Cultivation Quotes - Page 5

• There is a fine art to making enemies and it requires diligent cultivation. It's not as easy as it looks.

  Edward Abbey

  Art, Enemy, Looks

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.35, RosettaBooks

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• Birth Control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.

  Margaret Sanger

  Weed, Latin, Flower

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• So if I were talking to a young writer, I would recommend the cultivation of extreme indifference to both praise and blame because praise will lead you to vanity, and blame will lead you to self-pity, and both are bad for writers.

  John Berryman

  Vanity, Self, Talking

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• Beer was the driving force that led nomadic mankind into village life. It was this appetite for beer-making material that led to crop cultivation, permanent settlement and agriculture.

  Alan D. Eames

  Beer, Agriculture, Village Life

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• Cultivation of meditative stability alone, will not destroy the discrimination of inherent existence. Afflictive emotions can return, making all sorts of disturbances

  Gautama Buddha

  Inspiration, Return, Emotion

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• The beginning of wisdom is the awareness that there is insufficient evidence that a god or gods have created us and the recognition that we are responsible in part for our own destiny. Human beings can achieve this good life, but it is by the cultivation of the virtues of intelligence and courage, not faith and obedience, that we will most likely be able to do so.

  Paul Kurtz

  Good Life, Destiny, Atheism

  Paul Kurtz (1986). “The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal”

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• Men who have flattered themselves into this opinion of their own abilities, look down on all who waste their lives over books, as a race of inferior beings condemned by nature to perpetual pupilage, and fruitlessly endeavouring to remedy their barrenness by incessant cultivation, or succour their feebleness by subsidiary strength. They presume that none would be more industrious than they, if they were not more sensible of deficiences; and readily conclude, that he who places no confidence in his own powers owes his modesty only to his weakness.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Men, Race

  Samuel Johnson (1823). “The Works of Samuel Johnson: LL.D. A New Edition in Twelve Volumes. With an Essay on His Life and Genius, by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.83

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• Folly is like the growth of weeds, always luxurious and spontaneous; wisdom, like flowers, requires cultivation.

  Hosea Ballou

  Weed, Wisdom, Flower

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• The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint.

  George Will

  Media, Political, Culture

  George Will (2008). “One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation”, p.175, Crown Forum

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• There is no task of greater importance than to give our children the very best preparation for the demands of an ominous future, a preparation which aims at the methodical cultivation of their spiritual and their moral gifts. As long as the exemplary work of the Waldorf School Movement continues to spread its influence as it has done over the past decades, we can all look forward with hope. I am sure that Rudolf Steiner’s work for children must be considered a central contribution to the twentieth century and I feel it deserves the support of all freedom-loving thinking people.

  Bruno Walter

  Spiritual, Children, School

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• Gratitude is the state of mind of thankfulness. As it is cultivated, we experience an increase in our "sympathetic joy," our happiness at another's happiness. Just as in the cultivation of compassion, we may feel the pain of others, so we may begin to feel their joy as well. And it doesn't stop there.

  Stephen Levine

  Gratitude, Pain, Compassion

  Stephen Levine (2009). “A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last”, p.109, Harmony

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• To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.

  Louis Pasteur

  Knowledge, Science, Agents

  Hippocrates, Ambroise Paré, William Harvey, Edward Jenner, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1910). “Scientific Papers; Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology”

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• Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Running, Heart, People

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2013). “Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark”, p.120, Broadview Press

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• The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.

  Masanobu Fukuoka

  Garden, Agriculture, Goal

  Masanobu Fukuoka (2010). “The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming”, p.14, New York Review of Books

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• Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia.

  William James

  Life, Friendship, Littles

  William James (2008). “The Letters of William James”, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Here's the progression. Feminism won; you can have it all; of course you want children; mothers are better at raising children than fathers; of course your children come first; of course you come last; today's children need constant attention, cultivation, and adoration, or they'll become failures and hate you forever; you don't want to fail at that; it's easier for mothers to abandon their work and their dreams than for fathers; you don't want it all anymore (which is good because you can't have it all); who cares about equality, you're too tired; and whoops--here we are in 1954.

  Susan J. Douglas

  Mother, Dream, Children

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• I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed.

  Dalai Lama

  Inspirational, Peace, Pain

  The 14th Dalai Lama's Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1989.

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• You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.

  Jon Kabat-Zinn

  Life, Strong, Attachment

  Jon Kabat-Zinn (2005). “Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life”, Hyperion

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• Let woman then go on-not asking favors, but claiming as a right the removal of all hindrances to her elevation in the scale of being-let her receive encouragement for the proper cultivation of all her powers, so that she may enter profitably into the active business of life.

  Lucretia Mott

  Encouragement, Justice, Diversity

  Lucretia Mott (1850). “Discourse on Woman”, p.19

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  Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Education, Thinking, People

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2015). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, p.202, Booklassic

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• There is nothing that does not get easier through cultivation. The buddhas of the past started out as ordinary beings. They were not buddhas in the beginning. The path to buddhahood is traversed only through gradually developing more and more courage and DETERMINATION -then it is attained.

  Dalai Lama

  Determination, Past, Ordinary

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• In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyse and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Personality, Age

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• Is it wholly fantastic to admit the possibility that Nature herself strove toward what we call beauty? Face to face with any one of the elaborate flowers which man's cultivation has had nothing to do with, it does not seem fantastic to me. We put survival first. But when we have a margin of safety left over, we expend it in the search for the beautiful. Who can say that Nature does not do the same?

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Beauty, Beautiful, Flower

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1967). “And even if you do: essays on man, manners & machines”

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• No exercise brings into play all the muscles of the body in a more thorough manner, and none is more interesting than wrestling. He will find no other exercise more valuable in the cultivation of faculties which will help him to success in agility, strength, determination, coolness, and quick exercise of judgement.

  Hugh Leonard

  Sports, Determination, Wrestling

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• It would be wryly interesting if in human history the cultivation of marijuana led generally to the invention of agriculture, and thereby to civilization.

  Carl Sagan

  Weed, Marijuana, Civilization

  Carl Sagan (2012). “Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”, p.201, Ballantine Books

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