Live With An Open Mind Quotes

Love with an open heart. Live with an open mind. ~ Debasish Mridha

When Annunziata said she loved me or any of her thousands of other friends and beloveds, she was really saying, at least in my mind, "God loves you." To quote the singer/songwriter James Taylor, she showered the people she loved with love, always showing the way that she felt without holding back. Even as her body could barely contain her soul any longer, she'd open wide the gates of herself with a smile, that giggle, her twinkling eyes, and she'd let the supernatural love flow through her. Walking out of the chapel after her funeral, a woman I'd never seen before stopped me and said, "You're Cathleen, aren't you?" "Yes," I croaked, tears rolling off my nose as I fingered the prayer card with Annunziata's picture on it. Slipping an arm around my shoulders, the woman explained that she was one of Annunziata's former students and said, "She loved you so much." I know. ~ Cathleen Falsani

Picture salvation as a house that you live in. It provides you with protection. It is stocked with food and drink that will last forever. It never decays or crumbles. Its windows open onto vistas of glory. God built it at great cost to Himself and to His Son, and He gave it to you. The purchase agreement is called a 'new covenant.' The terms read: 'This house shall become and remain yours if you will receive it as a gift and take delight in the Father and the Son as they inhabit the house with you. You shall not profane the house of God by sheltering other gods nor turn our heart away after other treasures.' Would it not be foolish to say yes to this agreement, and then hire a lawyer to draw up an amortization schedule with monthly payments in the hopes of somehow balancing accounts. You would be treating the house no longer as a gift, but a purchase. God would no longer be the free benefactor. And you would be enslaved to a new set of demands that he never dreamed of putting on you. If grace is to be free - which is the very meaning of grace - we cannot view it as something to be repaid. ~ John Piper

He killed, his sword shearing, shield and horse a ram, pushing in, and further in, opening a space by force alone for the momentum of the men behind him. Beside him a man fell to a spear in the throat. To his left, an equine scream as Rochert's horse went down.
In front of him, methodically, men fell, and fell, and fell.
He split his attention. He swept a sword cut aside with his shield, killed a helmed soldier, and all the while flung out his mind, waiting for the moment when Touar's lines split open. The most difficult part of commanding from the front was this
staying alive in the moment, while tracking in his mind, critically, the whole fight. Yet it was exhilarating, like fighting with two bodies, at two scales. ~ C.S. Pacat

Can't make the world alcohol-free, and I wouldn't try. Those are things I can't control. But I control my home. And when I walk into the dining room or the kitchen and find an open bottle of booze in my living space, that's over the line. It has nothing to do with judging anybody else. I just know how I want to live in my own home. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

life is an adventure to be embraced with an open mind and loving heart ~ Bernardine Evaristo

Staying unSpun really boils down to following a few principles... When confronted with a claim, keep an open mind, ask questions, cross-check, look for the best information, and then weigh the evidence. ~ Brooks Jackson

Coming into a game in the eighth or ninth inning is like parachuting behind enemy lines. And sometimes the chute doesn't open. You have to live with that. It's an occupational hazard. ~ Dan Quisenberry

Mindful awareness / Mindful (Res):Awareness of present-moment experience, with intention and purpose, without grasping on to judgments. Traits of being mindful are having an open stance toward oneself and others, emotional equanimity, and the ability to describe the inner world of the mind. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

My kin would sooner have a badger in their house than a Campbell."
Alan saw his mother open hermouth and shook his head to silence her. He not only knew Shelby could hold her own but wanted to see her do it.
"Most MacGregors were comfortable enough with badgers in the parlor."
"Barbarians!" Daniel sucked in his breath. "The Campbells were barbarians, each and every one of them."
Shelby tilted her head as if to study him from a new angle. "The MacGregors have a reputation for being sore losers."
Instantly Daniel's face went nearly as red as his hair. "Losers? Hah! There's never been a Campbell born who could stand up to a MacGregor in a fair fight. Backstabbers."
"We'll have Rob Roy's biography again in a minute," Shelby heard Caine mutter. "You don't have a drink, Dad," he said, hoping to distract him. "Shelby?"
"Yes." She shifted her gaze to him, noting he was doing his best to maintain sobriety. "Scotch," she told him, with a quick irrepressible wink. "Straight up.If the MacGregors had been wiser," she continued without missing a beat, "perhaps they wouldn't have lost their land and their kilts and the name.Kings," she went on mildly as Daniel began to huff and puff, "have a habit of getting testy when someone's trying to overthrow them."
"Kings!" Daniel exploded. "An English king, by God! No true Scotsman needed an English king to tell him how to live on his land."
Shelby's lips curved as Caine handed her a glass. "That's a trut ~ Nora Roberts

