Performs Quotes

There is a saying of my adoptive ancestors. Though he performs a miracle, or two miracles, if he refuses the third miracle, it is not as profit to him. I shall dine at the Court of France tonight, and in the course of that evening, acquire the royal consent for O'LiamRoe and myself to stay as long as we please. For, to be perfectly frank," said Lymond, gently reflective, "to be perfectly frank, I can't wait to sink my teeth into the most magnificent, the most scholarly and the most dissolute Court in Europe, which so lightly slid out The O'LiamRoe, Chief of the Name, on his kneecaps and whiskers. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Redemption, salvation, and restoration are not God's ultimate goal. These He performs for the sake of something greater: namely, the enjoyment He has in glorifying Himself. ~ John Piper

All work which is necessary ennobles him who performs it. Only one thing is shameful - to contribute nothing to the community. ~ Adolf Hitler

In marriage for example, you say 'Yes' on the day you get married, 'I do', but each day you implicitly if not explicitly, also say 'Yes', by every act that one performs in a marriage, one is saying 'Yes', making a cup of coffee for one's wife or husband is a form of saying 'Yes' to the marriage vow that one is continuing the marriage by affirming it in one's deeds. And exactly the same in the religious life. ~ Kevin Hart

When women hate. When feeling hatred, women are more dangerous than men. First and foremost because once their hostile feeling has been aroused, they are inhibited by no considerations of fairness but let their hatred swell undisturbed to the final consequences; and second, because they are practiced in finding sore spots (which every man, every party has) and stabbing there: then their rapier-sharp mind performs splendid services for them (while men, when they see wounds, become restrained, often generous and conciliatory). ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We sometimes fail to realise that when we pray to Allah we are in fact performing a great act of ibadah (worship). On the surface it might seem as if we are asking out of self-interest, but we are really proving the sincerity of our belief in the tauhid (Oneness) of Allah and our submission to the True God. Thus the Prophet pbuh said: "Supplication is itself the worship." (Reported by Abu Daud and al-Tirmizi, sahih.) If a servant prays the whole night to Allah, he therefore performs a great ibadah all night long. ~ Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin

In book subjects a student can only do a student's work. All that can be measured is how well he learns, rather than how well he performs. All he can show is promise. ~ Peter Drucker

Management has authority only as long as it performs. ~ Peter Drucker

A leader is one who performs, reform and transform his society. ~ Jonah Takon

As one travels up any one of the large rivers [of Borneo] ,one meets with tribes that are successively more warlike. In the coast regions are peaceful communities which never fight
save in self-defense, and then with but poor success, whereas in the central regions, where the rivers take their rise, are a number of extremely warlike tribes whose raids have been a constant source of terror to the communities settled in the lower reaches of the rivers.... It might be supposed that the peaceful coast people would be found to be superior in moral qualities to their more warlike neighbors, but the contrary is the case. In almost all respects the advantage lies with the warlike tribes. Their houses are better built, larger, and cleaner; their domestic morality is superior; they are physically stronger, are braver, and physically and mentally more active and in general are more trustworthy. But, above all, their social organization is firmer and more efficient because their respect for and obedience to their chiefs and their loyalty to their community are much greater; each man identifies himself with the whole community and accepts and loyally performs the social duties laid upon him. ~ William McDougall

The puppet dances, He turns flips and he jigs. His painted red smile looks happy but he is screaming, for he performs on red-hot coals. His wooden feet begin to smoke. A man comes in with a shining axe. He swings it. I think he will cut off the puppet's burning feet, but instead the axe cuts all his strings. But the man with the axe falls just as swiftly as the puppet leaps away, free. ~ Robin Hobb

The country blacksmith who employs no journeyman is never conscious of any conflict between the capital invested in his anvil, hammer and bellows, and the labor he performs with them, because in fact, there is none. ~ Leland Stanford

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness. ~ Cyril Connolly

Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

God performs wonders beyond description. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

One of the most terrible things about the English education System in Ireland is its ruthlessness ... it is cold and mechanical, like the ruthlessness of an immensely powerful engine. A machine vast, complicated ... It grinds night and day; it obeys immutable and predetermined laws; it is as devoid of understanding, of sympathy, of imagination, as is any other piece of machinery that performs an appointed task. Into it is fed all raw human material in Ireland; it seizes upon it inexorably and rends and compresses and remoulds ... ~ Patrick Pearse

