Transforming Quotes

It is natural that we face obstacles in pursuit of our goals. But if we remain passive, making no effort to solve the problems we meet, conflicts will arise and hindrances will grow. Transforming these obstacles into opportunities is a challenge to our human ingenuity. ~ Dalai Lama

Healing severe or chronic pain, I believe, includes transforming our relationship to the pain, and, ultimately, it is about transforming our relationship to who we are and to life. ~ Sarah Anne Shockley

Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people who genuinely thirst for truth and justice. Numerous are the wares that nature produces by the dozen, but her choice products are few.
We all know that, so why complain? Was it not always thus and will it not always thus remain? Certainly, and one must take what nature gives as one finds it. But there is also such a thing as a spirit of the times, an attitude of mind characteristic of a particular generation, which is passed on from individual to individual and gives its distinctive mark to a society. Each of us has to his little bit toward transforming this spirit of the times. ~ Albert Einstein

When your ears hear and your eyes see the sin, weakness, or failure of your husband or wife, it is never an accident; it is always grace. God loves your spouse, and he is committed to transforming him or her by his grace, and he has chosen you to be one of his regular tools of change. ~ Paul David Tripp

The GE press release went to the papers the very next day: "Scientists of the General Electric Company, flying an airplane over Greylock Mountain in western Massachusetts yesterday, conducted experiments with a cloud three miles long, and were successful in transforming the cloud into snow. ~ Ginger Strand

I am not an alcoholic. I'm a social catalyst. People pay me to illustrate for other partygoers the chemical process involved in transforming from one persona into another drunker, more fun one. It's a matter of going from dull point A to exciting point B. And I'm a raving success at it. So successful that sometimes I wind up at Mysterious Point C. ~ Josh Kilmer-Purcell

As a nation, we are on a path of rapid and deep systemic change to our health system, and it's going to unfold for some time to come. It is already transforming the fundamental nature of the U.S. medical care delivery system. ~ John E. McDonough

At Camfed, we have focused on transforming the vicious cycle of poverty in many rural African communities into a cycle of opportunity. Alumnae of Camfed's programs go on to become role models and mentors for future generations of young students. We call this the 'virtuous circle,' and we know this is a model that works. ~ Ann Cotton

Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary. ~ Che Guevara

Therein lies the social significance of art: It is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is more lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious, which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. The artist seizes on this image and, in raising it from deepest unconsciousness, he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers. ~ Carl Jung

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

Meditation is not an escape. Meditation is the acceptance of life in its totality, with a view to transforming it for the highest manifestation of the divine Truth here on earth ~ Sri Chinmoy

So let us be bold in our efforts and even bolder in our vision. Let us tell the story of an America becoming - of a nation breaking free from the limits of its own arrested development and transforming into the place we were told about in school but which never really existed as such. Just because that place has been a cruel and taunting mirage for so long does not mean we cannot mold it into a reality. As the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) - one of the premier civil rights groups of our nation's history - used to say, Come, let us build a new world together. ~ Tim Wise

As the years passed, new myths arose to explain the mysterious objects the strangers brought from the land of the dead. A nineteenth-century missionary recorded, for example, an African explanation of what happened when captains descended into the holds of their ships to fetch trading goods like cloth. The Africans believed that these goods came not from the ship itself but from a hole that led into the ocean. Sea sprites weave this cloth in an "oceanic factory, and, whenever we need cloth, the captain ... goes to this hole and rings a bell." The sea sprites hand him up their cloth, and the captain "then throws in, as payment, a few dead bodies of black people he has bought from those bad native traders who have bewitched their people and sold them to the white men." The myth was not so far from reality. For what was slavery in the American South, after all, but a system for transforming the labor of black bodies, via cotton plantations, into cloth? ~ Adam Hochschild

She said it was because one day I was going to have to go through a metamorphosis like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly and that scared me, so butterflies scared me. ~ Gayle Forman

