Orthogonality Condition Quotes

During my first Olympics in 1980, at the age of 23, I was physically in great condition but mentally too inexperienced to cope comfortably in the pressure cooker of an Olympic year. ~ Sebastian Coe

With a feeling of despondency so intense that it was almost pleasurable, he got out his guitar.
So this was to be his condition now.What was he but a fragment of broken churned-up
humanity washed up on this faraway shore? This was where his journey had brought him ...
There mus be a song in this ... ~ Marina Lewycka

When I have to do something fast, I wear the most unflattering rubber pants over my pants and a big easy sweater. I can get on my knees in the garden in whatever condition, and when I'm done, I can take it off, get in the car, and drive to the office. It's the most practical thing. ~ Dries Van Noten

The History of Social Anxiety

The fact that some people are shyer than others has been observed since ancient times. However, the medical community didn't become interested in this condition until the 1970s, when Philip Zimbardo founded the Stanford Shyness Clinic.
At the time, many professionals believed that shyness was a natural state that children eventually outgrew. Zimbardo showed that shyness actually is a widespread psychological problem that has deep and lasting effects on those who suffer from it.
This new awareness led to a great deal of research into the causes and treatment of social anxiety. Today, the condition is in the spotlight. Ads in magazines and commercials on television tell about social anxiety and advertise medications to treat it. People are becoming more open about discussing when they feel anxious and feel less ashamed about asking for help. The time has never been better for you to try to overcome your social anxiety. ~ Heather Moehn

The natural condition of the modern conservative movement is to always be in a state of revolution. Conservatives are, by definition, uncomfortable with power. ~ Craig Shirley

In the investigation of a neurotic style of life, we must always suspect an opponent, and note who suffers most because of the patient's condition. Usually this is a member of the family. ~ Alfred Adler

They say the first thing to go when you're old is your legs or your eyesight. It isn't true. The first thing to go is parallel parking. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Confidence; Noun. A condition where one knows what he is good at no matter how much you try to convince him otherwise. ~ Dan Pearce

Fiction is the study of the human condition under imagined circumstances. ~ Charles Stross

It is always tempting to try to shut out the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition, but once it has broken through the cautionary barricades we have erected against it, we can never see the world in the same way again. ~ Karen Armstrong

Nothing is more difficult than to equalize the action of the government in reference to the various and diversified interests of the community; and nothing more easy than to pervert its powers into instruments to aggrandize and enrich one or more interests by oppressing and impoverishing the others; and this, too, under the operation of laws couched in general terms - and which, on their face, appear fair and equal. Nor is this the case in some particular communities only. It is so in all - the small and the great, the poor and the rich - irrespective of pursuits, productions, or degrees of civilization; with, however, this difference, that the more extensive and populous the country, the more diversified the condition and pursuits of its population; and the richer, more luxurious, and dissimilar the people, the more difficult is it to equalize the action of the government, and the more easy for one portion of the community to pervert its powers to oppress and plunder the other. ~ John C. Calhoun

From Adam to the present, the whole history of the world has been one recurring instance of personal and group apostasy after another...Apostasy consists in abandonment and forsaking of...true principles, and all those who do not believe and conform to them are in an apostate condition, whether they are the ones who departed from the truth or whether they inherited their false concept from their apostate fathers.
With the loss of the gospel, the nations of the earth went into a moral eclipse called the Dark Ages. Apostasy was universal. And this darkness still prevails except among those who have come to a knowledge of the restored gospel. ~ Bruce R. McConkie

This symmetrical composition- the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end- may seem quite 'novelistic' to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as 'fictive,' 'fabricated,' and 'untrue to life' into the word 'novelistic.' Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion. They are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence (Beethoven's music, death under a train), into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life ... Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress ... The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful. ~ Milan Kundera

An imperfect human heart, perfectly shattered, was her conclusion. A condition so common as to be virtually universal, rendering issues of right and wrong almost incidental. ~ Richard Russo

There is speaking well, speaking easily, speaking justly and speaking seasonably: It is offending against the last, to speak of entertainments before the indigent; of sound limbs and health before the infirm; of houses and lands before one who has not so much as a dwelling; in a word, to speak of your prosperity before the miserable; this conversation is cruel, and the comparison which naturally arises in them betwixt their condition and yours is excruciating. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

Thus one can see in the Negro church to-day, reproduced in microcosm, all the great world from which the Negro is cut off by color-prejudice and social condition. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

He was silent a moment; then he said, "I want a drink of water."
She almost laughed aloud, because it was such a mundane request that could have been made of anyone, but then she saw the tension in his jaw and lips and realized that, again, he was checking out his condition, and he wanted her with him. She turned to the small Styrofoam pitcher that was kept full of crushed ice, which she used to keep his lips moist. The ice had melted enough that she was able to pour the glass half full of water. She stuck a straw into it and held it to his lips.
Gingerly he sucked the liquid into his mouth and held it for a moment, as if letting it soak into his membranes. Then, slowly, he swallowed, and after a minute he relaxed. "Thank God," he muttered hoarsely. "My throat still feel swollen. I wasn't sure I could swallow, and I sure as hell didn't want that damned tube back."
Behind Jay, Frank turned a smothered laugh into a cough.
"Anything else?" she asked.
"Yes. Kiss me. ~ Linda Howard

Healthy people are those who live in healthy homes on a healthy diet; in an environment equally fit for birth, growth work, healing, and dying ... Healthy people need no bureaucratic interference to mate, give birth, share the human condition and die. ~ Ivan Illich

Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

He that hath a blind conscience which sees nothing, a dead conscience which feels nothing, and a dumb conscience which says nothing, is in as miserable a condition as a man can be on this side of hell. ~ Patrick Henry