God really performs the miracle of multiplying our time, but only if we give it to him first. ~ Peter Kreeft

All you have to do, is to see whether the law takes from some what belongs to them in order to give it to others to whom it does not belong. We must see whether the law performs, for the profit of one citizen and to the detriment of others, an act which that citizen could not perform himself without being guilty of a crime. Repeal such a law without delay ... [I]f you don't take care, what begins by being an exception tends to become general, to multiply itself, and to develop into a veritable system. ~ Frederic Bastiat

You feel the fragrance of goodness not only in the mere physical presence of a person, but also in the words he uses and the acts he performs. It all leaves you more perfumed. ~ Rabb Jyot

Time studies find that a mother, especially one who works outside the home for pay, is among the most time-poor humans on the planet, especially single mothers, weighed down not only by role overload but also what sociologists call "task density" - the intense responsibility she bears and the multitude of jobs she performs in each of those roles.6 ~ Brigid Schulte

Literature is the only art in which the audience performs the score. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Each time a mediocre singer performs, he is saying, in effect, "This is good enough for you." The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattention, rudeness and noise. ~ Florence King

In proportion as the machine is improved and performs man's work with an ever increasing rapidity and exactness, the labourer, instead of prolonging his former rest times, redoubles his ardour, as if he wished to rival the machine. O, absurd and murderous competition! ~ Paul Lafargue

is Whitney? Is that your dealer?" "Whitney Houston," Mom said. "You know, dear. She was that singer who sang that song you like that Helena performed." "'Hit Me Baby, One More Time?" "That's Britney, dear." "'Dirty?" "That was Christina." "Umbrella?" "And that was Rihanna. Larry, you're embarrassing yourself. You have a gay son, for God's sake. How can you not know your divas?" Mom sounded affronted. "Paul? Paul! If you can hear me, don't listen to your father! He obviously doesn't know his ass from his elbow!" "Language," Dad scolded. "And I know my divas. I know them very well. What about that Woman Goo-Goo that Helena performs like? ~ T.J. Klune

Yet, sluggard, wake, and gull thy soul no more With earth's false pleasures, and the world's delight, Whose fruit is fair and pleasing to the sight, But sour in taste, false as the putrid core: Thy flaring glass is gems at her half light; She makes thee seeming rich, but truly poor: She boasts a kernel, and bestows a shell; Performs an inch of her fair-promis'd ell: Her words protest a heav'n; her works produce a hell. ~ Francis Quarles

A soul occupied with great ideas performs small duties. ~ Harriet Martineau

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son has happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation – "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?"

Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier's trade – that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs – I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, "Stop there! Your theory is confined ~ Frederic Bastiat

Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place. ~ Victor Null

If it is an element of liberation for Latin America, I believe that it should have demonstrated that. Until now, I have not been aware of any such demonstration. The IMF performs an entirely different function: precisely that of ensuring that capital based outside of Latin America controls all of Latin America. ~ Che Guevara

When a musical act performs, the black audience goes crazy for all the stuff, the album cuts, everything. White audiences, they're nice and all, but they're not going to lose it until they get the hits. Comedy is the same thing. ~ Chris Rock

His eyes blaze and sparkle, his whole face is crimson with blood that surges from the lowest depths of the heart, his lips quiver, his teeth are clenched, his hair bristles and stands on end, his breathing is forced and harsh, his joints crack from writhing, he groans and bellows, bursts out into speech with scarcely intelligible words, strikes his hands together continually, and stamps the ground with his feet; his whole body is excited and performs great angry threats; it is an ugly and horrible picture of distorted and swollen frenzy - you cannot tell if this vice is more execrable or more hideous. ~ Seneca.