America is the civilization of people engaged in transforming themselves. In the past, the stars of the performance were the pioneer and the immigrant. Today, it is youth and the Black. ~ Harold Rosenberg

People try to get out of themselves and to escape from the man. This is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels, they turn into beast; instead of lifting, they degrade themselves. These transcendental humors frighten me, like lofty and inaccessible heights. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Where are they all going? What for? Do they never hear the rhythm of the wheels or see the bare plains outside the windows? They know everything there is to know about this life, but they still move on along the corridor, from the W.C. to their compartment, from the lobby to the restaurant, gradually transforming today into one more yesterday, and they think that a God exists who will reward them or punish them for it. ~ Victor Pelevin

Creative new health strategies like micro-insurance for poor people or Kangaroo care for pre-term babies are transforming health outcomes in even the most low-resource settings. Dedication and innovation are transforming health care worldwide. ~ Liya Kebede

The true investor scarcely ever is forced to sell his shares, and at all other times he is free to disregard the current price quotation. He need pay attention to it and act upon it only to the extent that it suits his book, and no more.* Thus the investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage. That man would be better off if his stocks had no market quotation at all, for he would then be spared the mental anguish caused him by other persons' mistakes of judgment. ~ Benjamin Graham

Something was piercing through me, some kind of heat burning the raw layer under the skin. Something I couldn't then explain and that even now I have trouble transforming from thought into words. But something was happening. A dial was turning. You can imagine a compass needle twitching to life - the smallest pulse - the barest movement - struggling for north. ~ Ben H. Winters

Whatever the trend in exchange rates or whatever the external factors, a manufacturing company is always faced with the mission of transforming itself into a company that can produce higher value-added to absorb the increase in the cost of living in the country it's operating in. ~ Fujio Mitarai

The world is being re-shaped by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, community and other powerful forces. The combination of these technologies unlocks an incredible opportunity to connect everything together in a new way and is dramatically transforming the way we live and work. ~ Marc Benioff

Others will always show you exactly where you are stuck. They say or do something and you automatically get hooked into a familiar way of reacting - shutting down, speeding up, or getting all worked up. When you react in the habitual way, with anger, greed, and so forth, it gives you a chance to see your patterns and work with them honestly and compassionately. Without others provoking you, you remain ignorant of your painful habits and cannot train in transforming them into the path of awakening. ~ Pema Chodron

I AM TRANSFORMING FOR THE BETTER. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Worldly Life [sansaar] means continuous-flow. The worldly life is that which is always changing [transforming]. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Each of you has a personal vocation which He has given you for your own joy and sanctity. When a person is conquered by the fire of His gaze, no sacrifice seems too great to follow Him and give Him the best of ourselves. This is what the saints have always done, spreading the light of the Lord ... and transforming the world into a welcoming home for everyone. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains - flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado's intensity doesn't abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost. ~ Haruki Murakami

You can't talk about truth without talking about learning how to die because it's precisely by learning how to die, examining yourself and transforming your old self into a better self, that you actually live more intensely and critically and abundantly. ~ Cornel West

The wings of the dove are as soft as they are swift. Gentleness is a sure result of the Sacred Dove's transforming power: hearts touched by His benign influence are meek and lowly henceforth and for ever. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

On the other hand, he was also enjoying the ecstasy of an idea, not daring just yet to envision its complications, dangers, and vicious absurdities. For now, the idea was enough. It was indestructible. Transforming it into reality, well, that was something else altogether. For now, though, let's let him enjoy it. ~ Markus Zusak

On visioning: In visioning, you're not using your limited perception of life to manifest. You're using your mind for the purpose it was actually created - as an avenue of awareness, a receiving station to pick up the divine ideas being broadcast everywhere. And once you catch this vision, it doesn't just manifest, it changes you, stretches you, transforming you into a person who can handle the higher vibration and larger manifestation. You don't just get the new Mercedes, you get Mercedes Consciousness. You become the change you want to see. ~ Derek Rydall

