Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.
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The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.
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His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. You appear to be astonished, he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it. To forget it! You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. But the Solar System! I protested. What the deuce is it to me? he interrupted impatiently: you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.
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It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed ... The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.
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It takes a little courage, and a little self -- control. And some grim determination, If you want to reach the goal. It takes a deal of striving, and a firm and stern-set chin. No matter what the battle, If you really want to win. There's no easy path to glory, There's no road to fame. Life, however we may view it, Is no simple parlor game; But it's prizes call for fighting, For endurance and for grit; For a rugged disposition and don't know when to quit.
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It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking at it that one overcomes it but, rather, often by working on the one next to it. Certain people and certain things require to be approached on an angle.
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You say that at the time of the Congress, in 1765, The great mass of the people were zealous in the cause of America. The great mass of the people is an expression that deserves analysis. New York and Pennsylvania were so nearly divided, if their propensity was not against us, that if New England on one side and Virginia on the other had not kept them in awe, they would have joined the British. Marshall, in his life of Washington, tells us, that the southern States were nearly equally divided. Look into the Journals of Congress, and you will see how seditious, how near rebellion were several counties of New York, and how much trouble we had to compose them. The last contest, in the town of Boston, in 1775, between whig and tory, was decided by five against two. Upon the whole, if we allow two thirds of the people to have been with us in the revolution, is not the allowance ample? Are not two thirds of the nation now with the administration? Divided we ever have been, and ever must be. Two thirds always had and will have more difficulty to struggle with the one third than with all our foreign enemies.
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Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness-a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion.
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The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?
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People need trouble -- a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
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To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd. or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge.
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I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis
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But, my dearest Agathon, it is truth which you cannot contradict; you can without any difficulty contradict Socrates.
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A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
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All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all things whatsoever. In the societies of the Western world compassionate intelligence is encouraged in girls - in boys it is tabu. The tabu on tenderness in which boys are conditioned, the emphasis on 'manliness,' 'machoism,' plays havoc with the male's capacity for compassionate intelligence. Tenderness is considered to be feminine, and that is sufficient to remove it from the repertoire of masculine behavior. Indeed, things have reached such a pass in the Western world that many men seem to have lost all understanding of its meaning. The masculine world would substitute for it the idea of 'justice.' The difficulty with that is that there is not much compassion in their justice, and justice without compassion is not justice at all.
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But of all other stupendous inventions, what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very far distant either in time or place? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangement of two dozen little signs upon paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of man.
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In really hard times the rules of the game are altered. The inchoate mass begins to stir. It becomes potent, and when it strikes, it strikes with incredible emphasis. Those are the rare occasions when a national will emerges from the scattered, specialized, or indifferent blocs of voters who ordinarily elect the politicians. Those are for good or evil the great occasions in a nation's history.
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Dogs have been extensively used in heart research, but their coronary arteries differ from those of humans - they have smaller connections with one another and the left coronary artery dominates, while in humans the right does so. In addition, the conduction system has a different pattern of blood supply, and consequently, researchers have had difficulty in producing ischemic heart blocks in dogs, which occurs frequently in humans. The blood coagulation mechanism is unlike ours, therefore using dogs to test prosthetic devices and valves is unreliable. A dog's reaction to shock is also very different to that of humans.
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Einstein is an analytical mathematician seeking to give a physical interpretation to the conclusions of his mathematical process. In this he is hampered by a load of contradictory and absurd assumptions of the school that he follows, which throws him into all manner of difficulty. Einstein has such a faculty for embracing both sides of a contradiction that one would have to be of the same frame of mind to follow his thought, it is so peculiarly his own. The whole Relativity theory is as easy to follow as the path of a bat in the air at night.
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My writing is like a ten gallon spring. It can issue from the ground anywhere at all. On smooth ground it rushes swiftly on and covers a thouasand li in a single day without difficulty. When it twists and turns among mountains and rocks, it fits its form to things it meets: unknowable. What can be known is, it always goes where it must go, always stops where it cannot help stopping -- nothing else. More than that, even I cannot know.
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The difficulty in life is the choice.
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Difficulties show men what they are. In case of any difficulty remember that God has pitted you against a rough antagonist that you may be a conqueror, and this cannot be without toil.
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Animals live by ethics! (1) A flock of wild geese had settled to rest on a pond. One of the flock is captured by a gardener who had clipped its wings. When the geese started to resume their flight, this one tried frantically, but vainly, to lift itself into the air. The others, observing its struggles, flew about in obvious efforts to encourage it, but no use. The entire flock then settled back on the pond and waited, even though the urge to go on was strong, for several days, until the damaged feathers grew sufficiently to permit the goose to fly. (2) A friend who owned a small cafe and used to throw crumbs for the sparrows, noticed that one was injured and had difficulty getting about. But he was interested to discover that the other sparrows would leave the crumbs which lay nearest their crippled comrade so that he could get his share, undisturbed.'
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We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure all your life.
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The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.
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The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision--whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.
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We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted...So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life.
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I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.
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Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
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Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed.
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