Sit in front of an object of concentration with the eyes open. Focus on a candle flame, or a yantra, a little dot, something small. Just look at it. Focus on it until there is nothing else in your mind. This develops willpower. ~ Frederick Lenz

There is love in everything, and when we really live and view life with an open heart (and live in our truth), the light illuminates the way. ~ Kasi Kaye Iliopoulos

Your ass is actually very nice. Well, at least what I can see of it. If your ass is that nice, no wonder they have an obsession with your - "

"Concentrate," I grumble, snapping my fingers in front of his face.

"I'm trying," he lies, still staring down at my ass. I start to turn to face him instead of sitting comfortably on the bed, just so my ass will be facing the wall, but the door flies open and slams into the wall.

Drake curses, then he grunts a, "Fuck me."

"The fuck is going on in here?" Drex growls, letting his eyes drop to my exposed back, and apparently my exposed ass. Not my fault this hospital keeps the ridiculous slit in the back of their gowns.

"We're having a conversation," I say with a sweet smile. "It's full of dirty innuendo and intriguing assumptions about my pussy."

"No the hell it isn't," Drake refutes, looking at me like I've lost my damn mind.

"But you were just saying that my - "

"Damn it, you crazy woman! Don't give him a reason to break my arms while I can't fight back!" Drake barks. ~ C.M. Owens

Never be petty. Do not feed resentments against anyone. I prefer good-hearted sinners to so called good people who are intolerant and devoid of compassion. Being spiritual is to have an open mind, understand and forgive, and be friends with everyone. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Everything I am inside is pink and blue. Pastels without, soft clouds above, blue sky everywhere with an occasional rain but from renewal, not anger. My mind has no boundaries. Its floor is poetry, the wallpaper music. The windows are always open to allow the humor to drift in and out. The furniture is made of air, I am forever floating. ~ Kimberly Jo Smith

Children aren't only less inhibited than adults; they are also less powerful, and smaller too. They may or may not be more open-minded and liberated than grown-ups, but they are forced to live in a world that wasn't designed for them, and one that is not primarily concerned with their desires and their welfare. And so children are constantly compromising, constantly adjusting to an environment that is clearly not theirs, not yet. That's wisdom, not innocence. ~ Ian Bogost

Saying It To Keep It From Happening"


Some departure from the norm
Will occur as time grows more open about it.
The consensus gradually changed; nobody
Lies about it any more. Rust dark pouring
Over the body, changing it without decay -
People with too many things on their minds, but we live
In the interstices, between a vacant stare and the ceiling,
Our lives remind us. Finally this is consciousness
And the other livers of it get off at the same stop.
How careless. Yet in the end each of us
Is seen to have traveled the same distance - it's time
That counts, and how deeply you have invested in it,
Crossing the street of an event, as though coming out of it
were
The same as making it happen. You're not sorry,
Of course, especially if this was the way it had to happen,
Yet would like an exacter share, something about time
That only a clock can tell you: how it feels, not what it
means.
It is a long field, and we know only the far end of it,
Not the part we presumably had to go through to get there.
If it isn't enough, take the idea
Inherent in the day, armloads of wheat and flowers
Lying around flat on handtrucks, if maybe it means more
In pertaining to you, yet what is is what happens in the end
As though you cared. The event combined with
Beams leading up to it for the look of force adapted to the
wiser
Usages of ag ~ John Ashbery

You'll find that more doors open if you approach them with an open heart rather than a closed mind. ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

