Alters Quotes

We are a small, open economy, highly dependent on global flows. It is inevitably a demand that dramatically alters and that is reflected in what we feel here in New Zealand. So there is at its most basic level a limit to what we can do and that is true everywhere. ~ John Key

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved ~ William Shakespeare

In many ways, the felt sense is like a stream moving through an ever-changing landscape. It alters its character in resonance with its surroundings. When the land is rugged and steep, the stream moves with vigor and energy, swirling and bubbling as it crashes over rocks and debris. Out on the plains, the stream meanders so slowly that one might wonder whether it is moving at all. Rains and spring thaw can rapidly increase its volume, possibly even flood nearby land. In the same way, once the setting has been interpreted and defined by the felt sense, we will blend into whatever conditions we find ourselves. This amazing sense encompasses both the content and climate of our internal and external environments. Like the stream, it shapes itself to fit those environments. ~ Peter A. Levine

Worry is irrelevant. It alters nothing. When was the last time you solved a problem by worrying about it? ~ Max Lucado

We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters. ~ James Anthony Froude

Thus on Easter we celebrate Christ's Resurrection as something that happened and still happens to us. For each one of us received the gift of that new life and the power to accept it and to live by it. It is a gift which radically alters our attitude toward everything in this world, including death. It makes it possible for us joyfully to affirm: "Death is no more!" Oh, death is still there, to be sure and we still face it and someday it will come and take us. But it is our whole faith that by His own death Christ changed the very nature of death, made it a passage - a "passover," a "Pascha" - into the Kingdom of God, transforming the tragedy of tragedies into the ultimate victory. "Trampling down death by death," He made us partakes of His Resurrection. This is why at the end of the Paschal Matins we say: "Christ is risen and life reigneth! Christ is risen and not one dead remains in the grave! ~ Alexander Schmemann

A wise man alters his misconceptions when he learns the truth; a fool tries to beat the truth into the mold of his misconceptions. ~ Sarah A. Chrisman

Shortly after I began work with Teresa, I acquired another MPD client, a supposedly schizophrenic young man I will call Tony. He called in to the clinic on a day I was on telephone duty, saying he was having flashbacks of "ritual abuse." I did not yet know what that was. Tony became my client. He could be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of him as a three-year-old, "Tiny Tony," standing on his head on my office couch, and running down the hall to try unsuccessfully to make it to the bathroom. He had in his head the entire rock band of Guns'n'Roses, and I got to know Axl, the band leader, quite well. I remember the time Tony was in hospital and I went to visit him; Axl popped out and said, "Remember, we're schizophrenic in here! ~ Alison Miller

The state is concerned with the promotion of outward righteousness arising from the individual being constrained to keep the law. The Gospel alters human nature, whereas the state merely restrains human greed and evil, having no positive power to alter human motivation. ~ Alister E. McGrath

The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute. ~ Claude Monet

Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. ~ Lynn Raye Harris

One alters the past to form the future but there is a real significance to the pattern which finally appears, which resists all further change. ~ James Salter

Instead of showing visibly distinct alternate identities, the typical DID patient presents a polysymptomatic mixture of dissociative and posttraumatic stressdisorder (PTSD) symptoms that are embedded in a matrix of ostensibly non-trauma-related symptoms (e.g., depression, panic attacks, substance abuse,somatoform symptoms, eating-disordered symptoms). The prominence of these latter, highly familiar symptoms often leads clinicians to diagnose only these comorbid conditions. When this happens, the undiagnosed DID patient may undergo a long and frequently unsuccessful treatment for these other conditions.
- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p5 ~ James A. Chu

The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience. ~ Ned Rorem

Correct Overestimated Feedback Fears

One of the reasons anxious people fear feedback is that they tend to judge their performance more harshly than others judge them. If you're feeling anxious, you'll probably overestimate the likelihood that any feedback you'll get will be negative - the negative predictions thinking error.
Let's say you need to get feedback on your delivery of an upcoming presentation. You fear that you'll get crucified, that people will say your presentation style is horrible and won't say anything nice. How likely does this feared outcome feel? You might say, "It feels 99% likely." How likely is it in reality? You think, "Objectively, maybe 50%?" Your answer of 50% may still be an overestimate, but at least it jump-starts the shift in your thinking. It alters you that your anxious feelings are, to some extent, clouding your perceptions.
Although it seems strange that people can shift their thinking just based on whether they are asked to think with their anxious mind or their objective mind, this isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. There's lots of research evidence that people's thinking changes based on how they're asked to think about something. For example, my own doctoral research asked people in relationships how their judgments of their romantic partner compared to reality. People recognized that they tended to view their partners more positively than warranted by reality.
Experiment: Think of a current area in your life wh ~ Alice Boyes

