

“I am happy. I am very happy. This morning when I woke up I felt good because the sun was shining. I felt good because I was a frog. And I felt good because I have you as a friend. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think about how fine everything is.”
― Days with Frog and Toad
― Days with Frog and Toad

“As a prophet and communal leader, Muhammad was entitled to special treatment, such as eating better while campaigning with his men. Yet he ate only what his warriors ate and suffered privations â€� intense heat, hunger and thirst, exhaustion and discomfort â€� equally with them. When he led a force of slightly over three hundred warriors to Badr in March 624, for example, they had only seventy camels between them. Three or four men therefore rode cramped on each camel. Muhammad asked for no preferential treatment, even though no one would have begrudged him the right to ride alone, and he uncomfortably shared his camel with ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib and Zayd ibn Harithah (some sources say Marthad ibn Abi Marthad al-Ghanawi).”
― The Leadership of Muhammad: A Historical Reconstruction
― The Leadership of Muhammad: A Historical Reconstruction

“Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life the character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors. . . . Modern life is so mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions—and our own—were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time. . . . The intrusion into everyday life of this all-seeing eye no longer takes us by surprise or catches us with our defenses down. We need no reminder to smile.”
― The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations
― The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations

“In the last twenty-five years, the borderline patient, who confronts the psychiatrist not with well-defined symptoms but with diffuse dissatisfactions, has become increasingly common. He does not suffer from debilitating fixations or phobias or from the conversion of repressed sexual energy into nervous ailments; instead he complains "of vague, diffuse dissatisfactions with life" and feels his "amorphous existence to be futile and purposeless." He describes "subtly experienced yet pervasive feelings of emptiness and depression," "violent oscillations of self-esteem," and "a general inability to get along." He gains "a sense of heightened self-esteem only by attaching himself to strong, admired figures whose acceptance he craves and by whom he needs to feel supported." Although he carries out his daily responsibilities and even achieves distinction, happiness eludes him, and life frequently strikes him as not worth living.”
― The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations
― The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations

“The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word Mother,' and the most beautiful call is the call of My Mother.' It is a word full of hope and love, a sweet and kind word coming from the depths of the heart. The mother is every thing-she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly..Every thing in nature bespeaks the mother. And the mother, the prototype of all existence, is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love.. The word mother is hidden in our hearts, and it comes upon our lips in hours of sorrow and happiness as the perfume comes from the heart of the rose and mingles with clear and cloudy air.”
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