What does it mean to be an 'open source' society? What does one mean when one says one has an 'open mind'? Open source means that its a society everybody can work on improving. It has a synergy that allows the best minds to float on top, since there is no entropical hierarchy of mediocrity - once everything stays fluid there is the odd chance for genius elements to actually lead. Such is the case now in Turkey. The protesters are a fluid synergy that have no entropical leadership, and thus the most brilliant PR moves are made by the resistance, who are opposed by the worst sort of mediocrity that is totally at odds with reality. An 'open mind' follows a similar process, but in this case the entropy hides in the hierarchy of ideas that is implanted in the brain: once a person follows mediocre ideas - such as the 'idea' that 'marriage is the meaning of life' or 'having a job is the purpose of existence' etc - then the phenomenon of the 'open mind' becomes already impossible, for there is an internal hierarchy of entropy present that will prevent any sort of original impulse to have the meaning it truly has. Hence, the only way to escape the mediocrity of ones own mind is to allow anything to build and revise it. ~ Martijn Benders

There are a few things that need to occur for our loved ones to have more relationships. First, they must learn some social skills and competencies -- especially so for those who are independent and often on their own, so that they will not become victimized by others and can make some connections. Second, for those who require it, they need to have support staff who understand movement differences and sensory challenges and how to include a nonverbal person who uses alternative means of communication. Last, but not least, for friendship to occur, people need to have an open mind, be more flexible, and be more accepting of people with differences. ~ Chantal Sicile-Kira

Occupation, curfew, settlements, closed military zone, administrative detention, siege, preventive strike, terrorist infrastructure, transfer. Their WAR destroys language. Speaks genocide with the words of a quiet technician.

Occupation means that you cannot trust the OPEN SKY, or any open street near to the gates of snipers tower. It means that you cannot trust the future or have faith that the past will always be there.

Occupation means you live out your live under military rule, and the constant threat of death, a quick death from a snipers bullet or a rocket attack from an M16.

A crushing, suffocating death, a slow bleeding death in an ambulance stopped for hours at a checkpoint. A dark death, at a torture table in an Israeli prison: just a random arbitrary death.

A cold calculated death: from a curable disease. A thousand small deaths while you watch your family dying around you.

Occupation means that every day you die, and the world watches in silence. As if your death was nothing, as if you were a stone falling in the earth, water falling over water.

And if you face all of this death and indifference and keep your humanity, and your love and your dignity and YOU refuse to surrender to their terror, then you know something of the courage that is Palestine. ~ Suheir Hammad

I steeled myself as best I could, and, with teeth gritted, using only one finger I typed:

C U there E.

I sat back, feeling a bit queasy. Illiterate communication was quicker, that was true, but not by much. I'd saved myself the trouble of typing four whole characters. Still, it was part of my new credo, trying new things. I'd tried it, and I very definitely did not like it. LOL could go and take a running jump. I wasn't made for illiteracy; it simply didn't come naturally. Although it's good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it's also extremely important to stay true to who you really are. I read that in a magazine at the hairdressers. ~ Gail Honeyman

She and her brother got their usual table, right in front of the grimy, bulletproof window covered with steel bars. Nothing but the best seat in the house when visiting Kyle Rhodes.

He laid into her the moment he sat down. "Who's Tall, Dark, and Smoldering?"

Jordan's mouth dropped open. "Shut up. You've been reading Scene and Heard?"

Kyle gestured to the bars. "What else am I supposed to do in this place?"

"Repent. Reflect on your wrongdoings. Rehabilitate your criminal mind."

"You're avoiding the question."

Yes, she was. Because her brother was number two on the list of people she really, really didn't want to lie to, right after her father. "It's no big deal. He's just a guy I brought to Xander's party." Who, yes, happened to be tall, dark, and smoldering. Allegedly. And who occasionally made her smile, when he wasn't busy getting under her skin. Like an itch she couldn't scratch. Or a tick.

"For five thousand dollars a head, I doubt he's 'just a guy,' " Kyle said.

Suddenly, their friend Puchalski, the inmate with the black snake tattoo, was at their table. "So who's this tall, dark, and smoldering jerk?" he asked Jordan, seemingly affronted.

Jordan held out her hands. "Seriously, does everyone read Scene and Heard in this place?"

