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1 " Promise YourselfTo be so strong that nothingcan disturb your peace of mind.To talk health, happiness, and prosperityto every person you meet.To make all your friends feelthat there is something in themTo look at the sunny side of everythingand make your optimism come true.To think only the best, to work only for the best,and to expect only the best.To be just as enthusiastic about the success of othersas you are about your own.To forget the mistakes of the pastand press on to the greater achievements of the future.To wear a cheerful countenance at all timesand give every living creature you meet a smile.To give so much time to the improvement of yourselfthat you have no time to criticize others.To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world,not in loud words but great deeds.To live in faith that the whole world is on your sideso long as you are true to the best that is in you. "
― , Your Forces and How to Use Them
2 " It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it's easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it's in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning. "
― Paulo Coelho , The Alchemist
3 " Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence. "
― Dorothy Thompson
4 " I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else. "
― G.K. Chesterton
5 " The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it. "
― Terry Pratchett , Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3)
6 " We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie. "
― David Mamet , Boston Marriage
7 " In the long second before everyone absorbs what just happened, I see the angel rolling his eyes heavenward, like a teenager in the presence of overwhelming lameness. Some people just have no sense of gratitude. "
― Susan Ee , Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, #1)
8 " What are you?" she asked. " A monster," said Kell hoarsely. " You'd better let me go." The girl gave a small, mocking laugh. " Monsters don't faint in the presence of ladies." " Ladies don't dress like men and pick pockets," retorted Kell. Her smile only sharpened. " What are you really?" " Tied to your bed," said Kell matter-of-factly. " And?" His brow furrowed. " And in trouble. "
9 " Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. "
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , The Little Prince
10 " In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team. "
― Jean-Paul Sartre
11 " Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places. I learned about these qualities during my bouts with depression. In that deadly darkness, the faculties I had always depended on collapsed. My intellect was useless; my emotions were dead; my will was impotent; my ego was shattered. But from time to time, deep in the thickets of my inner wilderness, I could sense the presence of something that knew how to stay alive even when the rest of me wanted to die. That something was my tough and tenacious soul. "
― Parker J. Palmer , A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life
12 " Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, 'atheism' is a term that should not even exist. No one needs to identify himself as a 'non-astrologer' or a 'non-alchemist.' We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. "
― Sam Harris , Letter to a Christian Nation
13 " In this becalmed zone the sea has a smooth surface, the palm-tree stirs gently in the breeze, the waves lap against the pebbles and raw materials are ceaselessly transported, justifying the presence of the settler; and all the while the native, bent double, near dead than alive, exists interminably in an unchanging dream. The settler makes history; his life is an epoch, an Odyssey... Over against him torpid creatures, wasted by fever, obsessed by ancestral customs, form an almost inorganic background for the innovating dynamism of colonial mercantilism. "
― Frantz Fanon , The Wretched of the Earth
14 " Speak the truth do not become angered and give when asked, even be it a little. By these three conditions one goes to the presence of the gods. "
― Gautama Buddha
15 " The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom. We use the word 'dimension' because it seems the best way to indicate the manner of our sacramental entrance into the risen life of Christ. Color transparencies 'come alive' when viewed in three dimensions instead of two. The presence of the added dimension allows us to see much better the actual reality of what has been photographed. In very much the same way, though of course any analogy is condemned to fail, our entrance into the presence of Christ is an entrance into a fourth dimension which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life. It is not an escape from the world, rather it is the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of the world. "
― Alexander Schmemann , For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy
16 " Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God. "
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
17 " We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. "
― C.S. Lewis
18 " Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. "
― Colum McCann , Let the Great World Spin
19 " The Word we study has to be the Word we pray. My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theologians, and spiritual writers, but from sitting still in the presence of the living Word and beseeching Him to help me understand with my head and heart His written Word. Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of *knowing* Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited. "
― Brennan Manning , The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
20 " The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God.Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me.' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father. "
― John Ortberg , The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You
