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1 " believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it.I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That’s the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don’t even see it, because I’m too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting.The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven. That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before it.I believe that if we cultivate a true attention, a deep ability to see what has been there all along, we will find worlds within us and between us, dreams and stories and memories spilling over. The nuances and shades and secrets and intimations of love and friendship and marriage an parenting are action-packed and multicolored, if you know where to look.Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull of the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted.Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is.You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural. You are more than dust and bones.You are spirit and power and image of God.And you have been given Today. "
― Shauna Niequist , Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life
2 " In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. "
― Anne Frank , The Diary of a Young Girl
3 " Science and philosophy have for centuries been sustained by unquestioning faith in perception. Perception opens a window on to things. This means that it is directed, quasi-teleologically, towards a *truth in itself* in which the reason underlying all appearances is to be found. The tacit thesis of perception is that at every instant experience can be co-ordinated with that of the previous instant and that of the following, and my perspective with that of other consciousnesses—that all contradictions can be removed, that monadic and intersubjective experience is one unbroken text—that what is now indeterminate for me could become determinate for a more complete knowledge, which is as it were realized in advance in the thing, or rather which is the thing itself. Science has first been merely the sequel or amplification of the process which constitutes perceived things. Just as the thing is the invariant of all sensory fields and of all individual perceptual fields, so the scientific concept is the means of fixing and objectifying phenomena. Science defined a theoretical state of bodies not subject to the action of any force, and *ipso facto* defined force, reconstituting with the aid of these ideal components the processes actually observed. It established statistically the chemical properties of pure bodies, deducing from these those of empirical bodies, and seeming thus to hold the plan of creation or in any case to have found a reason immanent in the world. The notion of geometrical space, indifferent to its contents, that of pure movement which does not by itself affect the properties of the object, provided phenomena with a setting of inert existence in which each event could be related to physical conditions responsible for the changes occurring, and therefore contributed to this freezing of being which appeared to be the task of physics. In thus developing the concept of the thing, scientific knowledge was not aware that it was working on a presupposition. Precisely because perception, in its vital implications and prior to any theoretical thought, is presented as perception of a being, it was not considered necessary for reflection to undertake a genealogy of being, and it was therefore confined to seeking the conditions which make being possible. Even if one took account of the transformations of determinant consciousness, even if it were conceded that the constitution of the object is never completed, there was nothing to add to what science said of it; the natural object remained an ideal unity for us and, in the famous words of Lachelier, a network of general properties. It was no use denying any ontological value to the principles of science and leaving them with only a methodical value, for this reservation made no essential change as far as philosophy was concerned, since the sole conceivable being remained defined by scientific method. The living body, under these circumstances, could not escape the determinations which alone made the object into an object and without which it would have had no place in the system of experience. The value predicates which the reflecting judgment confers upon it had to be sustained, in being, by a foundation of physico-chemical properties. In ordinary experience we find a fittingness and a meaningful relationship between the gesture, the smile and the tone of a speaker. But this reciprocal relationship of expression which presents the human body as the outward manifestation of a certain manner of being-in-the-world, had, for mechanistic physiology, to be resolved into a series of causal relations.”—from_Phenomenology of Perception_. Translated by Colin Smith, pp. 62-64—Artwork by Cristian Boian "
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty
4 " It is the business of man to become acquainted with the material universe in all of its manifestations, so far as may be possible, in order to provide a foundation of knowledge on which the reasoning mind of man may increasingly build. "