Puchalski gestured to Kyle. "I snagged it from Sawyer here while he was reading the financial section. I've got to keep up with current e ~ Julie James

I incline toward things stripped of any chance of ending or surviving. So you will understand why I have always been concerned with the West. This concern seemed to you absurd or gratuitous. "The West - you aren't even part of it," you pointed out. Is it my fault if my greed for misery has not found another object? Where else will I find so persistent a will to fail? I envy the West the dexterity with which it manages to die out. When I would fortify my disappointments, I turn my mind toward this theme of an inexhaustible negative richness. And if I open some history of France, England, Spain, or Germany, the contrast between what they were and what they are gives me, besides a certain vertigo, the pride of having discovered, at last, the axioms of twilight. ~ Emil M. Cioran

The Set Aside Prayer is a good place to begin. God; please enable me to set aside everything I think I know about myself, other people, these Steps, and especially You, so that I can have an open mind and a new experience with myself, other people, these Steps, and especially You! ~ Tom R.

Those who take up any subject with an open mind, willing to learn anything that will contribute to their advancement, comfort and happiness, are wise. ~ Roger McDonald

I find that while each partner might have needed some specific coaching, the real tests we faced were basically the same, season after season. We had to learn to move as a team. We had to master complex, carefully timed choreography. We had to face the hot lights and live action and the idea that millions of eyes were upon us. But beyond that, I needed to inspire and instill confidence in each person I coached and danced with. I needed to communicate with an open heart and empathetic, encouraging words. I had to critique usefully and praise strategically. I also needed to be my authentic self--exposing my personal vulnerabilities to win their trust. Ultimately, I had to make each of my partners embrace not just me, but also her own sill and power. Every partner I've danced with has it within them to kick ass and climb mountains. When you put yourself in a situation when you're vulnerable, that's when your power is revealed. And it's always there; it's part of your DNA. It's like a woman walking into a room looking for the diamond necklace and realizing it's around her neck. I'm not changing any of these ladies; I'm helping them rediscover themselves.
And truth be told, that was never my goal. I never walked into a studio thinking, I'm going to transform this person's life. I'm no therapist! I was just trying to put some damn routines together! But I realized after all these seasons that the dance is a metaphor for the journey. Every one of my partners has had a very diff ~ Derek Hough

I was thinking, The last thing I want to do is get in a wreck and lose another limb. I completely lost it and blew up at my father.
"Why did you do that? I can't get injured again! Pull over. I'll drive!" I screamed.
Dad is not the kind of person who would have ever taken that kind of behavior from me in the past, but I think he understood the paranoia. I'd asked him while I was in the hospital, "Did you ever think one of your kids would ever lose a limb?"
And he said, "No, it never crossed my mind. I was always more afraid I would lost another limb."
It wasn't until later that I realized how great it was of him that he kept his cool and understood where I was coming from. He just let me freak out and let me drive. I think in some ways it was the same kind of lesson he taught me as a child without ever saying a word. I watched him just get on with things with one arm. He never made a fuss about it. It was an example that growing up I didn't know I'd need eventually.
So I got in the driver's seat and we continued on our way. After a while we stopped at a gas station to stretch our legs and get some snacks. I grabbed a lemon-line Gatorade and Dad grabbed something to drink and we got back in the car. I turned the car on, so the air and the radio were going as I tried and tried to get my Gatorade bottle open, but the top was too big and I couldn't quite get my fingers to grab it, hold it, and twist it open. My finger strength just wasn't there yet. So I ~ Noah Galloway

Dimitri? She tried not to influence him. It was their decision together, not just hers. She knew he would listen with an open mind to her reasons and she wanted to be able to do the same for him.
His laughter was soft in her mind, filling her with an odd tingling sensation, with a small rush of heat. Skyler.
That was it. Her name. She sent him a look from under her lashes, one she usually reserved for Josef. Are you mocking me?
Teasing you. Just a little. We're getting the wolf pups. How could I possibly say no to a gift like that? You would never stop arguing with me.
Discussing. I was totally prepared to be reasonable and listen to you and then show you all the reasons you were absolutely wrong if you disagreed.
Dimitri burst out laughing. ~ Christine Feehan