But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected. ~ Marcel Proust

Just as legendary rivers were used to represent the flow of life, so Mount Athos is a handy image to show human vulnerability. Its minerals themselves reminding us that ours is a planet constituted around Nature's awesome violence! Struggling to survive then, is integral to our existence. Literature on these issues, transforming rock and boulder into a subjective mountain, where fleshly mountaineers set forth, in the blinding brilliance of an alpine dawn, to ascend their own transgressions, remains telling. Breathing in, when nearing the top, to smell the pure air of spiritual comprehension: of heady intrinsic freedom, only to descend, once more, into the obscure and the pedestrian; albeit existentially transformed! In this way, indeed, Mount Athos transfigures many a man. ~ David William Parry

A powerful church is capable of transforming our world to God's kingdom standard ~ Sunday Adelaja

The novel moves like all the arts. It's transforming itself all the time. ~ Nathalie Sarraute

If we are to remain preeminent in transforming knowledge into economic value, America's system of higher education must remain the world's leader in generating scientific and technological breakthrough, and in meeting the challenge to educate workers. ~ Alan Greenspan

Life with God will overflow any attempts to compartmentalize or contain it. It is not just for those who are 'spiritually inclined.' We are made to live with God at the very center of our lives, transforming our thoughts, actions, decisions, relationships, vocations, communities, and social structures. ~ Richard J. Foster

I had spent many years living with a plain piece of canvas just right on my face as a headboard for my bed. As the years passed by, I watched it slowly transforming into a work of art which still lives above my head. And that my friend, is truly living art. ~ Shawn Lukas

The mystery of this courage of Bauer's is Hegel's Phenomenology. As Hegel here puts self-consciousness in the place of man, the most varied human reality appears only as a definite form, as a determination of self-consciousness. But a mere determination of self-consciousness is a "pure category," a mere "thought" which I can consequently also abolish in "pure" thought and overcome through pure thought. In Hegel's Phenomenology the material, perceptible, objective bases of the various estranged forms of human self-consciousness are left as they are. Thus the whole destructive work results in the most conservative philosophy because it thinks it has overcome the objective world, the sensuously real world, by merely transforming it into a "thing of thought" a mere determination of self-consciousness and can therefore dissolve its opponent, which has become ethereal, in the "ether of pure thought." Phenomenology is therefore quite logical when in the end it replaces human reality by "Absolute Knowledge" - Knowledge, because this is the only mode of existence of self-consciousness, because self-consciousness is considered as the only mode of existence of man; absolute knowledge for the very reason that self-consciousness knows itself alone and is no more disturbed by any objective world. Hegel makes man the man of self-consciousness instead of making self-consciousness the self-consciousness of man, of real man, man living in a real objective world and determined by that world. He ~ Karl Marx

You may have read or heard about the so-called positive thinkers of the West. They say just the opposite -- they don't know what they are saying. They say, "When you breathe out, throw out all your misery and negativity; and when you breathe in, breathe in joy, positivity, happiness, cheerfulness."

Atisha's method is just the opposite: when you breathe in, breathe in all the misery and suffering of all the beings of the world -- past, present and future. And when you breathe out, breathe out all the joy that you have, all the blissfulness that you have, all the benediction that you have. Breathe out, pour yourself into existence. This is the method of compassion: drink in all the suffering and pour out all the blessings. And you will be surprised if you do it. The moment you take all the sufferings of the world inside you, they are no longer sufferings. The heart immediately transforms the energy. The heart is a transforming force: drink in misery, and it is transformed into blissfulness... then pour it out.

