The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.
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A good inclination is but the first rude draught of virtue, but the finishing strokes are from the will, which, if well disposed, will by degrees perfect it, as if all disposed will quickly deface it.
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I love that you get cold when it is 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle in your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
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Despite everything I've achieved in my life, the culinary awards, the military commendations, the honorary degrees, I have never, ever lost sight of what's truly important. The thing that gives meaning to these triumphs. Someone to share them with. A companion. A help mate. A wife.
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Most new things are not good, and die an early death; but those which push themselves forward and by slow degrees force themselves on the attention of mankind are the unconscious productions of human wisdom, and must have honest consideration, and must not be made the subject of unreasoning prejudice.
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Now you will recieve us! We do not ask for your poor or your hungry. We do not want your tired and sick. It is your corrupt we claim! It is your evil that will be sought by us. With every breath we shall hunt them down. Each day we will spill their blood, 'till it rains down from the skies! Do not kill, do not rape, do not steal. These are principles which every man of every faith can embrace! These are not polite suggestions. These are codes of behavior and those of you that ignore them will pay the dearest cost! There are varying degrees of evil. We urge you lesser forms of filth, not to push the bounds and cross over, into true corruption, into our domain. For if you do, one day you will look behind you and you will see we three and on that day YOU WILL REAP IT! And will send you to whatever god you wish.
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No country can be described as free- but each has different degrees of bondage.
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Whereas the degrees of rationality vary and some minds are distinguished over others, these clerks, if not convinced of what the Pasha has given them, must turn to their associates with the problem, and if all see an excess or shortcoming in the matter, then they should turn to the Pasha and present the requisite information.
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The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.
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How have I been able to live so long outside Nature without identifying myself with it? Everything lives, moves, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays, emanating either from myself or from others, cross the limitless chain of created things unimpeded; it is a transparent network that covers the world, and its slender threads communicate themselves by degrees to the planets and stars. Captive now upon earth, I commune with the chorus of the stars who share in my joys and sorrows.
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We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation.
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What is so great as friendship, let us carry with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, -- so we may hear the whisper of the gods. Let us not interfere. Who set you to cast about what you should say to the select souls, or how to say any thing to such? No matter how ingenious, no matter how graceful and bland. There are innumerable degrees of folly and wisdom, and for you to say aught is to be frivolous. Wait, and thy heart shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
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Any language is necessarily a finite system applied with different degrees of creativity to an infinite variety of situations, and most of the words and phrases we use are prefabricated in the sense that we don't coin new ones every time we speak.
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A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He descended a bit more and shouted to a man on the ground, Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am. The man on the ground below replied, You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude. You must be a sponsor, said the balloonist. I am, replied the man, how did you know? Well, answered the balloonist, everything you told me, I believe, is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've probably delayed my trip. Well, said the man on the ground, you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect other people to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault.
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The beginning, middle, and end of the birth, growth, and perfection of whatever we behold is from contraries, by contraries, and to contraries; and whatever contrariety is, there is action and reaction, there is motion, diversity, multitude, and order, there are degrees, succession and vicissitude.
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In a lunch session at the slaughterhouse, a lamb jumped out of its pen and came unnoticed up to some slaughtermen who were sitting in a circle eating some sandwiches; the lamb approached and nibbled a small piece of lettuce that a man was holding in his hand. The men gave the lamb some more lettuce and when the lunch period was over they were so affected by the action of the lamb that not one of them was prepared to kill this creature, and it had to be sent away elsewhere - showing that within each human soul there is an element of pity, compassion and love in varying degrees. It is our duty to encourage the higher qualities to bloom and blossom wherever possible in each individual.
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No sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage, which they will climb incontinent, or else be incontinent before marriage.
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It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.
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Melancholy and sadness are the start of doubt... doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the differing degrees of wickedness.
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We have not wings we cannot soar; but, we have feet to scale and climb, by slow degrees, by more and more, the cloudy summits of our time.
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Men become accustomed to poison by degrees.
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I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct.
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There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transpare...
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This tendency [to cruelty] should be watched in them [children], and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing other animals will, by degrees, harden their hearts even towards men.... And they, who delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Children should from the beginning be brought up in an abhorrence of killing or tormenting living beings.... And indeed, I think people from their cradles should be tender to all sensible creatures.... All the entertainment and talk of History is of nothing but fighting and killing; and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerors, who, for the most part, are but the great butchers of mankind, further mislead youth.
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When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.
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I can't imagine taking another job in sports, ... I have no interest in professional athletics. Pacific happens to be a place I have two degrees from and I think I can help.
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Let this be an example for the acquisition of all knowledge, virtue, and riches. By the fall of drops of water, by degrees, a pot is filled.
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Your body must become familiar with its death—in all its possible forms and degrees—as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral s...
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Ill habits gather unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
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God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas, but for scars.
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