“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.
~Maya Angelou
Remember this because it will happen many times in your life. When people show you who they are the first time believe them. Not the 29th. time. When a man doesn't call you back the first time, when you are mistreated the first time, when someone shows you lack of integrity or dishonesty the first time, know that this will be followed many many other times, that will some point in life come back to haunt or hurt you. Live your life in truth. Don't pretend to be someone you're not. You will survive anything if you live your life from the point of view of truth.”
―
~Maya Angelou
Remember this because it will happen many times in your life. When people show you who they are the first time believe them. Not the 29th. time. When a man doesn't call you back the first time, when you are mistreated the first time, when someone shows you lack of integrity or dishonesty the first time, know that this will be followed many many other times, that will some point in life come back to haunt or hurt you. Live your life in truth. Don't pretend to be someone you're not. You will survive anything if you live your life from the point of view of truth.”
―
“Once he went into the mountains on a clear, sunny day, and wandered about for a long time with a tormenting thought that refused to take shape. Before him was the shining sky, below him the lake, around him the horizon, bright and infinite, as if it went on forever. For a long time he looked and suffered. He remembered now how he had stretched out his arms to that bright, infinite blue and wept. What had tormented him was that he was a total stranger to it all. What was this banquet, what was this great everlasting feast, to which he had long been drawn, always, ever since childhood, and which he could never join? Every morning the same bright sun rises; every morning there is a rainbow over the waterfall; every evening the highest snowcapped mountain, there, far away, at the edge of the sky, burns with a crimson flame; every little fly that buzzes near him in a hot ray of sunlight participates in this whole chorus: knows its place, loves it, and is happy; every little blade of grass grows and is happy! And everything has its path, and everything knows its path, goes with a song and comes back with a song; only he knows nothing, understands nothing, neither people nor sounds, a stranger to everything and a castaway.”
― The Idiot
― The Idiot
“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Essays, Letters and Miscellanies
― Essays, Letters and Miscellanies
“All great things are slow of growth; this is true even of a grape or of a fig.
If then you say to me now, I desire a fig, I shall answer, It needs time: wait till it first
flower, then cast its blossom, then ripen. Whereas then the fruit of the fig-tree reaches
not maturity suddenly nor yet in a single hour, do you nevertheless desire so quickly,
and easily to reap the fruit of the mind of man?—Nay, expect it not, even though I bade
you!”
―
If then you say to me now, I desire a fig, I shall answer, It needs time: wait till it first
flower, then cast its blossom, then ripen. Whereas then the fruit of the fig-tree reaches
not maturity suddenly nor yet in a single hour, do you nevertheless desire so quickly,
and easily to reap the fruit of the mind of man?—Nay, expect it not, even though I bade
you!”
―
“The chains that keep you bound to the past are not the actions of another person. They are your own anger, stubbornness, lack of compassion, jealousy and blaming others for your choices. It is not other people that keep you trapped; it is the entitled role of victim that you enjoy wearing. There is a familiarness to pain that you enjoy because you get a payoff from it. When you figure out what that payoff is then you will finally be on the road to freedom.”
―
―
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OUR SHARED SHELF IS CURRENTLY DORMANT AND NOT MANAGED BY EMMA AND HER TEAM. Dear Readers, As part of my work with UN Women, I have started reading ...more
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