In a democracy sovereignity is vested in a majority; and a majority is not only, at best, an ignorant, foolish and emotional mob, but shifts continually and alters from year to year. ~ Jean Bodin

Sometimes it seems safer to have just enough God to get to heaven, but not so much that he radically alters our lives. ~ Chris Hodges

Because alters often do not reveal themselves early in therapy, and it may take several years for a therapist to observe most of the alters... ~ Ruth A. Blizard

Delighting in the Lord alters the desires. ~ Billy Graham

Accumulated experience always alters perception of the past. ~ Siri Hustvedt

Churches crack me up. They're like money, a conspiracy of faith. Like everyone agreed to believe that not only is there a God, but he comes down and checks on folks, so long as they hang in certain places, put up alters, burn lots of candles and incense, and perform sit-stand-kneel and other wacky rituals that'd make a coven of witches not look OCD. ~ Karen Marie Moning

The world had always loved the saint as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. His primary desire was not to reform people, any more than his primary desire was to a relieve suffering. To turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim. He would have thought little of the Prisoners' Aid Society and other modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of perfection.

It seems a very dangerous idea. It is - all great ideas are dangerous. That it was Christ's creed admits of no doubt. That it is the true creed I don't doubt myself.

Of course the sinner must repent. But why? Simply because otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done. The moment of repentance is the moment of initiation. More than that: it is the means by which one alters one's past. The Greeks thought that impossible. They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms, 'Even the Gods cannot alter the past.' Christ showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do. Christ, had he been asked, would have said - I feel quite certain about it - that the moment ~ Oscar Wilde

Everything alters me, but nothing changes me. ~ Salvador Dali

You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit othere is a fool. My way of thinking is the result of my reflections. It is part of my inner being,the way I am made. I do not contradict them, and would not even if I wished to. For my system, which you disapprove of is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness -it means more to me than my life itself. ~ Marquis De Sade

It may be desirable to explain, that by the word operation, we mean any process which alters the mutual relation of two or more things, be this relation of what kind it may. This is the most general definition, and would include all subjects in the universe. ~ Ada Lovelace

At that period I paid as constant attention to the greater securing of my happiness, to enjoying and judging it, too, as I had always done for the smallest details of my acts; and what is the act of love, itself, if not a moment of passionate attention on the part of the body? Every bliss achieved is a masterpiece; the slightest error turns it awry, and it alters with one touch of doubt; any heaviness detracts from its charm, the least stupidity renders it dull. My own felicity is in no way responsible for those of my imprudences which shattered it later on; in so far as I have acted in harmony with it I have been wise. I think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

The eye altering, alters all. ~ William Blake

Who would be so base as to pick on a wizened, shriveled old lady, well stricken in years, who has consecrated her entire life to the needy and the destitute? On the other hand, who would be so incurious as to leave unexamined the influence and motives of a woman who once boasted of operating more than five hundred convents in upward of 105 countries - "without counting India"? Lone self-sacrificing zealot, or chair of a missionary multinational? The scale alters with the perspective, and the perspective alters with the scale. ~ Christopher Hitchens

God never estimates what we give from impulse. We are given credit for what we determine in our hearts to give; for the giving that is governed by a fixed determination. The Spirit of God revolutionises our philanthropic instincts. Much of our philanthropy is simply the impulse to save ourselves an uncomfortable feeling. The Spirit of God alters all that. As saints our attitude towards giving is that we give for Jesus Christ's sake, and from no other motive. ~ Oswald Chambers

This is what happens to the brain of those living with mental illnesses (more accurately, "brain illnesses"). The brain does not function as it should; life is out of control. The brain alters our bodies; thoughts are distorted, emotions are unregulated, and behaviors we once thought could never occur happen. One of the most challenging, exhausting, and painful phenomena we do as humans is to live and survive with these changes in our minds. The toll it takes on an individual's body and the people in their lives is, tragically, often too much to bear.