Once you have learned that your heart can do this magic, this miracle, you would like to do it again and again. Try it. It is one of the most practical methods -- simple, and it brings immediate results. Do it today, and see. That is one of the approaches of Buddha and all his disciples. Atisha is one of his disciples, in the same tradition, in the same line. Buddha says again and again to his disciples, "IHI PASSIKO: come and see!" They are very sc ~ Osho

Ann: You didn't cause my miscarriages. But you are committed to transforming me to be like you. ~ K. Howard Joslin

Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Every person experiences life changing, career shocking and pain in love situations; you are no new ~ Deeksha Arora

This process, this method necessary to man's survival and prosperity upon the earth, has often been derided as unduly or exclusively "materialistic." But it should be clear that what has happened in this activity proper to man's nature is a fusion of "spirit" and matter; man's mind, using the ideas it has learned, directs his energy in transforming and reshaping matter into ways to sustain and advance his wants and his life. Behind every "produced" good, behind every man-made transformation of natural resources, is an idea directing the effort, a manifestation of man's spirit. ~ Murray Rothbard

All of a sudden my arms were full of the most fantastic life, frenetic, impossible to hold on to even if I'd wanted to, and I wanted to. But then all I was holding was the blanket, because my father had jumped into the river. And that's when I discovered my father hadn't been dying after all. He was changing, transforming himself into something new and different to carry his life forward. ~ Daniel Wallace

In transforming backward agricultural China into an advanced industrialized country, we are confronted with arduous tasks and our experience is far from adequate. So we must be good at learning. ~ Mao Zedong

There are many in public life who deserve only our praise and admiration. But there are too many who are products of a class that knows little other than spin and the machinations of politics. Little wonder that leadership of the transforming sort is so hard to come by. The danger is that this may be permanent. Where our best people shun politics because the profession isn't honoured as it once was, this only serves to make the profession even less honoured. ~ Tim Soutphommasane

Suffering, sin, and evil are no longer located in God's will, but are understood as arising within a finite, open, developmental, and future-oriented creation. They are dealt with by the power of God's love revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God's answer to the problem of woundedness and wickedness is not to show us now or in the eschaton how they fit into God's design or mosaic, but to show us how God overcomes the brokenness and maliciousness of the creation now and in the eschaton through the redemptive power of the cross and resurrection. Divine power is rethought as the suffering and transforming power of Jesus' cross and resurrection, not as the omnipotent power of the timeless will of God. Incarnation, instead of immutability, defines God's will and way. God is the suffering and transforming God. ~ Tyron Inbody

Babylon would not be transforming into anything, and not any time soon. It was decimated; not just structurally and in human lives, but more importantly in essence. It was no longer the center of the world. There would be no mountain of the gods, no golem army. No more empire. Nimrod's cosmos lay shattered into a million pieces. He knew the Creator had cursed him. Nimrod had sought to make a name for himself as a Mighty Hunter, flaunting his prowess in the face of El Shaddai himself. He sought to make a tower that reached to the sky, linking heaven and earth. That tower had collapsed. The city would take decades to repopulate and rebuild the ruins. ~ Brian Godawa

Like a therapist hairdressers are in a position of trust. We are transforming not just how a person looks but how they feel. ~ Tabatha Coffey

In this fast-developing world, particularly in the fast-transforming China market, we really need to take this opportunity and offer a modern interpretation of Scandinavian design which fits people's demands perfectly. ~ Li Shufu

To derive pleasure from a novel is to enjoy the act of departing from words and transforming these things into images in our mind. ~ Orhan Pamuk

God-confidence comes as the Holy Spirit works in us. As we pray and when we make choices that honor God, the Holy Spirit fills us with His power for ministry. When we are filled with God's goodness, we are confidently and effectively able to share His love and joy. As women of prayer open to the transforming touch of the Holy Spirit, we will find his divine life in us overflowing into the lives of others. ~ Elizabeth George

Grace is the voice that calls us to change and then enables us to yield to its transforming power. Grace matters because Jesus matters, and it works because he does. ~ Max Lucado

Nurturing and cherishing creation is a command God gives not only at the beginning of history, but to each of us. It is part of his plan; it means causing the world to grow responsibly, transforming it so that it may be a garden, a habitable place for everyone. ~ Pope Francis

And if I can take part in it by transforming my own consciousness, then someone else's, I'm happy to do it. ~ Bill Hicks