Feeling quiet and empty, he told himself that he would be all right tomorrow. He would forgive himself the weakness of this night, it was like the tears one is permitted at a funeral, and then one learns how to live with an open wound or with a crippled factory. ~ Ayn Rand

I respect you more than that."
I almost fell off the couch. I parted my hair and looked up at him, but he was no longer squatting in front of me. He'd stood and moved away.
"Are we, like, having a conversation?"
"Did you just, like, ask me for advice and listen with an open mind? Is so, then yes, I would call this a conversation. I can see how you might not recognize it, considering all I usually get from you is attitude and hostility-"
"Oh! All I ever get from you is hostility and-"
"And here we go. She's bristling and my hackles go up. Bloody hell, I feel fangs coming on. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such ~ Henry Miller

A traveller with an open mind grows richer with each journey, with each encounter, with each conversation. ~ Jane Wilson-Howarth

Moreover, probably owing to excessive self-consciousness, perhaps as the result of the generally unfortunate cast of my personality, there existed between my thoughts and feelings, and the expression of those feelings and thoughts, a sort of inexplicable, irrational, and utterly insuperable barrier; and whenever I made up my mind to overcome this obstacle by force, to break down this barrier, my gestures, the expression of my face, my whole being, took on an appearance of painful constraint. I not only seemed, I positively became unnatural and affected. I was conscious of this myself, and hastened to shrink back into myself. Then a terrible commotion was set up within me. I analysed myself to the last thread, compared myself with others, recalled the slightest glances, smiles, words of the people to whom I had tried to open myself out, put the worst construction on everything, laughed vindictively at my own pretensions to 'be like every one else,' - and suddenly, in the midst of my laughter, collapsed utterly into gloom, sank into absurd dejection, and then began again as before - went round and round, in fact, like a squirrel on its wheel. Whole days were spent in this harassing, fruitless exercise. ~ Ivan Turgenev

Children share with geniuses an open, inquiring, uninhibited quality of mind. ~ Chauncey Guy Suits

That was when it dawned on her--Dom wanted to unearth her secrets. Nancy's secrets. Just as Jane had feared, he really had deduced that she hid some.
A shiver ran down her spine, and she jerked her gaze from him, fighting to hide her consternation. "Merely the same reason I gave you before. Nancy could be in trouble. And it's your duty as her brother-in-law to keep her safe."
"From what?" he demanded. "From whom? Is there more to this than you're saying?"
Ooh, the fact that he was so determined to unveil the truth about Nancy while hiding his former collusion with her scraped Jane raw. "I could ask the same of you," she said primly. "You're obviously holding something back. You have some reason for your determination to believe ill of Nancy. I wonder what that might be."
Two can play your game, Almighty Dom. Hah!
He was silent so long that she ventured a glance at him to find him looking rather discomfited. Good! It was about time.
"I am merely keeping an open mind about your cousin, which is more than I can say for you," Dom finally answered. "She isn't the woman you think she is."
"Because she wouldn't give in to your advances twelve years ago, you mean?" She would make him admit the truth about that night if it was the last thing she did! "Perhaps that's why you're determined to blacken her character. You're angry that she resisted you and married your brother instead."
"That's a lie!" When several people on the street turned to look ~ Sabrina Jeffries

For what is worth: Slazinger claims to have learned from history that most people cannot open their minds to new ideas unless a mind-opening team with a peculiar membership goes to work on them. Otherwise, life will go on exactly as before, no matter how painful, unrealistic, unjust, ludicrous, or downright dumb that life may be.
The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise, the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.
The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic person, capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation. „Such a person, working alone", he says, „is invariably ignored as a lunatic."
The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find: a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas, and who testifies that the first specialist is far from mad. „A person like that working alone", he says, „can only yearn out loud for changes, but fail to say what their shapes should be".
The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain anything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pig-headed they may be. „He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting," says Slazinger. „Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

When the mind is open, an open heart often follows, and this creates room for acceptance of our differences. Acceptance, like Arthur and the bumblebee side by side living their life purpose in total harmony with one another. Acceptance and harmony: two elegant principles to build on. Would you agree? ~ Sherri Lynea Gerek