-Dr. Daniel J. Reidenberg ~ Kevin Hines

The differences in alter personality states' self-concepts can be striking, but authorities routinely stress that these are more apparent than real (e.g., Putnam, 1989a; Kluft, 1991). Various typologies have been offered, but few systematic data exist. Types of MPD alters, such as child-like personality states, angry alters, protectors, and persecutors, are found often enough to warrant further investigation. ~ Frank W. Putnam

Prosperity's the very bond of love, Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together Affliction alters. ~ William Shakespeare

But there is no truth except truth in relation, and heavenly relation is composed of wheels in motion, tilting axes, turning dials; it is a clockwork orchestration that alters every minute, never repeating, never still. We are no longer sheltered in a cloistered reminiscence of the past. We now look outward, through the phantasm of our own convictions: we see the world as we wish to perfect it, and we imagine dwelling there. ~ Eleanor Catton

Imagination is not, as some poets have thought, simply synonymous with good. It may be either good or evil. As long as art remained primarily mimetic, the evil which imagination could do was limited by nature. Again, as long as it was treated as an amusement, the evil which it could do was limited in scope. But in an age when the connection between imagination and figuration is beginning to be dimly realized, when the fact of the directionally creator relation is beginning to break through into consciousness, both the good and the evil latent in the working of imagination begin to appear unlimited. We have seen in the Romantic movement an instance of the way in which the making of images may react upon the collective representations. It is a fairly rudimentary instance, but even so it has already gone beyond the dreams and responses of a leisured few. The economic and social structure of Switzerland is noticeably affected by its tourist industry, and that is due only in part to increased facilities of travel. It is due not less to the condition that (whatever may be said about their 'particles') the mountains which twentieth-century man sees are not the mountains which eighteenth-century man saw.

It may be objected that this is a very small matter, and that it will be a long time before the imagination of man substantially alters those appearances of nature with which his figuration supplies him. But then I am taking the long view. Even so, we need not be too confi ~ Owen Barfield

I mean that the escape of knowledge into the realm of wider society irretrievably alters the nature of our lives. ~ Nick Harkaway

When I was younger I used to see the earth as a fundamentally stable and serene place, possessed of a delicate, nearly divine balance, which humans had somehow managed to upset. But as I studied trails more closely, this fantasy gradually evaporated. I now see the earth as the collaborative artwork of trillions of sculptors, large and small. Sheep, humans, elephants, ants: each of us alters the world in our passage. When we build hives or nests, mud huts or concrete towers, we re-sculpt the contours of the planet. When we eat, we convert living matter into waste. And when we walk, we create trails. The question we must ask ourselves is not whether we should shape the earth, but how. ~ Robert Moor

I suggested that the system put all the potential offending [sexually abusive] alters in an internal prison. Jennifer said that would take too long. An alter popped out and said, "Just a minute," and then, after a brief silence, announced that they had "killed" all the offender alters; they were lying in the inside world dead, covered in blood! I was not very happy with such drastic measures, but accepted it for the interim, knowing I could rely on Jennifer to tell me if the risk recurred. I made a list of the "dead" alters.
The next morning Jennifer called; she had dreamed about sexually abusing a child. I asked her to look for more related memories before we met in the evening. She had to "reincarnate" all the dead alters to find the memories. (We already had a method for doing this, as some alters had previously experienced internal "death" in "disasters" in the inner world; when they were made new internal bodies, they became alive again.) ~ Alison Miller

Self-preservation is the fundamental motive of the passions, according to Spinoza; but self-preservation alters its character when we realize that what is real and positive in us is what unites us to the whole, and not what preserves the appearance of separateness. ~ Anonymous

It's just that . . . when you have kids, it just changes things." "Do me a favor, Yates. Please don't give me that having-children-alters-you spiel. I listen to that crap enough from my painfully few friends. ~ Harlan Coben

Somehow, architecture alters the way we think about the world and the way we behave. Any serious architecture, as a litmus test, has to be that. ~ Thom Mayne