To other scientists, the scientist who corrects a colleague's error, or cites good reasons for seriously doubting his or her conclusions, performs a noble deed, like a Zen master who boxes the ears of a novice straying from the meditative path, although scientists correct one another more as equals than as master and student. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I believe that any doctor that performs an abortion, I would advocate that any doctor that performs an abortion, should be criminally charged for doing so. ~ Rick Santorum

This parcel of penguins really performs! ~ Richard Atwater

What is the function that a clergyman performs in the world? Answer: He gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell. ~ H.L. Mencken

Ladies, this is what scares me. When a horse is finally tamed and trained, bearing the burden of saddle and human expectations alike, she is called broken. It is only then that she performs the duties expected of her. ~ Jess Connolly

I told him that the soul could be freed from sinful thoughts only by guarding the mind and cleansing the heart and that this could be done by interior prayer. I added that according to the holy Fathers, one who performs saving works simply from the fear of hell follows the way of bondage, and one who does the same just in order to be rewarded with the Kingdom of Heaven follows the path of a bargainer with God. The one they call a slave, the other a hireling. But God wants us to come to him as children to their father. He wants us to behave ourselves honorably from love for him and zeal for his service. He wants us to find our happiness in uniting ourselves with him in a saving union of mind and heart. ~ Reginald M. French

The moral pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in the intelligent gratification of consciousness. ~ Susan Sontag

No matter what I put out, somebody will be offended. I made a video on 10 reasons to smile, and it has dislikes. That should be an indication that there will be some who get offended no matter what you do. The best you can do as an entertainer or as someone who performs is to follow what you believe in. ~ Lilly Singh

problematic within post-Reformation dogmatics. Is faith something I `do' to earn God's favour, and, if not, what role does it play? Once we release Paul's justification-language from the burden of having to describe `how someone becomes a Christian', however, this is simply no longer a problem. There is no danger of imagining that Christian faith is after all a surrogate `work', let alone a substitute form of moral righteousness. Faith is the badge of covenant membership, not something someone `performs' as a kind of initiation test. ~ N. T. Wright

The commandment to refrain from placing blame on our parents, deeply imprinted in us by our upbringing, skillfully performs the function of hiding essential truths from us. ~ Alice Miller

Nature performs the cure, the physician takes the fee. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Almost 70 years have gone by, and I've still got that feeling when I write ... Writing, for me, is still it. It has always been the basis of everything I do. I'm a writer who performs, not a performer who writes. I love the act of writing. It's still a thrill for me. ~ Clive James

A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about himself and his environment...For imagination sets the goal 'picture' which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of 'will,' as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination. ~ Maxwell Maltz

You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle. ~ Jean Cocteau

A Ghafa never performs with a net," Inej said indignantly.
"Does a Ghafa frequently perform twenty stories above cobblestones after being held prisoner for a week?"
"There will be a net," said Kaz. "It's in place behind the silo guardhouse already, under a sack of sandbags."
The silence in the tomb was sudden and complete. Inej couldn't believe what she was hearing. ~ Leigh Bardugo

It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular; it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary. His entire life will be a priestly ministration. As he performs his never-so-simple task, he will hear the voice of the seraphim saying, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of the hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. ~ A.W. Tozer

The reflection and experience of many years have led me to consider the holy writings not only as the most authentic and instructive in themselves, but as the clue to all other history. They tell us what man is, and they alone tell us why he is what he is: a contradictory creature that seeing and approving of what is good, pursues and performs what is evil. All of private and public life is there displayed ... From the same pure fountain of wisdom we learn that vice destroys freedom; that arbitrary power is founded on public immorality. ~ Gouverneur Morris

Am I to admire a man who injures me in an awkward and mistaken attempt to protect me, and to despise a man who to earn a good income performs for me some great and lasting service? ~ George J. Stigler

He does. All that He has decreed He performs. "But our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased" (Psa. 115:3); and why has He? Because "there is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the LORD" (Pro 21:30). ~ Arthur W. Pink

Virtue theory, which is also called aretaic ethics (from the Greek term arete, "virtue"), holds that morality is more than simply doing the right thing. The foundational moral claims made by the virtue theorist concern the moral agent (the person doing the action), not the act that the agent performs. ~ Scott B. Rae

In another building, I was shown his [Mr Brunel's] manufactory of shoes, which, like the other, is full of ingenuity, and, in regard to subdivision of labour, brings this fabric on a level with the oft-admired manufactory of pins. Every step in it is effected by the most elegant and precise machinery; while as each operation is performed by one hand, so each shoe passes through twenty-five hands, who complete from the hide, as supplied by the currier, a hundred pair of strong and well-finished shoes per day. All the details are performed by ingenious applications of the mechanic powers, and all the parts are characterized by precision, uniformity, and accuracy. As each man performs but one step in the process, which implies no knowledge of what is done by those who go before or follow him, so the persons employed are not shoemakers, but wounded soldiers, who are able to learn their respective duties in a few hours. The contract at which these shoes are delivered to government is 6s. 6d. per pair, being at least 2s. less than what was paid previously for an unequal and cobbled article.