It is my belief that the basic knowledge that we're providing to the world will have a profound impact on the human condition and the treatments for disease and our view of our place on the biological continuum. ~ J. Craig Venter

Idiocy in the modern age isn't an all-encompassing, twenty-four-hour situation for most people. It's a condition that everybody slips into many times a day. Life is just too complicated to be smart all the time. ~ Scott Adams

Looking back now, I mourn the mutual wounds inflicted in verbal battles with the "unsaved". In fact, I have chosen to delete that particular term from my vocabulary as I have learned that even with my $500 European-designer bifocals, I cannot see into a person's heart to know his spiritual condition. All I can do is tell the jagged tale of my own spiritual journey and declare that my life has been better for having followed Christ. ~ Ron Hall

What a lovely thing a rose is!"
He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.
"There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion," said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. "It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I reached in experience the nirvana which is unborn, unrivalled, secure from attachment, undecaying and unstained. This condition is indeed reached by me which is deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand, tranquil, excellent, beyond the reach of mere logic, subtle, and to be realized only by the wise. ~ Gautama Buddha

We are in need of a way out of our poverty of soul and the desperate state of our human condition. We find it in this child lying in a manger, who was and is Jesus Christ, the long-promised Messiah, Seed, Redeemer, and King. ~ Stephen Nichols

There is just something about women who spend hours and hours knitting a sweater with mind-blowingly expensive yarn, when they could just buy a sweater for a fraction of the price - not to mention the time saved doing so - that lends itself to acceptance and patience for the human condition. ~ Penny Reid

Every decent man of our time is and is bound to be a coward and a slave. This is his normal condition. I am deeply convinced of that. This is how he is constituted, and this is what he is meant to be. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Neither black/red/yellow nor woman but poet or writer. For many of us, the question of priorities remains a crucial issue. Being merely "a writer" without a doubt ensures one a status of far greater weight than being "a woman of color who writes" ever does. Imputing race or sex to the creative act has long been a means by which the literary establishment cheapens and discredits the achievements of non-mainstream women writers. She who "happens to be" a (non-white) Third World member, a woman, and a writer is bound to go through the ordeal of exposing her work to the abuse and praises and criticisms that either ignore, dispense with, or overemphasize her racial and sexual attributes. Yet the time has passed when she can confidently identify herself with a profession or artistic vocation without questioning and relating it to her color-woman condition. ~ Trinh T. Minh-ha

A Course in Miracles rightly points out that, whenever you are unhappy, there is the unconscious belief that the unhappiness "buys" you what you want. If "you" - the mind - did not believe that unhappiness works, why would you create it? The fact is, of course, that negativity does not work. Instead of attracting a desirable condition, it stops it from arising. Instead of dissolving an undesirable one, it keeps it in place. Its only "useful" function is that it strengthens the ego, and that is why the ego loves it. ~ Eckhart Tolle

The condition of women in Islamic societies as a whole is also far from desirable. However, we should acknowledge that there are differences. In certain countries, the conditions are much better and in others much worse. ~ Shirin Ebadi

It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave
subject
inferior
dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality. ~ Susan B. Anthony

Don't wish me happiness
I don't expect to be happy all the time ...
It's gotton beyond that somehow.
Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.
I will need them all. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

If people are hungry, ill-clad, unsheltered or diseased, nothing is so important as to remedy their condition. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

To be diagnosed with cancer was a frightening thing, and my first reaction was sheer panic, but I was really fortunate that the cancer was caught at such an early stage that I didn't need chemo or radiotherapy. But I know that cancer is a chronic condition, and once you've had it, you're on the list, because it can come back. ~ Marianne Faithfull

There is something in us, somehow, that, in the most degraded condition, we snatch at a chance to deceive ourselves into a fanciedsuperiority to others, whom we suppose lower in the scale than ourselves. ~ Herman Melville

The Belly and the Members


ONE fine day it occurred to the Members of the Body that they were doing all the work and the Belly was having all the food. So they held a meeting, and after a long discussion, decided to strike work till the Belly consented to take its proper share of the work. So for a day or two, the Hands refused to take the food, the Mouth refused to receive it, and the Teeth had no work to do. But after a day or two the Members began to find that they themselves were not in a very active condition: the Hands could hardly move, and the Mouth was all parched and dry, while the Legs were unable to support the rest. So thus they found that even the Belly in its dull quiet way was doing necessary work for the Body, and that all must work together or the Body will go to pieces. ~ Aesop

Waiting, he thought, was the most miserable condition a man could find himself in. His whole life, he had been waiting for one thing or another. ~ Paul Russell

PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj. Having full power. A Minister Plenipotentiary is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he never exert it. ~ Ambrose Bierce

It has to be now," he insisted, a flick of amusement in his voice. He nudged his burgeoning loins against her. "After all, you can't allow me to go around like this all day."
"From what I've learned so far, this is your natural condition," came her pert reply. ~ Lisa Kleypas

America has the longest prison sentences in the West, yet the only condition long sentences demonstrably cure is heterosexuality. ~ Bruce Jackson

Demanding yet denying the human condition makes for an explosive contradiction. And explode it does, as you and I know. And we live in an age of conflagration: it only needs the rising birth rate to worsen the food shortage, it only needs the newly born to fear living a little more than dying, and for the torrent of violence to sweep away all the barriers. In Algeria and Angola, Europeans are massacred on sight. This is the age of the boomerang, the third stage of violence: it flies right back at us, it strikes us and, once again, we have no idea what hit us. ~ Frantz Fanon

When a sinner has any just sense of his condition, as alienated from a holy God, he will not be apt to think of the unpardonable sin. ~ Ichabod Spencer