Seeing alters the thing that is seen and transforms the seer ~ James Elkins

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

The violation of the existence and natures of things, of oneself, or of others is evil. Disrespect encroaches upon the space of others, and alters or empties their nature. Respect is respect for the limits, the boundaries, the space of others, and thus for their natures. Morally good action designates the active respect for others, for things, and also for ourselves. ~ Alphonso Lingis

The great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors. As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never alters in the main headings of its history
hunger and labour, seed-time and harvest, love and death. ~ George Eliot

It's a strange thing, having a child," he said. It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything - anything - to protect her. If I had to set myself on fire to save her from something, I would do it with the utmost relief and gratitude. It's quite a thing, quite a privilege, to care about someone so much that the measure of worth of your own life is changed so much."

Tatsu. ~ Barry Eisler

Our perception of space alters the space. It is consciousness that finds meanings in all spaces ~ Tarthang Tulku

Your life is a trajectory. Every choice you make alters that trajectory, in a positive or negative way. Will you categorize that dinner with friends as a business expense? Will you be honest with your daughter? Will you take more credit than you're due? These are just the small questions that we face every day, and little by little, the answers influence the trajectory of our lives and beings. ~ Donald Van De Mark

In the godly, holy truths are conveyed by way of a taste; gracious men have a spiritual palate as well as a spiritual eye. Grace alters the spiritual taste. ~ Richard Sibbes

Human being's possess the cognitive ability to survey and study the biological and cultural constraints that influence us in order to gain an enhanced understanding of who each of us are. Comprehension of what comprises a self allows human beings to monitor and regulate their thoughts and actions and therefore revise and modify their sense of self. How much conscious control we assert over our minds as well as what decisions through default we leave essentially unregulated and in the sole providence of the unconscious mind determines our self-identity. Self-identity in turns affects personal decision-making, which alters our external world. The combined impact of millions of people making conscious choices exerts a profound impact upon reality, the physical world that is constantly in flux. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

So, what's a nudge? A nudge is some small feature of the environment that attracts our attention and alters our behavior. ~ Richard Thaler

Our pasts shape us,Sam.None of us the person he or she used to be,it's true, but what we are still contains a great proportion of what we once were.Nothing,not even suffering the worst kind of tragedy,alters us completely.At core,we are set in stone. ~ James Lovegrove

Ironically, your trust in your inner belonging radically alters your outer belonging. Unless you find belonging in your solitude, your external longing will remain needy and driven. ~ John O'Donohue

The human mind moves always forward, alters its viewpoint and enlarges its thought substance, and the effect of these changes is to render past systems of thinking obsolete or, when they are preserved, to extend, to modify and subtly or visibly to alter their value. ~ Sri Aurobindo

The society which projects and undertakes the technological transformation of nature alters the base of domination by gradually replacing personal dependence (of the slave on the master, the serf on the lord of the manor, the lord on the donor of the fief, etc.) with dependence on the "objective order of things" (on economic laws, the market etc.). ~ Herbert Marcuse

Dear little ones, I know this might be scary and confusing right now, but my name is Jade and I'm here to help. ~ Jade Miller

The danger, then, is that materialism is not only shaping how we live but the way we think as well. It influences our consumer tastes and our preference for high-paying jobs, but it also alters our capacity to pray, the nature of our prayers, and the ways in which religious tutelage instructs our values. ~ Robert Wuthnow

Death Vision

I think it's a multiplication of sight,
Like after a low hovering autumn rain
When the invisible web of funnel weaves
And sheetweb weavers all at once are seen
Where they always were, spread and looping
The grasses, every strand, waft and leaf-
Crest elucidated with water-light and frost,
completing the fullest aspect of field.

Or maybe the grace of death is split-second
Transformation of knowledge, an intricate,
Turning realization, as when a single
Sperm-embracing deep ovum transforms,
In an instant, from stasis to replicating,
Star-shifting shimmer, rolls, reaches,
Alters its plane of intentions, becomes
A hoofing, thumping host of purpose.


I can imagine not merely
The falling away of blank walls
And blinds in that moment, not merely
A shutter flung open for the first time
Above a valley of interlocking forests
And constellations but a sweeping,
Penetrating circumference of vision
Encompassing both knotweed bud
And its seed simultaneously, seeing
Blood bone and its ash as one,
The repeated light and fall and flight
Of hawk-owl and tundra vole
As a union of origin and finality.