While, however, we admire these triumphs of mechanics, and congratulate society on the prospect of enjoying more luxuries at less cost of human labour, it ought not to be forgotten, that the general good in such cases is productive of great partial evils, against which a paternal government ought to provide. No race of workmen being proverbially more industrious than shoemakers, it is ~ Richard Phillips

First rate magician perform first rate magic effects, second rate magician performs third rate magic effects. ~ Amit Kalantri

Fashion is treated too much as news rather than what it is, what it does and how it performs. ~ Geoffrey Beene

Dear Deborah,

Words do not come easily for so many men. We are taught to be strong, to provide, to put away our emotions. A father can work his way through his days and never see that his years are going by. If I could go back in time, I would say some things to that young father as he holds, somewhat uncertainly, his daughter for the very first time. These are the things I would say:

When you hear the first whimper in the night, go to the nursery leaving your wife sleeping. Rock in a chair, walk the floor, sing a lullaby so that she will know a man can be gentle.

When Mother is away for the evening, come home from work, do the babysitting. Learn to cook a hotdog or a pot of spaghetti, so that your daughter will know a man can serve another's needs.

When she performs in school plays or dances in recitals, arrive early, sit in the front seat, devote your full attention. Clap the loudest, so that she will know a man can have eyes only for her.

When she asks for a tree house, don't just build it, but build it with her. Sit high among the branches and talk about clouds, and caterpillars, and leaves. Ask her about her dreams and wait for her answers, so that she will know a man can listen.

When you pass by her door as she dresses for a date, tell her she is beautiful. Take her on a date yourself. Open doors, buy flowers, look her in the eye, so that she will know a man can respect her.

When she moves away ~ Lisa Wingate

A mother has two hands but performs jobs of many arms. You will never be able to do the impossible until you realise what your mother did. ~ Gloria D. Gonsalves

My writing partner, Nicki, and I became obsessed with a monologist who performs unscripted shows equipped with nothing more than scribbled bullet points and a glass of water. We wrote him a fan letter and found ourselves sharing lunch and eventually a friendship. ~ Emma McLaughlin

Reading is like skiing. When done well, when done by an expert, both reading and skiing are graceful, harmonious, activities. When done by a beginner, both are awkward, frustrating, and slow.
Learning to ski is one of the most humiliating experiences an adult can undergo (that is one reason to start young). After all, an adult has been walking for a long time; he knows where his feet are; he knows how to put one foot in front of the other in order to get somewhere. But as soon as he puts skis on his feet, it is as though he had to learn to walk all over again. He slips and slides, falls down, has trouble getting up, gets his skis crossed, tumbles again, and generally looks- and feels- like a fool.
Even the best instructor seems at first to be of no help. The ease with which the instructor performs actions that he says are simple but that the student secretly believes are impossible is almost insulting. How can you remember everything the instructors says you have to remember? Bend your knees. Look down the hill Keep your weight on the downhill ski. Keep your back straight, but nevertheless lean forward. The admonitions seem endless-how can you think about all that and still ski?
The point about skiing, of course, is that you should not be thinking about the separate acts that, together, make a smooth turn or series of linked turns- instead, you should merely be looking ahead of you down the hill, anticipating bumps and other skiers, enjoying the feel of th ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Where does it all begin? History has no beginnings, for everything that happens becomes the cause or pretext for what occurs afterwards, and this chain of cause and pretext stretches back to the Palaeolithic age, when the first Cain of one tribe murdered the first Abel of another. All war is fratricide, and there is therefore an infinite chain of blame that winds its circuitous route back and forth across the path and under the feet of every people and every nation, so that a people who are the victims of one time become the victimisers a generation later, and newly liberated nations resort immediately to the means of their former oppressors. The triple contagions of nationalism, utopianism and religious absolutism effervesce together into an acid that corrodes the moral metal of a race, and it shamelessly and even proudly performs deeds that it would deem vile if they were done by any other. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Yes. A language that will at last say what we have to say. For our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. Hence, every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent. [ ... ] Consider a word that refers to a thing- " umbrella", for example. [ ... ] Not only is an umbrella a thing, it is a thing that performs a function. [ ... ] What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? [ ... ] the umbrella ceases to be an umbrella. It has changed into something else. The word, however, has remained the same. Therefore it can no longer express the thing. ~ Paul Auster

