending time aiming.
Her eyes narrowing, she turned her attention back to where Stephanie stood with Ben, feeling her own pain turn to intense fury. “Dominic knew her so damn well because he was usually thinking the same thing. She was his female version – two halves fitting perfectly together,” Gena spat out, anger inflected in her voice. “Like him, she’s reckless and like him, once she gets something into her head nothing or no one will change her mind.” Her fury revealed itself in her eyes, as she spat out, “And, like him, she’s going to get herself killed.” - Gena Evans, Nowhere to Run
Theory and knowledge remain suspect, not because of inherent worthlessness, but because of their historic isolation from action. Without theoretical orientation, however, action is vulnerable to oversimplified and glib imitativeness-even mimicry-and to the use of the gimmick.
They say in moments of great fear or desperation, a man will always make a choice—either to flee or face his enemy, but choice requires thought, and in the moment when you know for certain that death is stalking you with strides you cannot outrun, there is no time for thought. You do not choose. Like Betto, or Malchus, or Valens, you act, doing either one thing or the other.
Many people experience the travesty of regret in their end days; the realization that nothing held them back, that nothing was in their way, that there is no one to blame, only themselves. Don't just sit by waiting for your life to happen, make it happen! Don’t just hope your dreams will come alive, breathe life into them! Don't let your fear help you birth a well-nourished regret, take action today! At the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of your life, live in such a manner that you can hold your head up high, smile, and be proud of a life well lived.
This is not the time to be passive. This is the time to shape, sculpt, paint, participate… the time to get sweaty, to get dirty, to fall in love, to forgive, to forget, to hug, to kiss… this is the time to experience, participate and live your life as a verb.
I huffed out a deep breath. “It’s something huge, isn’t it?” Beezle nodded. “Yup.” There was a sound of several limbs splashing in the water. “Is it all squishy and tentacly?” “Yup.” “I hate my life,” I said, and as I turned I conjured a ball of nightfire and threw it.
As the sun rules the day and the moon governs the night, so too, we are connected by: the air that we breathe, light that we see and the darkness that follows. Life is too short to waste it on disagreements. Surely, we can all agree to disagree. So let us find a common ground, form a union and spread joy, happiness and freedom around the world for the benefit of you, me and the future generations to come.
The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century. Buy one to-day and it would be indistinguishable from the one Wyatt Earp wore when he was the Marshal of Dodge City. It is the oldest hand-gun in the world, without question the most famous and, if efficiency in its designated task of maiming and killing be taken as criterion of its worth, then it is also probably the best hand-gun ever made. It is no light thing, it is true, to be wounded by some of the Peacemaker’s more highly esteemed competitors, such as the Luger or Mauser: but the high-velocity, narrow-calibre, steel-cased shell from either of those just goes straight through you, leaving a small neat hole in its wake and spending the bulk of its energy on the distant landscape whereas the large and unjacketed soft-nosed lead bullet from the Colt mushrooms on impact, tearing and smashing bone and muscle and tissue as it goes and expending all its energy on you.In short when a Peacemaker’s bullet hits you in, say, the leg, you don’t curse, step into shelter, roll and light a cigarette one-handed then smartly shoot your assailant between the eyes. When a Peacemaker bullet hits your leg you fall to the ground unconscious, and if it hits the thigh-bone and you are lucky enough to survive the torn arteries and shock, then you will never walk again without crutches because a totally disintegrated femur leaves the surgeon with no option but to cut your leg off. And so I stood absolutely motionless, not breathing, for the Peacemaker Colt that had prompted this unpleasant train of thought was pointed directly at my right thigh.Another thing about the Peacemaker: because of the very heavy and varying trigger pressure required to operate the semi-automatic mechanism, it can be wildly inaccurate unless held in a strong and steady hand. There was no such hope here. The hand that held the Colt, the hand that lay so lightly yet purposefully on the radio-operator’s table, was the steadiest hand I’ve ever seen. It was literally motionless. I could see the hand very clearly. The light in the radio cabin was very dim, the rheostat of the angled table lamp had been turned down until only a faint pool of yellow fell on the scratched metal of the table, cutting the arm off at the cuff, but the hand was very clear. Rock-steady, the gun could have lain no quieter in the marbled hand of a statue. Beyond the pool of light I could half sense, half see the dark outline of a figure leaning back against the bulkhead, head slightly tilted to one side, the white gleam of unwinking eyes under the peak of a hat. My eyes went back to the hand. The angle of the Colt hadn’t varied by a fraction of a degree. Unconsciously, almost, I braced my right leg to meet the impending shock. Defensively, this was a very good move, about as useful as holding up a sheet of newspaper in front of me. I wished to God that Colonel Sam Colt had gone in for inventing something else, something useful, like safety-pins.
Oh thank God, please you have to help me!” begged the human. “She tied me up, she wants to kill me!”I arched a brow. “Is that so?”“She’s insane!”I folded my arms across my chest. “Well, the good news is, she’s totally sane. The bad news is my fiancée here is a crazy, homicidal bitch and she wants to kill you.