What art does is to coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous. The so-called uselessness of art is a clue to its transforming power. Art is not part of the machine. Art asks us to think differently, see differently, hear differently, and ultimately to act differently, which is why art has moral force. Ruskin was right, though for the wrong reasons, when he talked about art as a moral force. Art is not about good behaviour, when did you last see a miracle behave well? Art makes us better people because it asks for our full humanity, and humanity is, or should be, the polar opposite of the merely mechanical. We are not part of the machine either, but we have forgotten that. Art is memory - which is quite different [from] history. Art asks that we remember who we are, and usually that asking has to come as provocation - which is why art breaks the rules and the taboos, and at the same time is a moral force. ~ Jeanette Winterson

At the time of our hike, the
Appalachian Trail was fifty-nine years old. That is, by American standards, incredibly venerable. The Oregon and Santa Fe trails didn't last as long. Route 66 didn't last as long.
The old coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway, a road that brought transforming wealth and life to hundreds of little towns, so important and familiar that it became known as "America's Main Street," didn't last as long. Nothing in America does. If a product or enterprise doesn't constantly reinvent itself, it is superseded, cast aside, abandoned without sentiment in favor of something bigger, newer, and, alas, nearly always uglier. And then there is the good old AT, still quietly ticking along after six decades, unassuming, splendid, faithful to its founding principles, sweetly unaware that the world has quite moved on. It's a miracle really. ~ Bill Bryson

In order for agape to flourish, I must not be afraid to change my life. If I liked what I was doing, very well. But if I did not, there was always the time for a change. If I allowed change to occur, I would be transforming myself into a fertile field and allowing the Creative Imagination to sow its seeds in me.
"Everything I have taught you, include agape, makes sense only if you are satisfied with yourself. If you are not, then the exercises you have learned are inevitably going to make you seek change. And if you do not want all of those exercises to work against you, you have to allow change to happen.
"This is the most difficult moment in a person's life
when the person witnesses the good fight and is unable to change and join the battle. When this happens, knowledge turns against the person who holds it. ~ Paulo Coelho

Each word was shaped with certainty, and I felt, more strongly than ever before in my life, that I had at last found my true path. I knew the story would change as I told it. No one can tell as tory without transforming it in some way; it is part of the magic of storytelling. Like the troubadors of the past, who hid their messages in poems, songs and fairy tales, I too would hide my true purpose [ ... ]
It was by telling stories that I would save myself. ~ Kate Forsyth

Now, as the world's scientists focus with increasing intensity on transforming the genetic codes of every living creature into information that can be used to treat and ultimately prevent disease, Shenzhen is home to a different kind of factory: B.G.I., formerly called Beijing Genomics Institute, the world's largest genetic-research center. ~ Michael Specter

President [Barack] Obama has talked about fundamentally transforming this country. There's 7 billion people across the face of the globe, many of whom want to come to this country. If they come legally, great. But if they come illegally and they get amnesty, that is how we fundamentally change this country, and it really is striking. ~ Ted Cruz

You have got to compete with them ... you have to be working toward a future of your own. A picture of the future of your own that is contradictory to theirs, in which the things that they want to do have no place because you have been so successful at promoting the idea of sex within marriage ... focus on transforming the society to be reinforcing of all these ideas ... everywhere ... When you do that then you create a climate in which these things really cannot get very far. ~ Scott Lively

Fundamentally transforming the foundations of the economy is the biggest contribution we can make towards building a sustainable future. The current economic crisis may be painful, but it will be nothing compared with the crises we will face if we continue to grow in a way that threatens the life-support systems on which we rely ~ Jonathon Porritt

Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil. The greatest way to do that is through love. I believe firmly that love is a transforming power than can lift a whole community to new horizons of fair play, goodwill, and justice. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. ... In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society. ~ Antonio Gramsci

Storytellers are master manipulators transforming non-reality (grounded in reality) into vicarious experience. ~ BatWhaleDragon