As respects its isolation and its indifference to the basic requirements of all organic activity, the pecuniary power complex discloses a startling resemblance to a newly discovered center in the brain-that which is called the pleasure center. So far as is known, this pleasure center performs no useful function in the organism, unless it should prove that in some still obscure way it plays a part in more functional pleasure reactions. But in laboratory monkeys this localized center can be penetrated by electrodes which permit a micro-current to stimulate the nervous tissue in such a fashion that the flow of current-and hence the intensity of pleasure-can be regulated by the animal himself.

Apparently the stimulation of this pleasure center is so rewarding that the animal will continue to press the current regulator for an indefinite length of time, regardless of every other impulse or physiological need, even that for food, and even to the point of starvation. The intensity of this abstract stimulus produces something like a total neurotic insensibility to life needs. The power complex seems to operate on the same principle. The magical electronic stimulus is money.

What increases the resemblance between this pecuniary motivation and that of the cerebral pleasure center is that both centers, unlike virtually all organic reactions, recognize no quantitative limits. What has always been true of money, among those susceptible to its influence, applies equal ~ Lewis Mumford

I am fully persuaded, what God's promises, He faithfully performs. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

No one should judge that he has greater perfection because he performs great penances and gives himself in excess to the staying of the body than he who does less, inasmuch as neither virtue nor merit consists therein; for otherwise he would be an evil case, who for some legitimate reason was unable to do actual penance. Merit consists in the virtue of love alone, flavored with the light of true discretion without which the soul is worth nothing. ~ St. Catherine Of Siena

The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the last word. ~ Marcel Duchamp

A man's body is like a circus. You can swing off his trapeze arms, lay your head on thighs like fresh-blown balloons while his cock performs tricks, soft to hard, a burst like a cannon if you treat him right. ~ Bojan Veljanov

In a moment of crisis we don't act out of reasoned judgment but on our conditioned reflexes. We may be able to send men to the moon, but we'd better remember we're still closely related to Pavlov's dog. Think about driving a car: only the beginning driver thinks as he performs each action; the seasoned driver's body works kinesthetically ... A driver prevents an accident because of his conditioned reflexes; hands and feet respond more quickly than thought. I'm convinced the same thing is true in all other kinds of crisis, too. We react to our conditioning built up of every single decision we've made all our lives; who we have used as our mirrors, as our points of reference. If our slow and reasoned decisions are generally wise, those which have to be made quickly are apt to be wise, too. If our reasoned decisions are foolish, so will be those of the sudden situation. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

If your pet is dying in pain, you will be condemned for cruelty if you do not summon the vet to give him a general anaesthetic from which he will not come round. But if your doctor performs exactly the same merciful service for you when you are dying in pain, he runs the risk of being prosecuted for murder. ~ Richard Dawkins

No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. ~ James K. Polk

Debugging tip: For server applications, be sure to always specify the -server JVM command line switch when invoking the JVM, even for development and testing. The server JVM performs more optimization than the client JVM, such as hoisting variables out of a loop that are not modified in the loop; code that might appear to work in the development environment (client JVM) can break in the deployment environment (server JVM). ~ Brian Goetz

You could live without the opera singer, but not without the services of the baker. On this ground you might say that the baker performs a greater service; but no lover of music would agree. ~ Bertrand Russell

You that performs all day
When will you remove that mask. ~ Gabriel Iqbal

Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by - or rather, things that are ~ Plutarch