A mathematics of flesh and space might
Take hold if we ask for it in that last
Moment, might appear as if it had always
Existed within the eyes, translucent,
Jewel-like in stained gla ~ Pattiann Rogers

In our everyday garden grow the rosemary, juniper, ferns and plane trees, perfectly tangible and visible. For these plants that have an illusory relationship with us, which in no way alters their existentiality, we are merely an event, an accident, and our presence, which seems so solid, laden with gravity, is to them no more than a momentary void in motion through the air. Reality is a quality that belongs to them, and we can exercise no rights over it. ~ Leo Lionni

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. ~ William Blake

I've come to believe that in everyone's life, there's one undeniable moment of change, a set of circumstances that suddenly alters everything. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Jessica put out her hand and braced herself against the door jamb. She experienced one of those rare moments when understanding of the world alters and a previously impossible thing is admitted, if not understood. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

Types of Alters

Most people who have DID have at least several different personalities. Each personality is typically referred to as an alter or alternate personality. Alters may vary in terms of age, gender, and sexual orientation, much in the same way that members of a family differ. Each of these personalities will be distinct from one another and may have differing interests, talents, abilities, and functions. And as different as these personalities are from one another, there are some common types of alters found within individuals with DID. ~ Tracy Alderman

Being grateful all the time isn't easy. But it's when you feel least thankful that you are most in need of what gratitude can give you: perspective. Gratitude can transform any situation, It alters your vibration, moving you from negative energy to positive. It's the quickest, easiest, most powerful way to effect change in your life - this I know for sure. ~ Oprah Winfrey

Are you on the eve of change? Embrace it. Accept it. Don't resist it. Change is not only a part of life, change is a necessary part of God's strategy. To use us to change the world, he alters our assignments. ~ Max Lucado

The reported numbers of MPD alter personality states are given great play by critics. As usual, these critics rarely consult the research. Although cases with dozens or scores of alters have been reported, the mode is 3 and the median typically 8-10 (see, e.g., Putnam et al., 1986; Coons et al., 1988; Ross, Norton, and Wozney, 1989f; Kluft, 1991). ~ Frank W. Putnam

Giving in to fear alters God's best plan for your life. So use the power of God's Word to do what He wants you to do ... even if you have to do it afraid! The rewards are great. ~ Joyce Meyer

sin is always an offense that touches others, that alters the world and damages it. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Intelligence is a great scholar,
virtue is an extraordinary saint,
love is a remarkable sage;
together they are alters of integrity.

Awareness is a great scholar,
compassion is an extraordinary saint,
prudence is a remarkable sage;
together they are alters of humanity.

Intellect is a great scholar,
truth is an extraordinary saint,
experience is a remarkable sage;
together they are alters of philosophy.

Curiosity is a great scholar,
humility is an extraordinary saint,
discipline is a remarkable sage;
together they are alters of discovery.

Understanding is a great scholar,
patience is an extraordinary saint,
discernment is a remarkable sage;
together they are alters of harmony.

Life is a great scholar,
God is an extraordinary saint,
nature is a remarkable sage;
together they are alters of divinity.

Reality is a great scholar,
time is an extraordinary saint,
fate is a remarkable sage;
together they are alters of eternity.

The mind is a great scholar,
the heart is an extraordinary saint,
the soul is a remarkable sage;
together they are alters of spirituality.

Mankind is a great scholar,
the world is an extraordinary saint,
the universe is a remarkable sage;
together they are alters of immortality. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of all things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a sacrifice on their alters. ~ Ayn Rand

Entrepreneurship is at its best when it alters the future, and it alters the future when it jumps curves ~ Guy Kawasaki

Every experience permanently alters the way you perceive beauty ~ Katharine Hamnett

Though a man declares himself an atheist, it in no way alters his obligations. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

It is important to learn about being multiple, and what works for their healing, from your client. To work with the alters, rather than trying to get the ANP to control the rest of the personality system. ~ Alison Miller

