"Unawareness is the root of all evil."
Anonymous Egyptian Monk. Quoted in Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham. The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning. (1992) New York: Bantam, 2002. p. 68.
"Although self-awareness, by itself, does not lead to behavior change, it is foundational."
Doug Silsbee. Presence-Based Coaching: Cultivating Self-Generative Leaders Through Mind, Body, and Heart. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008. p. 51.
"One simple criterion for distinguishing authentic intuition from ego projections or wishful thinking is that the real stuff is delivered as invitations, not demands. The words 'You should do...' or 'You must do...' are not part of intuition. Rather, intuition is your soul saying, 'Please consider...' or 'Will you...?'"
Sharon Franquemont. You Already Know What to Do: 10 Invitations to the Intuitive Life. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000. p. 5.
As a character decides whether to jump into a well:
"Khalil is listening; he hears its whispers; he thinks its soft enticements are his own wise thoughts. He believes he's deciding — but all he's doing is listening to the whisper of the well."
John Speed. Tiger Claws. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007. p. 162.
"You sit down at the computer and say, 'What am I supposed to do?' The regular gamers in the room have to explain: 'You're supposed to figure out what you're supposed to do.'"
Steven Johnson. Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005. p. 42.
"What's intellect?"
"Well, intelligence. Aql." I nod. "Aql nazari. A talent for imagining. And aql amali. A talent for doing."
Uzma Aslam Khan. The Geometry of God. Clockroot Books, 2009.
"Yet when the time comes, I am not able to pull the trigger. I tell myself that the strategy works generally, but might not work with this hand. I cannot, by thought, generate the feeling of conviction that the laws of probabilities are actually in effect and that betting a bad hand occasionally is preferable to always folding. I cannot convince myself that what I know to be correct is actually correct."
Robert A. Burton. On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2008. p. 114.
"...if people do things for lunk-headed, backward-looking reasons, why wouldn't we also do things for significance-seeking, self-actualizing reasons? If we're predictably irrational — and we clearly are — why couldn't we also be predictably transcendent?"
Daniel H. Pink. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Canongate, 2010.
"To come to man's estate it is not necessary to get oneself killed around Madrid, or to fly mail planes, or to struggle wearily in the snows out of respect for the dignity of life. The man who can see the miraculous in a poem, who can take pure joy from music, who can break his bread with comrades, opens his window to the same refreshing wind off the sea. He too learns a language of men.
But too many men are left unawakened."
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Wind, Sand and Stars. (1939) Translated into English by Lewis Galantiere. London: The Folio Society, 1990. p. 195.
"The angel was thinking of its mission to find Essie. It had generally relied on its instincts for this kind of thing, as it had relied on its instincts for the less complex, but no less important, mission of saying Kaddish and some blessings.
Little Ash was the one who got caught up in details, and made what humans would recognize as plans. The angel simply expected that its mission would be fulfilled until, eventually, it was. Little Ash was always telling it this was an inefficient way to do business, but the angel felt doing business was a terrible, demonic way to describe the feeling of being needed. It wasn’t doing business. It was being a mitzvah. The demon was too caught up in being Little Ash to quite understand what was so satisfying about that.
My name, the angel insisted to itself, is Rescue. I am finding Essie. I know what my task is, and I am my task."
Sacha Lamb. When the Angels Left the Old Country. Levine Querido: 2022.
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Swing by Lars Nissen from Pixabay
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