But most of all, as summer slanted to an end, he was learning to love idleness, idleness no longer as stretches of freedom reclaimed by stealth here and there from involuntary labour, surreptitious thefts to be enjoyed sitting on his heels before a flowerbed with the fork dangling from his fingers, but as a yielding up of himself to time, to a time flowing slowly like oil from horizon to horizon over the face of the world, washing over his body, circulating in his armpits and his groin, stirring his eyelids. He was neither pleased nor displeased when there was work to do; it was all the same. He could lie all afternoon with his eyes open, staring at the corrugations in the roof-iron and the tracings of rust; his mind would not wander, he would see nothing but the iron, the lines would not transform themselves into pattern or fantasy; he was himself, lying in his own house, the rust was merely rust, all that was moving was time, bearing him onward in its flow. ~ J.M. Coetzee

What if something were to happen? What if something suddenly started throbbing? Then they would notice it was there and they'd think their hearts were going to burst. Then what good would their dykes, bulwarks, power houses, furnaces and pile drivers be to them? It can happen any time, perhaps right now: the omens are present. For example, the father of a family might go out for a walk, and, across the street, he'll see something like a red rag, blown towards him by the wind. And when the rag has gotten close to him he'll see that it is a side of rotten meat, grimy with dust, dragging itself along by crawling, skipping, a piece of writhing flesh rolling in the gutter, spasmodically shooting out spurts of blood. Or a mother might look at her child's cheek and ask him: "What's that, a pimple?" and see the flesh puff out a little, split, open, and at the bottom of the split an eye, a laughing eye might appear. Or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies, like the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river. And they will realize that their clothing has become living things. And someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth. He goes to the mirror, opens his mouth: and his tongue is an enormous, live centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He'd like to spit it out, but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with his own hands. And a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names, st ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

While we are born with curiosity and wonder and our early years full of the adventure they bring, I know such inherent joys are often lost. I also know that, being deep within us, their latent glow can be fanned to flame again by awareness and an open mind. ~ Sigurd F. Olson

No physicist started out impatient with common-sense notions, eager to replace them with some mathematical abstraction that could be understood only by rarified theoretical physics. Instead, they began, as we all do, with comfortable, standard, common-sense notions. The trouble is that Nature does not comply. If we no longer insist on our notions of how Nature ought to behave, but instead stand before Nature with an open and receptive mind, we find that common sense often doesn't work. Why not? Because our notions, both hereditary and learned, of how Nature works were forged in the millions of years our ancestors were hunters and gatherers. In this case common sense is a faithless guide because no hunter-gatherer's life ever depended on understanding time-variable electric and magnetic fields. There were no evolutionary penalties for ignorance of Maxwell's equations. In our time it's different. ~ Carl Sagan

So how are the wedding plans progressing?" Richard asked, once they were out of the village.
"They aren't." Breckenridge heard his clipped tones, heard the irritation beneath. Didn't care if Richard did, too. "She's taken some nitwit notion into her head that I don't need to marry her, that she's going to go off and manage an orphanage in the country, or some such thing, so her social ruination doesn't matter."
"Ah." Richard nodded sagely. "She's playing stubborn."
"Playing?" Breckenridge shot him an irate look. "She's the definition of the word. I've already tried talking her around. Twice."
"I hate to break it to you, old son, but it won't be your honeyed words that change her mind."
Breckenridge snorted. "I've tried that, too-so far all that's gained me is..." An even deeper sense of being irrevocably linked to her.
Richard glanced at him curiously. "What?"
Breckenridge pulled a face, growled, "Damned if I know."
Richard grinned. "Well, whatever it takes, just console yourself with the thought that the end result will be worth it."
Breckenridge cast Richard a sharp glance, saw the open contentment in his face. Felt compelled to ask, "So what did you have to do?"
Richard's smile deepened. "The same thing we've all have to do-prostrate ourselves at their dainty feet, swear undying love, and mean it. ~ Stephanie Laurens

Reflecting back on the journey to the
"Great Outdoors"
places me in a different tonal mood, filled
up with hope and passion, not resentful,
suppressed relics of anger unresolved

Did you listen to the winds?
What did you hear?
Did you listen to the trees?
What knowledge did they bring you?
Did you listen to the birds?
What songs did they sing to you?
Did you listen to the Universe(s)?
What messages did they bring you?
Did you listen to the ancestors?
What hope did they send you?
Did you really listen?