We have an ~everywhereness~ to us now that inevitably alters our relationship to those stalwart human aspects of self-containment, remoteness and isolation. ~ Laurence Scott

Mindset impacts emotion, which alters biology, which increases performance. Thus, it seemed, by tinkering with mindset - using everything from physical to psychological to pharmacological interventions - one could significantly enhance performance. ~ Steven Kotler

I think people always appreciate somebody else's informed educated opinion. To the degree that anybody with a computer can offer a journalistic point of view whether or not they have a degree, it sort of alters the validity of you have to place on anyone's individual comment. ~ Seth Green

The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not admit of one. Some of those who have asked it have added that if it should turn out that life has no purpose, it would lose all value for them. But this threat alters nothing. It looks, on the contrary, as though one had a right to dismiss the question, for it seems to derive from the human presumptuousness, many other manifestations of which are already familiar to us. Nobody talks about the purpose of the life of animals, unless, perhaps, it may be supposed to lie in being of service to man. But this view is not tenable either, for there are many animals of which man can make nothing, except to describe, classify and study them; and innumerable species of animals have escaped even this use, since they existed and became extinct before man set eyes on them. ~ Sigmund Freud

As information processing machines, our ability to process data about the external world begins at the level of sensory perception. Although most of us are rarely aware of it, our sensory receptors are designed to detect information at the energy level. Because everything around us - the air we breathe, even the materials we use to build with, are composed of spinning and vibrating atomic particles, you and I are literally swimming in a turbulent sea of electromagnetic fields. We are part of it. We are enveloped within in, and through our sensory apparatus we experience what is.
Each of our sensory systems is made up of a complex cascade of neurons that process the incoming neural code from the level of the receptor to specific areas within the brain. Each group of neurons along the cascade alters or enhances the code, and passes it on to the next set of cells in the system, which further defines and refines the message. By the time the code reaches the outermost portion of our brain, the higher levels of the cerebral cortex, we become conscious of the stimulation. However, if any of the cells along the pathway fail in their ability to function normally, then the final perception is skewed away from normal reality. ~ Jill Bolte Taylor

There are always costs when man alters nature, his own or the world around him. ~ Tam Linsey

The ultimate distinction you make is between yourself and the world. There is the inside (your subjective experience) and there is the outside. But every time you learn something, your brain is altered as new connections are formed. Your experience of something that occurs in the world physically alters your brain. The boundaries between you and the world are much more fluid than you might imagine. ~ Robert Greene

The way that we think is dependent upon our flowering formal and informal education. How we think affects our behavior. How we conduct ourselves in the unscripted interactions with our family, friends, and lovers alters our emotional being. Our emotional being funnels our thought processes. Our community modulates our actions and establishes standards for behavior, and our logical reasoning and moral reasoning skills evolve as we mature. The didactical association between education, thinking, behaving, communal relationships, and the ongoing process of making logical and moral decisions continues to shape unions and disunions of our transforming character. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Lives are made of strings of moments, and every once in a while, one of those moments is pivotal and defining. It changes everything, alters you so completely that when you look back, there's a clear before and after ~ Elizabeth Norris

I look at the blanked-out faces of the other passengers--hoisting their briefcases, their backpacks, shuffling to disembark--and I think of what Hobie said: beauty alters the grain of reality. And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.

Only what is that thing? Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet--for me, anyway--all that's worth living for lies in that charm?

A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.

Because--isn't it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture--? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it's a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what's right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart."

Only here's what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be po ~ Donna Tartt

Also, look for "floating alters." These are not deliberately created parts of the system, but alters that were accidentally split off at the same time as others. ~ Alison Miller

By the by ... " He glances at Jeb's back and leans closer, murmuring low. "Tumtum juice alters a person's inhibitions, magnifies their hunger. But it's not hunger for food. It's experiences they crave. Had it been me instead of your toy soldier, I would've found a means to slake your ravenous hunger without resorting to berries." His arrogance simmers my blood. "You don't have the equipment to satisfy anything. Moth. Remember?" He laughs, dark and soft, under his breath. "I am a man in every way that counts. Just like you are a woman, even if some people believe you're nothing more than a scared little girl in constant need of saving. ~ A.G. Howard

