The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.
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If any man has drunk a little too deeply from the cup of physical pleasure; if he has spent too much time at his desk that should have been spent asleep; if his fine spirits have become temporarily dulled; if he finds the air too damp, the minutes too slow, and the atmosphere too heavy to withstand; if he is obsessed by a fixed idea which bars him from any freedom of thought: if he is any of these poor creatures, we say, let him be given a good pint of amber-flavored chocolate... and marvels will be performed.
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As we become increasingly aware of the finite limits to the carrying capacity of the planet, the inefficiency of converting eight or nine kilograms of grain protein into one kilogram of animal protein for human consumption would by itself be sufficient argument against continuation of our present dietary habits. When one adds in the abuse of animals inherent to factory farming methods, the depletion and contamination of aquifers, the intense use of grain crops and grazing areas, and the release of methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the case against our meat-eating behavior becomes overwhelming. And that is before we factor in the effects of animal fats - an inescapable component of meat and poultry - on human health.
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The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.
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The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This
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Granted there are instances in which children have been reared in an atmosphere of inconsistency where value training of any kind was entirely missing; but even in these cases, it is the lack of loving guidance and structure rather than the lack of punitive retribution that has triggered the behavioral manifestations of delinquency. In a high percentage of court cases, there is evidence that the child has met with punishment that has not only been frequent but in many cases excessive. In fact, one of the sources of the child's own inadequate development is the model of open violence provided by the parent who has resorted repeatedly to corporal punishment, usually because of his own limited imagination. This indoctrination into a world where only might makes right and where all strength is invested in the authority of the mother or of the father not only makes it easy for the child to develop aggressive patterns of behavior but makes him emotionally distant and distrustful.
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I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.
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The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant -- and let the air out of the tires
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You now become easy victims of lust, anger, malice, envy and the rest of that evil brood; the atmosphere of the heart is polluted by the ego-fumes.
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We hope they will review their position, because if they do not, it will damage the atmosphere of unity we have in this critical time.
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A source of bad conscience, however, is the knowledge that my way of life, austere though it may appear to the richer folk, is still ruinously exploitive of nature -- not in my backyard, where I practice harmlessness toward even the wasps, but in the atmosphere, where my fossil fuel combustion's carbon dioxide is helping change the climate; in all those mountainous places where the metals and minerals that structure and drive my American life are torn from the earth; and in the flesh of fish and birds, mammals, and reptiles, where the chemicals that made the paper and plastic I use bioaccumulate, deforming reproduction. That guilty knowledge is another argument for material simplicity. The less I consume, the less harm I do to that which I love. In a consumer society, harmless living may be simple, but it is not easy. I make no claim to exemplary harmlessness or simplicity.
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Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.
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It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
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You create a team atmosphere, and the guys really learn to trust each other. They're doing things when the lights aren't on.
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If you sing alone in your shrine, the vibrations return to you as a reaction. But in community singing, what you have is not a reaction but a wave of vibrations. They enter into the atmosphere and purify the polluted air.
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We must believe that emotion recollected in tranquillity is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not recollected and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is tranquil only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.
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The track record of this administration on homeland security, its inadequate funding, its bureaucratic dysfunction at the Department of Homeland Security, as evidenced most tragically in [hurricane] Katrina but in many other similar instÃ?Âances over the past four and a half years, does not create an atmosphere of confidence.
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My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.
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Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible--the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nuturing family.
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The atmosphere he creates, ... is so incredible.
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It's such a great thing, it's something that needed to be done. There has been so much negative stuff going on with baseball. We need to represent our country proudly and with respect. This tournament is a playoff atmosphere, except it has people being proud of their heritage. It's awesome.
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Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence. Friendship needs no words -- it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.
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The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.
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The Antichrist will become a world leader even though he misuses his power. The root meanings of his names will give a clue of his destiny and what he is capable of. The name may sound somewhat barbaric to European ears. He will be influenced by old customs known in the literature but generally forgotten. [...] The Antichrist will be worse than Hitler. In ~1989 he's living in the Middle East. He is at a very crucial time in his life, when impressions will influence his future lifepath. Currently in the realm there is a lot of violence, political maneuvering, and corruption. The atmosphere is having an effect on him and he's coming to realize what his destiny is. [...] His followers will regard him as a religious figure. [...] He will gain immense world-wide power. Thursday will be an important day for him, he will take it as his day of worship. [...] There will be enormous warfare and bloodshed from his weapons, one 'a monster borne of a very hideous beast'. Hard radiation will cause gross deformities, terrible mutations in nature, in plants and animals as well as Mother Earth. In the period 1997 or 2001 there will be great pain and despair.
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The man who, from the beginning of his life, has been bathed at length in the soft atmosphere of a woman, in the smell of her hands, of her bo...
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What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea, to discover a great thought -- an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightning carry your messages. To be the first -- that is the idea.
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Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.
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The President seems to extend executive privilege way out past the atmosphere. What he says is executive privilege is nothing but executive poppycock.
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A deliberate choice on my part was for the player to continue to find new possibilities in the early Attic rooms far into the game. I think this builds atmosphere, though it means there's no neat division of the prologue from the middle game.
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Be reflective...and stay away from the theater as much as you can. Stay out of the theatrical world, out of its petty interests, its inbreeding tendencies, its stifling atmosphere, its corroding influence. Once become
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