What better way to lose that hangover headache than get drunk again? Oh, the joys of being Canadian with socialized health care and legal drinking age of nineteen. After a year (officially) honing that skill, I imbibed at an Olympic level. The red wine on the modular coffee table gleamed in a shaft of sunlight like its position had been ordained by the gods. I snatched up the crystal decanter, sloshing the liquid into the glass conveniently placed next to it. Once in a while, a girl could actually catch a break. I fanned myself with one hand. The myriad of lit candles seemed a bit much for Ari’s romantic encounter, but wine drinking trumped curiosity so I chugged the booze back. My entire body cheered as the cloyingly-sweet alcohol hit my system, though I hoped it wasn’t Manischewitz because hangovers on that were a bitch. I’d slugged back half the contents when I saw my mom on the far side of the room clutch her throat, eyes wide with horror. Not her usual, “you need an intervention” horror. No, her expression indicated I’d reached a whole new level of fuck-up. “Nava Liron Katz,” she gasped in full name outrage.
Mornings after sucked. Walks of shame were a necessary evil, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed shimmying back into the same trollop togs twice. I picked glitter out of my hair, then straightened my sequined top. I was officially decommissioning it. Multiple washings never quite managed to remove the lingering aura of bad decisions I made while wearing party clothes. My philosophy? Cross my fingers and hope for the most bang for the bucks spent later on new outfits.
Here's what I want you to learn from this: Never let someone answer a question for you. Jump in with anything at all to make sure hat you're the one talking. Say, 'That's an interesting question', or 'I'm glad you asked that question,' or 'Oh goody, my favorite subject.' Say anything that will guarantee that you're in the conversation about yourself and not out of it like a teenager standing next to her mother at a cocktail party. You must tell your own story, never let someone, even someone as familiar to you as your sister-in-law think she knows you better than you know yourself. She only sees what you do, she doesn't' see who you are inside. If I regret anything when I look back, it's how often I allowed people to think what they wanted to thing. I should've stopped them sort. I should've laughed at their assumptions. I should've hooted with laughter, 'Hoo hoo hoo,' and followed with twinkling, mischievous smile just to throw them off, just to keep them guessing,The problem is they watch what you do, who you love, how you cook, what you read and what you don't read, and they decide what it means, and sometimes you're not there to stop them, or you get the timing wrong. I've always wondered why people look so much to action for meaning. When people tell you a story, something that happened to them, something important, don't ask them what they did , ask them what they wanted to do, what they want to do is who they are. Actions are whispers compared to dreams.
Jena took a seat on the sofa, and Cole found himself with another dilemma. Should he sit next to her or take the other chair? Such a decision shouldn’t feel momentous, but it did. It felt as momentous as a choice between the past and the future. It felt like a choice between friendship and maybe more than friendship. He sat next to her on the sofa.
Amateurs are fond of advising that all practical measures should be postponed pending carrying out detailed researches upon the habits of anophelines, the parasite rate of localities, the effect of minor works, and so on. In my opinion, this is a fundamental mistake. It implies the sacrifice of life and health on a large scale while researches which may have little real value and which may be continued indefinitely are being attempted… In practical life we observe that the best practical discoveries are obtained during the execution of practical work and that long academic discussions are apt to lead to nothing but academic profit. Action and investigation together do more than either of these alone.
For any business decision, there are only two choices: action or inaction. The best option is to take action." - Ramesh Lohia and Jack T. Parker, consultants, iSixSigmaKaizen . In Quality Quotes, February 25, 2015, Knowledge Center, ASQ [ AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR QUALITY]
Given that media has become fast-paced, readers now want books that show the action and don’t just tell you what is happening. Modern readers don’t want three pages of descriptions of a farmhouse. They want to hear the door’s creak quiet the chirping of crickets out in the cornfield, they want to feel the cool air drift through the house, then they want to see the shadow of a man, gun drawn, standing over the bed of his disloyal lover.
You may have come to advocacy on your own, it may be part of your job or you may have been asked to “put a face” on a campaign by serving as its spokesperson. You may be acting as a lone crusader or as part of a larger advocacy effort. Either way, you share an objective with all other advocates: to have your story move audiences from apathy to empathy to action.
I’ve learned, Agent Sanders, most warriors feel the same way after they’ve come back from the battles where men in expensive suits and leather chairs send them. We keep asking and asking you to do the impossible and even when you succeed it seems the world doesn’t change all that much. Don’t let that diminish your sacrifice, and that of your family waiting at home. Your country is proud of you.
Sir Arthur stopped at the bottom of the hill and awaited the charging rider. The horseman halted in front of Sir Arthur and mud flew in all directions.“Who are you?” demanded Sir Arthur. He stared into the masked face and turbaned head of an assassin.Rufus's heart stopped. A gasp escaped his frozen lips and his legs wobbled.Sir Arthur asked again, “Who are you?”The man dismounted and drew from his golden sash a long scimitar. He approached Sir Arthur. The knight lifted his sword and the duel began.