Tragedy alters everything. ~ Diane Setterfield

The drivenness in any addiction is about the ruptured self, the belief that one is flawed as a person. The content of the addiction, whether it is alcoholism or work, is an attempt at an intimate relationship. The workaholic with her work or the alcoholic with his booze are having a love affair. Each alters mood to avoid the feeling of loneliness and hurt in the underbelly of shame. ~ John Bradshaw

All meaning alters with acceleration, because all patterns of personal and political interdependence change with any acceleration of information. ~ Marshall McLuhan

Fear is like the strong medicine used to fight serious diseases; it purges, but it also alters your temperament and wears out the body organs. A person who is driven by fear will always be the weaker for it ~ Francois Fenelon

Love? Love is about an unquenchable hunger, a passion so powerful it cannot be ignored. In the face of love," he spoke softly, "all resistance is futile. Sex is momentary, ephemeral ecstasy at best without love. No one with a good opinion of themselves would trade sex by itself if they could have the true geld .. love with a worthy lover. It alters lives, and even the barest slice of true love ... a moment, an evening, a day's worth, can become a treasure to be pulled from the memory and ignite those feelings again many years after it has passed. It is the most powerful of all compulsions." Das ~ William C. Samples

The concept of an education centered upon the care of the living being alters all previous ideas. Resting no longer on a curriculum, or a timetable, education must conform to the facts of human life. ~ Maria Montessori

You could double the number of synaptic connections in a very simple neurocircuit as a result of experience and learning. The reason for that was that long-term memory alters the expression of genes in nerve cells, which is the cause of the growth of new synaptic connections. ~ Eric Kandel

He seemed as graciously at home as in the best restaurants of the city; his elegance had an odd quality here - it did not insult the place, but seemed to transform it, like the presence of a king who never alters his manner, yet makes a palace of any house he enters. ~ Ayn Rand

Sometimes in life you meet one person that changes the way you think, alters your perception of life and nothing else matters apart from them. ~ Emma Hart

Love is a form of energy, and similar to all forms of energy, it is both essential for life and dangerous. Love can enrich a person's life or destroy a person's world. Love is a catalytic agent of change because it makes us dare to become the best person that we can be. Falling in love for the first time drives a person to the cusp of madness, while the bitter aftermath of a love lost irrevocably alters the positive and negative aspects of a person's character. Withstanding rejection by a lover, we discover within us those ingredients that we will need in order to find our life mate and complete ourselves as man and woman. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

And in the complicated, relished, introspective web of young lovers, or more exactly, young petters, they progress along the oldest channel in the world and the most deceptive, for they are certain it is unique to them. Even as they are calling themselves engaged, they are losing the details of their subtle involved pledging of a troth. They are moved and warmed by intimacies between them, by long husky conversations in the parlor, in inexpensive restaurants, by the murmurs, the holding of hands in the dark velvet caverns of movie houses. They forget most of the things that have advanced them into love, feel now only the effect of them. And of course their conversation alters, new themes are bruited. Shy sensitive girls may end up as poetesses or they may turn bitter and drink alone in bars, but nice shy sensitive Jewish girls usually marry and have children, gain two pounds a year, and worry more about refurbishing hats and trying a new casserole than about the meaning of life. After their engagement, Natalie talks over their prospects. ~ Norman Mailer

The power and appeal of Documentary is the way it alters and plays with the way the viewer relates to and understands the subject. ~ Ben Edwards

The journey is spectacularly important. The journey is how you spend your life. The destination is practically inconsequential compared to the journey. The destination determines where a man arrives. The journey determines what sort of man arrives. It shapes you, alters you. ~ Joseph R. Lallo

To recount modern life one has to have characters with iPads and smart phones who take trains and planes, and to be aware how this alters consciousness, identity, and the kind of experiences people have. They are constantly exposed to contact from everyone they know and many they don't. ~ Tim Parks

Most people think things are not real unless they are spoken, that it's the uttering of something, not the thinking of it, that legitimizes it. I suppose this is why people always want other people to say "I love you." I think just the opposite - that thoughts are realest when thought, that expressing them distorts or dilutes them, that it is best for them to stay in the dark climate-controlled airport chapel of your mind, that if they're released into the air and light they will be affected in a way that alters them, like film accidentally exposed. ~ Peter Cameron