She did not think that those who were late, or the ancestors themselves, would wish punishment upon us, no matter what our transgressions. It was far more likely that there would be love, falling like rain from above, changing the hearts of the wicked; transforming them ~ Alexander McCall Smith

But now it is Norris's privilege and pleasure to see her as no one else does, for he has been struck by love for Vida. And in his eyes, under the transforming inspection of his gaze―well, who can tell? Vida may become something more than she appears at the very moment, waiting quietly on her bench, the world breathing delicately around her. ~ Carrie Brown

Be blessed. And just as you are transforming your own life, may you transform the lives of those around you. When they ask, do not forget to give. When they knock at your door, be sure to open it. When they lose something and come to you, do whatever you can to help them find what they have lost. First, though, ask; knock at the door and find what is missing in your life. A hunter always knows what to expect - eat or be eaten. ~ Paulo Coelho

I don't doubt that at the dawn of martial arts, the main goal was to beat up one's opponents in the most effective way possible. But then, indirectly, the alchemy of martial arts began to strike some chords deep within the spirit of many individuals, transforming living war-machines into poets, artists, and philosophers. ~ Daniele Bolelli

The real alchemy is transforming the base self into gold or into spiritual awareness. That's really what new alchemy's all about. ~ Fred Alan Wolf

Today Lord I am going to do my best with Your help and for Your glory. I realize that there are many different people in the world with a variety of opinions and expectations. I will concentrate on being a God-pleaser and not a self-pleaser or man-pleaser. The rest I leave in Your hands lord. Grant me favor with You and with men and continue transforming me into the image of Your dear Son. Thank You Lord. ~ Joyce Meyer

When leadership rises to genius it has the power of transforming, of transforming experience into power. And that is what experience is for, to be made into power. The great leader creates as well as directs power. ~ Mary Parker Follett

When I filter the sunshine in my life, I bask in the light of a transforming and inspiring reality ... ~ Thomas Kinkade

In short, one who loves the illusion of the good is eventually won over to actually loving the good. But how can love of the illusion of the good lead to love of the good itself? If one loves the illusion of the good and enacts this illusion in social intercourse, one might come to appreciate its worth and to love the good itself for its own sake. Correlatively, from the point of view of the spectator, loving the illusion of the good in others may make us act politely in order to become lovable, which leads us to exercise our self-mastery, control our passions, and, eventually, to love the good for its own sake. In this sense, paradoxically, by deceiving others through politeness and social pretence, we in fact deceive ourselves and transform our pragmatic, polite behavior into virtuous behavior: by deceiving others through the pretence of virtue, we foster civil society, and in doing so, deceive ourselves by transforming our pretense of virtue into a disposition for virtue itself. Does not this line of thought recall Pascal's advice to non-believers who would like to believe, but cannot bring themselves to accomplish the leap of faith? "Kneel down, pray, act as if you believe, and belief will come by itself. ~ Slavoj Zizek

It is a shame that we so quickly lose that ability to believe in things; it limits the opportunities we have to transform ourselves, to save ourselves, for it puts the awful burden of transforming and saving ourselves on ourselves. Once you stop believing, you cannot pray, or make sacrifices or pilgrimages, or light candles. You are stuck with yourself, in a world without miracles. ~ Peter Cameron

For now, the idea was enough. It was indestructible. Transforming it into reality, well, that was something else altogether. For now, though, let's let him enjoy it.
We'll give him seven months.
Then we come for him.
And oh, how we come. ~ Markus Zusak

Mindfulness as a practice provides endless opportunities to cultivate greater intimacy with your own mind and to tap into and develop your deep interior resources for learning, growing, healing, and potentially for transforming your understanding of who you are and how you might live more wisely and with greater well-being, meaning, and happiness in this world. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

'Politico Magazine' listed me among the top 50 'thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics' for my work in coalitions advancing net neutrality. ~ Marvin Ammori