I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead, 'A pretty move, for the love of God.' And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle, and I don't give a damn which team or country performs it. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Everyone in this world perform their 'duty'. But when one performs the 'duty' and he also intimidates [scolds] someone in the process, he will reincarnate in the animal life form. If he carries out his duties with understanding, he will return to the human life form. And if he performs them with humbleness, he will reincarnate into the celestial world. ~ Dada Bhagwan

The fruitfulness of our life depends in large measure on our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility. All he asks of any act he performs is that it be his act. If it is performed by him, it must be good. All words spoken by him must be infallible. The car he has just bought is the best for its price, for no other reason than that he is the one who has bought it. He seeks no other fruit than this, and therefore he generally gets no other. ~ Thomas Merton

Every man is proud of what he does well; and no man is proud of what he does not do well. With the former, his heart is in his work; and he will do twice as much of it with less fatigue. The latter performs a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly tired. The little he has done, comes to nothing, for want of finishing. ~ Abraham Lincoln

People tend to judge presidents on how the economy performs, and yet we don't expect them to have the power to do much about it. Or we don't want them to exercise that power, if they were to have it. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Now you tell me, when a father goes ahead and washes diapers or performs some other mean task for his child, and someone ridicules him as an effeminate fool, though that father is acting in the spirit just described and in Christian faith, my dear fellow you tell me, which of the two is most keenly ridiculing the other? God, with all his angels and creatures, is smiling, not because that father is washing diapers, but because he is doing so in Christian faith. Those who sneer at him and see only the task but not the faith are ridiculing God with all his creatures, as the biggest fool on earth. Indeed, they are only ridiculing themselves; with all their cleverness they are nothing but devil's fools. ~ Martin Luther

There are very powerful and wealthy special interests who want to privatize or dismember virtually every function that government now performs, whether it is Social Security, Medicare, public education or the Postal Service. ~ Bernie Sanders

Meditation has also been proven scientifically to untangle and rewire the neurological pathways in the brain that make up the conditioned personality. Buddhist monks, for example, have had their brains scanned by scientists as they sat still in deep altered states of consciousness invoked by transcendental meditation and the scientists were amazed at what they beheld. The frontal lobes of the monks lit up as bright as the sun! They were in states of peace and happiness the scientists had never seen before. Meditation invokes that which is known in neuroscience as neuroplasticity; which is the loosening of the old nerve cells or hardwiring in the brain, to make space for the new to emerge. Meditation, in this sense, is a fire that burns away the old or conditioned self, in the Bhagavad Gita, this is known as the Yajna;

"All karma or effects of actions are completely burned away from the liberated being who, free from attachment, with his physical mind enveloped in wisdom (the higher self), performs the true spiritual fire rite. ~ Craig Krishna

Speech therapy is an art that deserves to be more widely known. You cannot imagine the acrobatics your tongue mechanically performs in order to produce all the sounds of a language. ~ Jean-Dominique Bauby

No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering; it simply performs its job horrifyingly well. ~ Sebastian Junger

You say 'I' and you are proud of this word. But greater than this- although you will not believe in it - is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say 'I' but performs 'I'. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A film like Wall-E exemplifies what Robert Pfaller has called 'interpassivity': the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity. ~ Mark Fisher

14You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples. ~ Anonymous

Reading is performance. The reader
the child under the blanket with a flashlight, the woman at the kitchen table, the man at the library desk
performs the work. The performance is silent. The readers hear the sounds of the words and the beat of the sentences only in their inner ear. Silent drummers on noiseless drums. An amazing performance in an amazing theater. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Neither our psychology nor that of the unbelievers can impart life to them. Unless the Holy Spirit Himself performs the work, all is vain. ~ Watchman Nee

The further we analyse the manner in which such an engine performs its processes and attains its results, the more we perceive how distinctly it places in a true and just light the mutual relations and connexion of the various steps of mathematical analysis; how clearly it separates those things which are in reality distinct and independent, and unites those which are mutually dependent. ~ Ada Lovelace

Longing performs all things ~ Mary Renault

Did you finish yours, Kota?"
"Working on it now, Actually."
"How's it going?"
He sat up, turning in his chair and holding up his notebook. "I don't know. What rhymes with formaldehyde?"
My eyes widened. Gabriel laughed, rubbing his fingers against his forehead. "Dude, what kind of poem are you writing?"
Kota blinked at us. "It's about a doctor."
"Does the doctor fall in love?" Gabriel asked.
"No."
"Does someone die?"
"Not in the story, technically."
"What does he do?"
"He performs an autopsy. ~ C.L.Stone