We can act only in our time, among the people who surround us. We shall be capable of nothing until we know whether we have the right to kill our fellow men, or the right to let them be killed. Since all contemporary action leads to murder, direct or indirect, we cannot act until we know whether, and why, we have the right to kill.
Whatever neutrality is, it is not very useful to anybody, and time is running out. If we do not do useful things whenever it is possible or necessary to do them, we shall soon be totally departed from the human scene, and forgotten, or remembered only for having disappeared. Armenians are too vital to be permitted to throw themselves away in neutrality, comfort, well-being, satisfaction, and so on and so forth.
The twins stopped and stared in surprise at the two vampires guarding a door on their right. The vampires returned their look of surprise."What are you doing here?" One of the vampires hissed."We're looking for Taco Bell." Luther said cheerfully as he and Tyrone reached behind their backs."Left or right, Tyrone?""I'll take the one on the left." Tyrone replied.
सक्ताः कर्मण्यविद्वांसो यथा कुर्वन्ति भारत।कुर्याद्विद्वांस्तथासक्तश्चिकीर्षुर्लोकसंग्रहम्॥॥३- २५॥न बुद्धिभेदं जनयेदज्ञानां कर्मसङ्गिनाम्।जोषयेत्सर्वकर्माणि विद्वान्युक्तः समाचरन्॥॥३- २६॥`Ignorant toil for result; wise – selflessly,Blaze the trail for detached action clearly,For the common weal, path to eternity,For the benefit of the entire humanity.’3. 25-26
Gangsters live for the action. The closer to death, the nearer to the heated coil of the moment, the more alive they feel. Most would rather succumb to a barrage of bullets from a roomful of sworn enemies than to the debilitation of old age, dying the death of the feeble. A gangster becomes as addicted to the thrill of the battle and the potential to die in the midst of it as he does to he more attractive lures in his path. In his world, the potential for death exists every day. The better gangsters don't shy away from such a dreaded possibility but rather find comfort in its proximity.
I know.” The two words ghosted against the skin of her neck, sending goose bumps down her spine. “But I want to touch you. I want to put my hands all over you. I want to kiss every inch of you and taste you as you come apart in my arms. I want to feel you wrapped around me with nothing but my name on your lips and the sheets a tangled mess beneath us. I want…” He exhaled heavily into her ear. “I want. I want. I want!
Do it, Octavian” She ghosted the tips of her fingers along the hem of his shirt. “Touch me.”He growled low in his throat, his forehead dropping another inch toward her shoulder, his hair tickling the side of her face. “Be my angel, Riley, not my siren. Don’t tempt me.”Moistening her lips with a sweep of her tongue, Riley glided her fingers over his belt, tracing the strip of leather to the silver buckle in the center. She felt rather than heard his deep inhalation and the tremor that raked his powerful body. Driven by his surrender, she used two fingers to walk over the square carvings etched into his abdomen, biting her lip to stop the grin that pulled when he groaned. “I want to be both for you, Octavian,” she whispered, letting her lips brush the curve of his shoulder.
The Iraqi sun quickly heated the air to an unbearable onehundred twenty three degree’s, causing an unquenchable thirst toboil up in him. Thomas then dropped his rifle under his right arm,where it hung beneath his pit by a strap called a fast sling, there theweapon dangled under his sweat soaked uniform.
When those who are responsible for the leadership of State begin to move in villainous ways; when they begin to destroy the fabric of what it is that our nation is held together with; when they violate the Constitution of our nation and begin to do things that are false to our dreams and our hopes--it is incumbent upon every citizen by right, but also by responsibility, to challenge that administration, to raise their voice in vigorous dissent and to challenge the way in which the state is doing business. And those who fail to do that, should be charged with patriotic treason!
The shots left a hard ringing sound within the closeness of the brick walls. Terry held the pistol at arm's length on a level with his eyes--the Russian Tokarev resembling an old-model Colt .45, big and heavy--and made the sign of the cross with it over the dead. He said, "Rest in peace, motherfuckers," turned, and walked out of the beer lady's house to wait at the side of the road.
Every breath we take from the airTakes oxygen from an insect’s lungs mid-prayerAnd every exhalation does loudly declareThat in the currency of life, we’re millionaires.A butterfly flapped it’s wings and Rome fellA passerby’s whistle cracked the liberty bellAnd I dare urge the daring not to yellLest we so bid a skyscraper a rough farewell.A snake’s tongue slithered and man did sinLet me tell you how the waves from a shark’s finDid set the tides on D-Day and let the allies win;Chance and destiny are identical twins.A word was spoken and the earth createdAnother phrase and the future was dictatedAnd so every action must be carefully weightedWe just never know how things are interrelated.
It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil-far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word "human" disappears from the race.