Living in a foreign country is one of those things that everyone should try at least once. My understanding was that it completed a person, sanding down the rough provincial edges and transforming you into a citizen of the world.
What I find appealing in life abroad was the inevitable sense of helplessness it would inspire. Equally exciting would be the work involved in overcoming that helplessness. There would be a goal involved, and I like having goals. ~ David Sedaris

Where do ideas come from? From looking at one thing, and seeing another. From fooling around, from playing with possibilities, from speculating, from changing, pushing, pulling, transforming, and if you're lucky, you come up with something worth saving, using, and building on. That's where the game stops and the work begins."
~ Short Film: Why Man Creates ~ Saul Bass

The foremost of his therapeutic principles is that conscious realization is an important agent for transforming the personality. The ~ C. G. Jung

When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life -- particularly human life -- such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may "break" a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head.

Erich Fromm was acutely sensitive to this fact when he broadened the definition of necrophilia to include the desire of certain people to control others-to make them controllable, to foster their dependency, to discourage their capacity to think for themselves, to diminish their unpredectibility and originalty, to keep them in line. Distinguishing it from a "biophilic" person, one who appreciates and fosters the variety of life forms and the uniqueness of the individual, he demonstrated a "necrophilic character type," whose aim it is to avoid the inconvenience of life by transforming others into obedient automatons, robbing them of their humanity.

Evil then, for the moment, is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness. ~ M. Scott Peck

In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life…Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination – making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish." (161) ~ Thomas Cahill

But the Holy Spirit is a force of consciousness within us that "delivers us from Hell," or fear, whenever we consciously ask Him to, working with us on the Causal level, transforming our thoughts from fear to love. ~ Marianne Williamson

All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete,or a scientist, or an independent business creator. in service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe- if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

A Pakistani exchange student's maternal American host "managed to summon the transforming question of her culture, built on the revolutionary idea that people are the sovereign, the boss, captains of their own fate.
She said, simply, "But what do YOU think? ~ Ron Suskind

Every day things happen in the world that cannot be explained by any law of things we know. Every day they're mentioned and forgotten, and the same mystery that brought them takes them away, transforming their secret into oblivion. Such is the law by which things that can't be explained must be forgotten. The visible world goes on as usual in the broad daylight. Otherness watches us from the shadows. ~ Fernando Pessoa

I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles in which vital and transforming events take place. ~ Rufus Jones

Practicality rules our perceptions.
To survive, our tiny brains need to tame the blizzard of
delusion generator
information that threatens to overwhelm us. Our perceptions
are wondrously flexible, transforming our worldview
automatically and continuously until we find safe harbor in
a comfortable delusion. ~ Scott Adams

I know several couples who experienced adultery in their marriages, but because in each case there was a wife who was willing to pray and a husband open to allowing God to change and restore him, the marriages are still intact and successful today. Only prayer, a submitted heart, and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit can work those kinds of miracles. ~ Stormie O'martian

For authentic transformation is not a matter of belief but of the death of the believer; not a matter of translating the world but of transforming the world; not a matter of finding solace but of finding infinity on the other side of death. The self is not made content; the self is made toast. ~ Ken Wilber

To me, the most critical thing in agriculture is investing in the peasant agriculture, transforming peasant agriculture. ~ Jakaya Kikwete

The newly released movie 'Noah' features a retelling of the creation story that clearly depicts Darwinian evolution transforming a single-cell organism into a monkey. The movie also seems to show magic in scenes more reminiscent of the occult than of the Bible story. ~ Aaron Klein

Central heating, French rubber goods and cookbooks are three amazing proofs of man's ingenuity in transforming necessity into art, and, of these, cookbooks are perhaps most lastingly delightful. ~ M.F.K. Fisher

Transforming education is not easy but the price of failure is more than we can afford, while the benefits of success are more than we can imagine. ~ Ken Robinson

These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world. ~ Alain De Botton

The innovative spirit was America's strongest attribute, transforming everything into a brave new world, but there lingered an insecurity about the arts. ~ Arthur Erickson