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We may remark
in passing that to be blind and beloved may, in this world where nothing
is perfect, be among the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness.
The supreme happiness in life is the assurance of being loved; of being
loved for oneself, even in spite of oneself; and this assurance the
blind man possesses. In his affliction, to be served is to be caressed.
Does he lack anything? no. Possessing love he is not deprived of light.
A love, moreover, that is wholly pure. There can be no blindness where
there is this certainty. - Victor Hugo
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The chemist
who can extract from his heart's elements, compassion, respect, longing,
patience, regret, surprise, and forgiveness and compound them into one
can create that atom which is called love. - Khalil Gibran
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To fall in
love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human
loneliness is cause enough. But is a hard quest worth making to find a
comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person
one desires to be. - Anna Strong
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When we
honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we
often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or
cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a
warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment
of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and
bereavement, who can tolerate now knowing, not curing, not healing and
face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who
cares. - Henri Nouwen
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When a
friend, then, indulges in the joy of unburdening a secret on to another
friend's bosom, he makes the latter, in his turn, feel the urge to taste
the same joy himself. He implores him, it is true, not to tell a soul;
but if such a condition were taken absolutely literally, it would at
once cut off the flow of these joys at their very source. The general
practice is for the secret to be confided only to an equally trustworthy
friend, the same conditions being imposed on him. And so from
trustworthy friend to trustworthy friend the secret goes moving on round
that immense chain, until finally it reaches the ears of just the very
person or persons whom the first talker had expressly intended it never
should reach. - Alessandro Manzoni
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The
unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much
easier to give up than the bad ones. - W. Somerset Maugham
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Be true to
your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something
strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age. -
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Any act often
repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in
strength, At first it may be but as a spider's web, easily broken
through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.
- Tryon Edwards
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The building
of a perfect body crowned by a perfect brain, is at once the greatest
earthly problem and grandest hope of the race. - Dio Lewis
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Just as your
car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther
when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your
thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance. -
Brian Tracy
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The higher
your energy level, the more efficient your body. The more efficient your
body, the better you feel and the more you will use your talent to
produce outstanding results. - Anthony Robbins
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The human
body has been designed to resist an infinite number of changes and
attacks brought about by its environment. The secret of good health lies
in successful adjustment to changing stresses on the body. - Harry J.
Johnson
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A person's
worth is contingent upon who he is, not upon what he does, or how much
he has. The worth of a person, or a thing, or an idea, is in being, not
in doing, not in having. - Alice Mary Hilton
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We smile at
the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its
fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager
and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure. - William Ellery Channing
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Smile at each
other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your
children, smile at each other - it doesn't matter who it is - and that
will help you to grow up in greater love for each other. - Mother
Teresa
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If you have
only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at
home, then go out in the street and start grinning "Good morning" at
total strangers. - Maya Angelou
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An inflated
consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own
existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of
understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right
conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore
cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that
must strike it dead. - Carl Jung
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Look into the
depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will
understand why this illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you
will thenceforth avoid falling ill. - Sigmund Freud
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There comes a
time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover
and the beloved. The aspiring soul which he embodies is the lover in
him. And the transcendental Self which he reveals from within is his
Beloved. - Chinmoy
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We live in an
atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us;
ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents,
of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked
skins. - George Bernard Shaw
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Be still when
you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've
got to say, and say it hot. - DH Lawrence
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If people can
be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped
that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men
better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards
oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we
are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence
we inflict upon our own natures. - Carl Jung
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You cannot
hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that
end, each of us must work for our own improvement and, at the same time,
share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty
being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. - Madame
Marie Curie
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The images of
the unconscious place a great responsibility upon a man. Failure to
understand them, or a shirking of ethical responsibility, deprives him
of his wholeness and imposes a painful fragmentariness on his life. -
Carl Jung
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A woman who
could always love would never grow old; and the love of mother and wife
would often give or preserve many charms if it were not too often
combined with parental and conjugal anger. There remains in the face of
women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by
religion, an after-spring, and later an after-summer, the reflex of
their most beautiful bloom. - Jean Paul Richter
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When he
pressed his lips to my mouth, the knot fell open of itself. When he
pressed them to my throat, the dress slipped to my feet. So much I know
- but when his lips touched my breast everything, I swear, down to his
very name, became so much confused that I am still, dear friends, unable
to recount (as much as I would care to) what delights were next bestowed
upon me and by whom. - S. Kowit
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Perhaps the
old monks were right when they tried to root love out; perhaps the poets
are right when they try to water it. It is a blood-red flower, with the
color of sin; but there is always the scent of a good about it. -
Olive Schreiner
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Truth is a
shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly
approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit
is capable. - Bertrand Russell
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Thoughts are
free and subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they
tower above the light of nature...create a new heaven, a new firmament,
a new source of energy from which new arts flow. - Paracelsus
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Men fear
thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin - more even
than death... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and
terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions,
and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not
afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and
the chief glory of man. - Bertrand Russell
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What is life
but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he
looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day?
This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By
how much we know, so we are. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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O loss of
sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than
chains, dungeon or beggary, or decrepit age! Light, the prime work of
God, to me is extinct, and all her various objects of delight annulled,
which might in part my grief have eased. Inferior to the vilest now
become of man or worm; the vilest here excel me, they creep, yet see; I,
dark in light, exposed to daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong, within
doors, or without, still as a fool, in power of others, never in my own;
scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. - John Milton