Close your eyes and open up your full
heart and listen again
Not for me
Do it 4 UrSelf
Do it 4 tha Future
Look beyond UrSelf
Open up UrSelf
Love ThySelf
Quiet the chatter of your mind, close
the racing tracks and be still and
quiet so that U can hear what
they're trying to say to U.

Be appreciative for what U have been
bestowed and blessed to be stewards of, please
do not take this to mean: Destroy, dominate,
and control.
Let it mean be cognizant of the complexity, respect true
biodiversity, respect and honor all Life, allow for balance, and
recognize evolutionary adaptability in all of Creation.

The winds are blowing good tidings and blessings
in this here direction as this one poem comes
to a close while striving for the rootedness of an
ancient Sequoia so high up in ~ Irucka Ajani Embry

Unlike them, however, her path was not through daring deeds or the study of magic or the use of miraculous powers. She had been gifted with something almost as rare: an open and eager mind. She had the gift of watching and listening, the gift of taking all the hurts and happenings of others' lives and understanding their purpose. ~ William Joyce

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diphtheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentery which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross a ~ Imperial War Museum

I've never believed protectionism of that kind will lead us anywhere. I think you can have certain specific rules for engaging with India.. for example, not allowing mineral resources to be taken out of the country.. but there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that when you open an economy you should do it in totality. Foreign investment adds a sense of competition; we should see this as a wake-up call to modernise and upgrade. Companies that do not will undoubtedly die. ~ Ratan Tata

She had signed her own death-warrant. He kept telling himself over and over that he was not to blame, she had brought it on herself. He had never seen the man. He knew there was one. He had known for six weeks now. Little things had told him. One day he came home and there was a cigar-butt in an ashtray, still moist at one end, still warm at the other. There were gasoline-drippings on the asphalt in front of their house, and they didn't own a car. And it wouldn't be a delivery-vehicle, because the drippings showed it had stood there a long time, an hour or more. And once he had actually glimpsed it, just rounding the far corner as he got off the bus two blocks down the other way. A second-hand Ford. She was often very flustered when he came home, hardly seemed to know what she was doing or saying at all.

He pretended not to see any of these things; he was that type of man, Stapp, he didn't bring his hates or grudges out into the open where they had a chance to heal. He nursed them in the darkness of his mind. That's a dangerous kind of a man.

If he had been honest with himself, he would have had to admit that this mysterious afternoon caller was just the excuse he gave himself, that he'd daydreamed of getting rid of her long before there was any reason to, that there had been something in him for years past now urging Kill, kill, kill. Maybe ever since that time he'd been treated at the hospital for a concussion.

("Three O'Clock") ~ Cornell Woolrich

I have an insatiable palate. I'll try anything once, with an open mind. However, there is a special place in my heart for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Don't get me wrong, I've sampled specialty Mac & Cheese all over the world, but nothing competes with the stuff I grew up on. ~ Rachel Nichols

What do you and Chris even talk about?" he asks. "You have nothing in common."
"What do we talk about?" I counter.
Peter laughs. "Point taken." He pushes away from the wall and puts his head in my lap, and I go completely still.
I try to make my voice sound normal as I say, "You're in a really strange mood today."
He raises an eyebrow at me. "What kind of mood am I in?" Peter sure loves to hear about himself. Normally, I don't mind, but today I'm not in the mood to oblige him. He already has too many people in his life telling him how great he is.
"The obnoxious kind," I say, and he laughs.
"I'm sleepy." He closes his eyes and snuggles against me. "Tell me a bedtime story, Covey."
"Don't flirt," I tell him.
His eyes fly open. "I wasn't!"
"Yes, you were. You flirt with everyone. It's like you can't help yourself."
"Well, I don't ever flirt with you." Peter sits back up and checks his phone, and suddenly I'm wishing I didn't say anything at all. ~ Jenny Han