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c81cb3e
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Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.
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gifts
mediocrity
recognition
sherlock-holmes
talent
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Arthur Conan Doyle |
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25007e0
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"They always gives me bath salts," complained Nobby. "And bath soap and bubble bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I can't think why, 'cos it's not as if I hardly ever has a bath. You'd think they'd take the hint, wouldn't you?"
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gifts
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Terry Pratchett |
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8fc5294
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You and me-we've whored together. We've fought together.And I still dunna understand how ye always seems to know where the money is hidden and the liquor is stored and the scandals are richest.' It's a gift.
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gifts
humor
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Christina Dodd |
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7479ede
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"Been eating candies, have you?" "You sent those?" She kept her mouth closed as much as possible. "Of course." He picked up the brown bad of candy on the table. "What's your..." He trailed off as he weighed the bad in his hands. "Didn't I give you three pounds of candy?" She smiled impishly. "You ate half the bag!" "Was I supposed to save it?" "I would have liked some!" "You never told me that."
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gifts
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Sarah J. Maas |
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c3269e5
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Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours' reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini.
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gifts
parenting
reading
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Nick Hornby |
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63cefa5
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I like to think of it less as embezzling and more as an involuntary goodwill contribution.
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embezzlement
gifts
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Jim Butcher |
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cf106d5
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The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.
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gifts
holidays
materialism
tess-gerritsen
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Tess Gerritsen |
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895f41a
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And a young prince must be prudent like that, giving freely while his father lives so that afterwards, in age when fighting starts steadfast companions will stand by him and hold the line.
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gifts
leadership
seamus-heaney
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Seamus Heaney |
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e737f9a
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Certainty. Life's last and kindest gift.
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20th-century-literature
bliss
certainty
cynicism
czech-literature
death
death-and-dying
endings
gallows-humor
gifts
sleep
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Milan Kundera |
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249fcb7
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She also keeps talking about the Billie Holiday record she bought for me. And she says she wants to expose me to all these great things. And to tell you the truth, I don't really want to be exposed to all these great things if it means that I'll have to listen to Mary Elizabeth talk about all the great things she exposed me to all the time. It almost feels like of the three things involved: Mary Elizabeth, me, and the great things, only the first one matters to Mary Elizabeth. I don't understand that. I would give someone a record so they could love the record, not so they would always know that I gave it to them.
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gifts
histrionic-people
kindness
love
obnoxious-people
self-centered-people
selfishness
selflessness
snobs
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Stephen Chbosky |
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b8b4ced
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The wind and the grass and something in the sky, sun, or moon, shining on our backs as we run: They are gifts that humans toss away like socks on Christmas morning, because we see them every day and don't think of them as gifts anymore. But new socks are always better than old socks. And the wind and grass and sky, I think, are better seen with new eyes than jaded ones. I hope my eyes will never grow old.
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beauty
earth
gifts
nature
youth
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Kevin Hearne |
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b20b3a6
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The gift blesses the giver.
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an-occult-history-of-britain
gifts
thomas-cromwell
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Hilary Mantel |
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c108817
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"I am deserving of no gifts." "That is so. But you must recall, Severian, that when a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but payment."
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deserving
gene-wolfe
generosity
gifts
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Gene Wolfe |
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c9c38f3
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...and I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven.
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folly
gifts
heaven
mistakes-man-makes
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James Lee Burke |
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6b7d7d2
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Jesus was a penniless teacher who wandered about the dusty sun-bit country of Judea, living upon casual gifts of food; yet he is always represented clean, combed, and sleek, in spotless raiment, erect, and with something motionless about him as though he was gliding through the air. This alone has made him unreal and incredible to many people who cannot distinguish the core of the story from the ornamental and unwise additions of the unintelligently devout.
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combed
devout
gifts
jesus
judea
poor
raiment
reality
sleek
spotless
unintelligent
unreal
unwise
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H.G. Wells |
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5ea3d09
|
"If the secret core of potlatch is the reciprocity of exchange, why is this reciprocity not asserted directly, why does it assume the "mystified" form of two consecutive acts each of which is staged as a free voluntary display of generosity? Here we encounter the paradoxes of forced choice, of freedom to do what is necessary, at its most elementary: I have to do freely what I am expected to do. (If, upon receiving a gift, I immediately return it to the giver, this direct circulation would amount to an extremely aggressive gesture of humiliation, it would signal that I refused the other's gifts -- recall those embarrassing moments when elderly people forget and give us last year's present once again ... ) ...the reciprocity of exchange is in itself thoroughly ambiguous; at its most fundamental, it is destructive of the social bond, it is the logic of revenge, tit for tat. To cover this aspect of exchange, to make it benevolent and pacific, one has to pretend that each person's gift is free and stands on its own. This brings us to potlatch as the "pre-economy of the economy," its zero-level, that is, exchange as the reciprocal relation of two non-productive expenditures. If the gift belongs to Master and exchange to the Servant, potlatch is the paradoxical exchange between Masters. Potlach is simultaneously the zero-level of civility, the paradoxical point at which restrained civility and obscene consumption overlap, the point at which it is polite to behave impolitely."
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freedom
generosity
gifts
politeness
potlatch
revenge
vengeance
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Slavoj Žižek |
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af6853f
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Answer this to yourselves, & expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art & Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel: Is not this plain & manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, & not pronounce heartily! That to Labour in Knowledge. is to Build up Jerusalem: and to Despise Knowledge, is to Despise Jerusalem & her Builders. And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another; calling it pride & selfishness & sin; mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift. which always appear to the ignorance-loving Hypocrite, as Sins. but that which is a Sin in the sight of cruel Man. is not so in the sight of our kind God.
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faith
gifts
jesus
sin
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William Blake |
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4f14418
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In symbolic exchange, of which the gift is our most proximate illustration, the object is not an object: it is inseparable from the concrete relation in which it is exchanged, the transferential pact that it seals between two persons: it is thus not independent as such. It has, properly speaking, neither use value nor (economic) exchange value. The object given has symbolic exchange value.
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gifts
symbolic-exchange
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Jean Baudrillard |
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e8e4743
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"We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. "Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten," Dad said, "you'll still have your stars."
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gifts
inspirational
parental-love
stars
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Jeannette Walls |
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f9bd70a
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My journey to the land of the Shuar tribe had taught me the importance of practical gifts.
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gifts
journey
shuar
tribe
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Tahir Shah |
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3d8180a
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One of the gifts we receive from Jesus is an entirely new foundation upon which to build our lives. Once you receive Him, He becomes your new foundation and every day you walk with Him, you build on it.
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gifts
god
inspirational
jesus
life
love
prayer
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Stormie Omartian |