― , Rational Theology
5 " You cannot build a dream on a foundation of sand. To weather the test of storms, it must be cemented in the heart with uncompromising conviction. "
― T.F. Hodge , From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
6 " Sometimes two people find each other with broken foundation, and they build something together as a team to make a foundation that is indestructible. - AK Brown "
― Swapna Rajput
7 " Knowledge is just a foundation. The whole point of a foundation is to build on it. "
8 " A leader’s purpose is to provide knowledge and generate trust through kindness. This will provide a foundation that allows others to make choices, right or wrong, and grow in a positive manner from the experience. "
― Farshad Asl , The "No Excuses" Mindset: A Life of Purpose, Passion, and Clarity
9 " You know what she's made of." " Yeah, good stock, good breeding, a hard head and a hunger to win." She flashed him a smile as they approached the kitchen door. " I've been told that describes me. I'm half Irish, Brian, I was born stubborn." " No arguing with that. A person might make the world a calmer place for others by being passive, but you don't get very far in it yourself, do you?" " Look at that. We have a foundation of agreement. Now tell me you like spaghetti and meatballs." " It happens to be a favorite of mine." " That's handy. Mine, too. And I heard a rumor that's what's for dinner." She reached for the doorknob, then caught him off guard by brushing a light kiss over his lips. " And since we'll be joining my parents, it would probably be best if you didn't imagine me naked for the next couple of hours." She sailed in ahead of him, leaving Brian helplessly and utterly aroused. "
10 " dianemoorewriter.comFebruary 11, 2015 · From Love Thy Neighbor" On journalism and news purists as well as why I pursued print instead of TV journalism/news at the No. 1 journalism school in the country: news reporters are willing to take risks " so that people can base their lives on a foundation of truth not lies. That's why I do it -- to be the one responsible voice in the crowd." Page 105' " Love Thy Neighbor "
11 " The glorification of hatred is predicated on a foundation of fear-induced ignorance venomous to haters and those they believe they hate. "
― Aberjhani , Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays
12 " The foundation laid in us before was a foundation of thoughts, traditions, and religion of men "
13 " Once a woman is comfortable in her own skin, living her own life and building a foundation by herself; it takes one heck of a man to make her want to sacrifice her independence. "
― Nikki Rowe
14 " That the majority of people do not embrace salvation in this life does not mean that their experiences now do not lay a foundation for a later acceptance of it. "
15 " The value of someone is not determined by titles, positions and sects, but by the impact and the major contributions he/she makes in the society by digging a hole in the universe to build a foundation for the next generation that is coming. "
― Lydor Brunice
16 " I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity. "
17 " Your call to power is to slow down and reflect within. Gather the peace within yourself before you go out and act among the world. The feel good feeling that lasts is only achieved when you yourself know peace. Nothing is more powerful. This is why you have the highs and lows, the mood swings, the transcendent ecstasy followed by the crash. It is because you have yet to develop a foundation of peace for yourself that acts as an unmovable anchor in your life. Establish this peace in your life and you will experience a whole new reality of the world that flows with you in every way possible, rather than against you. "
― Alaric Hutchinson , Living Peace: Essential Teachings for Enriching Life
18 " The past was worth remembering and knowing in its own right. It was not behind us, never truly behind us, but under us, holding us up, a foundation for all that was to come and everything that had ever been. "
― Laura Lippman , In a Strange City (Tess Monaghan, #6)
19 " And so we have this Oklahoma City, set upon a foundation so strong that it cannot be shaken. What shall you, the inheritors, do with this city? We hope that you shall make it more and more the city beautiful, more and more the city intellectual, more and more the city spiritual. For these three, beauty, mind, and spirit are the choicest diadems of life." Morituri vos salutamus!" Which, in this case, may be translated, " We, the Pioneers, salute you! "
20 " Although it is easy to imagine happiness as the upwards turn on this haphazard rising and falling of emotion which is life, but really it is a foundation of strength of character and inner balance that precipitates peace, a foundation that is slowly built or slowly chipped away. There are times when it may seem that the foundation of happiness is broken, but as the dust settles and the debris is cleared away, we find that the storm has only covered it, still leaving everything we have built in place. True happiness is forged in the furnace of perseverance, fortitude, hope and love. It is not burned or broken by the heat, rather it is made unbreakable—it becomes eternal. Life is the fuel for this purifying fire. "
― Michael Brent Jones , Dinner Party: Part 2
