My name is `Abdu'l-Bahá [literally, Servant of Baha]. My qualification is `Abdu'l-Bahá. My reality is `Abdu'l-Bahá. My praise is `Abdu'l-Bahá. Thraldom to the Blessed Perfection [Bahá'u'lláh] is my glorious and refulgent diadem, and servitude to all the human race my perpetual religion... No name, no title, no mention, no commendation have I, nor will ever have, except `Abdu'l-Bahá. This is my longing. This is my greatest yearning. This is my eternal life. This is my everlasting glory.
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Out of the earth to rest or range Perpetual in perpetual change, The unknown passing through the strange.
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The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benedictions.
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Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a perpetual succession of miracles rising into view.
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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pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different.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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Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
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What are the best times to reflect on the course of your life? Whenever you are near water, such as the ocean, a quiet pond, or a small stream. Bodies of water, particularly if they are moving, help to stimulate your creative thought process. Similarly, if you are near a fireplace or even a candle, while the flames tend to have a calming effect, they also help you to reflect on what is really important and what you want to be doing more often. The brilliant, quiet stillness of a candle flame can have an anxiety-reducing effect on your entire being. Believe it or not, you can actually choose to feel comfortable about how you spend your time. Philosophically, but also practically speaking, up to this minute in your life, you did indeed have enough time to accomplish everything you accomplished. And that's been quite a lot. When you choose to feel comfortable about how you spend your time, it immediately helps to reduce anxiety. You can also choose to feel good about your accomplishments. To bemoan the fact that you have only accomplished so much by such and such a time or such and such an age is to remain in a perpetual state of discontent. Feel good about what you have accomplished and look forward to what you will accomplish, and you will have a greater sense of control of the time in your life.
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Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
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I walk ahead of myself in perpetual expectancy of miracles.
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If you think about it seriously, all the questions about the soul and the immortality of the soul and paradise and hell are at bottom only a way of seeing this very simple fact: that every action of ours is passed on to others according to its value, of good or evil, it passes from father to son, from one generation to the next, in a perpetual movement.
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The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet.
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Five enemies of peace inhabit with us -- avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
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Confidence in the principles of an enemy must remain even during war, otherwise a peace could never be concluded; and hostilities would degenerate into a war of extermination since war in fact is but the sad resource employed in a state of nature in defence of rights; force standing there in lieu of juridical tribunals. Neither of the two parties can be accused of injustice, since for that purpose a juridical decision would be necessary. But here the event of a battle (as formerly the judgments of God) determines the justice of either party; since between states there cannot be a war of punishment no subordination existing between them. A war, therefore, which might cause the destruction of both parties at once, together with the annihilation of every right, would permit the conclusion of a perpetual peace only upon the vast burial-ground of the human species.
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Five enemies of peace inhabit with us--avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
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The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.
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Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.
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It's bad taste to be wise all the time, like being at a perpetual funeral.
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If you do not feel yourself growing in your work and your life broadening and deepening, if your task is not a perpetual tonic to you, you have not found your place.
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The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
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Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.
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A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
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A universal and perpetual peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary...
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The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.
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The symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, b...
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The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful must take himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable, renascent errors.
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Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.
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The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system which is never a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new.
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The double law of attraction and radiation or of sympathy and antipathy, of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of Creation, and the perpetual cause of life.
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Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity.
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A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.
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