The creature we finally ended up building is biomechanical to the extent that he has physically grown into, or maybe even out of, his seat, - he's integrated totally into the function he performs. ~ H.R. Giger

A quarterback that goes out and performs for you and is a franchise quarterback is more valuable than a player playing another position, but there's a lot more risk there. It's a more difficult position to play, and there are lot more failures. ~ Bob McNair

And what impels him to repeat this process at every single lesson, and, with the same remorseless insistence, to make his pupils copy it without the least alteration? He sticks to this traditional custom because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating. The meditative repose in which he performs them gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work can be done. ~ Eugen Herrigel

I love the power of the musician who composes and performs. I envy their ability to put a nugget of truth in three minutes of sweat and emotional outpouring, colored entirely from their thoughts. ~ Kim Harrison

James Taylor is the kind of person I always thought the word 'folksinger' referred to. He writes and sings songs that are reflections of his own life, and performs in them in his own style. All of his performances are marked by an eloquent simplicity. ~ Jon Landau

I use the following scenario in my classes to illustrate the nature of the moral circle. Imagine, I ask my students, that your best friend just got a job waiting tables at a restaurant. To celebrate with her you arrange with friends to go to the restaurant to eat dinner on her first night. You ask to be seated in her section and look forward to surprising her and, later, leaving her a big tip. Soon your friend arrives at your table, sweating and stressed out. She is having a terrible night. Things are going badly and she is behind getting food and drinks out. So, I ask my students, what do you do? Easily and naturally the students respond, "We'd say, 'Don't worry about us. Take care of everyone else first.'" I point out to the students that this response is no great moral struggle. It's a simple and easy response. Like breathing. It is just natural to extend grace to a suffering friend. Why? Because she is inside our moral circle.

But imagine, I continue with the students, that you go out to eat tonight with some friends. And your server, whom you vaguely notice seems stressed out, performs poorly. You don't get good service. What do you do in that situation? Well, since this stranger is not a part of our moral circle, we get frustrated and angry. The server is a tool and she is not performing properly. She is inconveniencing us. So, we complain to the manager and refuse to tip. In the end, we fail to treat another human being with mercy and dignity. Why? Because i ~ Richard Beck

The soul must stretch over the cosmogonic abysses, while the body performs its daily duties. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

And yet that performance has a method. Trump's artlessness, like Mark Antony's, is only apparent. Listen, for example, as he performs one of his favorite riffs. He begins by saying something critical of Mexicans and Chinese. Then he turns around and says, 'I love the Mexican and Chinese people, especially the rich ones who buy my apartments or stay at my hotels or play on my golf courses.' It's their leaders I criticize, he explains, but then in a millisecond he pulls the sting from the criticism: 'they are smarter and stronger than our leaders; they're beating us.' And then the payoff all this has been leading up to, the making explicit of what has been implied all along. 'If I can sell them condominiums, rent space to them in my building at my price, and outfox them in deals, I could certainly outmaneuver them when it came to trade negotiations and immigration.' (And besides, they love me.)

Here is the real message, the message that makes sense of the disparate pieces of what looks like mere disjointed fumbling: I am Donald Trump; nobody owns me. I don't pander to you. I don't pretend to be nice and polite; I am rich and that's what you would like to be; I'm a winner; I beat people at their own game, and if you vote for me I will beat our adversaries; if you want wonky policy details, go with those losers who offer you ten-point plans; if you want to feel good about yourselves and your country, stick with me.

So despite the lack of a formal center or a ~ Stanley Fish

When people read, they hear voices and see images in their head. This production is total synesthesia and something close to madness. A great book is an hallucinated IMAX film for one. The author had a feeling, which he turned into words, and the reader gets a feeling from those words - maybe it's the same feeling; maybe it's not. As Peter Mendelsund wrote in What We See When We Read, a book is a coproduction. A reader both performs the book and attends the performance. She is conductor, orchestra, and audience. A book, whether nonfiction of fiction, is an "invitation to daydream. ~ Derek Thompson