"Without opposition, there could be no creation. All life would cease without resistance. Emotions also have their polar opposites: attraction " repulsion, love " hate, aggression " meekness, and mercy " callousness."

"Courage is an act of grace when it is not required; it originates from an inner necessity to honor, love, and cherish people, and respect oneself."

"There are diverse styles of learning, problem solving, and a range of methodologies that a person can draw from in order to structure their thoughts or intentionally revise ingrained personal habits including both systematic and unsystematic approaches. Problems solving styles are reflective of personal differences in the manner that people prefer to position themselves in respect to the phenomena in the world and efficiently react to alterations in the external environment. Problem solving strategies encompass numerous variances in what manner a person approaches new concepts, how they manage their daily affairs, and respond effectively to new opportunities and complex challenges."

"A person achieves enlightenment only through a purposeful engagement with life and by resolutely searching for truth and shedding artifices."

"Every person's story contains chapters of pain and loss, victory and defeat, love and hate, pride and prejudice, courage and fear, faith and self-distrust, charity and kindness, selfishness and jealously. Every person's story also contains folios of hopefulness and truthfulness, deceit and despair, action and change, passion and compassion, excitement and boredom, birth and creation, mutation and defect, generation and preservation, delusions and illusions, imagination and fantasy, bafflement and puzzlement. What makes a person's selfsame story unique is how he or she organizes the pure and impure forces that comprise them, how they respond to internal and external crisis, if they act in a safeguarding and humble manner, or lead a self-seeking and destructive existence."

"It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. Wisdom, compassion, and courage are essential ingredients for love. To love other people we must begin by forgiving them. If we do not bring forth the part of us that is capable of love and compassion, it will destroy us."

"Although we amplify our cognitive degree of awareness and enhance our appreciation for life experiences by maturing, it also brings us death. Facing a certain death forces a person to examine the worthiness of continuing to live."

"The greatest crime in human history was not the creation of the armaments of warfare and destruction of life, but the invention of hand mirror, which enticed humankind to peer at their surface appearance instead of seeking spiritual salvation. Prior to the invention of the mirror, people saw themselves through other people's eyes or by looking deep within themselves."

"Serenity of mind produces an expanding awareness that fosters creative selflessness, which in turn enables us to experience unabashed harmony communing in rhythmical bliss with nature."

"A theatrical spectacle is inherent whenever family members congregate and reacquaint themselves with powerful universal themes educed from homecomings including hugs, food, drink, conversation, politics, games, music, conflict, terror, mercy, smiles, tears, prayers, misfortune, and self-discovery."

"Everyone who loves life is an artist at heart. Although it is sometimes difficult to love our world and our lot in life, failure to find the ability to love life and express appreciation for our world is tantamount to not existing at all."

"We each act as the creator of the self, and therefore, we strive to attain self-realization by understanding what we were in various stages of life including what we began as and what we transmuted into becoming."

"We each want nothing more than to live for the moment. Nature hardwired us perpetually to follow the call of the wild, cull all the highs in life, and rejoice in life by dancing, singing, jumping, building nests, creating beauty, and playing with our young. We each find ourselves happiest when we are engaging in conduct that makes us feel alive."

"A wise person strives to reach self-transcendence by engaging in delicate contemplation, while avoiding the snare of self-denigration's negative invocation. An overshadowing sense of a caustic self can be destructive, whereas an encircling sense of a kindhearted self allows a person to express the profundity and elation of a feral creature curiously exploring nature's glorious playground."

"At the inauguration of each sentence, the writer commences with an optimistic sense of curiosity. Similar to an inquisitive explorer, a writer begins each thoughtful decree with an appreciative sense of the unknown and ends with a reverent regard for the unanswerable. Repeating this instigating act of discovery by placing a combination of sentences down on paper creates a unique verdict. The writer's compilation of pronouncements expresses their interpretation of life. Replicating this creative endeavor in the futile effort to say it all imitates the revolving mystery of life where physical reality and mysterious forces of nature operate upon humankind."

"Literature is map of humanity, the documenter of civilization. Books introduce us to the landscape of the greatest minds of every century."

"There is more than one road to spiritual salvation. We discover a philosophical way of living by encountering the world, culling knowledge from all available resources, and thinking reverently about life."

"Some people never stop working, especially the demanding type of person whom the world never seems to touch, the indomitable person whom is determined to make the world their own place."

"Drinking caffeinated drinks including high potency energy drinks, and consuming other enablers, we do not need to develop an internal source for the energy, effort, endurance, and enthusiasm needed to confront each day."

"We learn invaluable life lessons from people whom exhibit courage and grace under extraordinary circumstances."

"We cannot anticipate in advance how anyone will respond when they first rub elbows with Eros' malady of passion and madness. Eros arrives on a wing of a devious angel to take control of our body, encapsulate our mind, and seize command over the quality of our life. In its purest manifestation, romantic love guarantees to rip us asunder, because we are unwittingly dispossessed of our precious sense of self-control."

"Every person fails, nobody achieves everything that he or she set out to achieve. Nobody, regardless of how many personal triumphs they enjoy, no matter how rich or powerful they become, goes through life without encountering failure. You cannot fail unless a person valiantly tries to accomplish a task. The most audacious person readily attempts difficult projects, despite feeling uncertain if they can prevail. Successful people exhibit the character to respond positively to failure. Some failures prove instrumental in altering a person's outlook, and their revised perspective leads to brilliant successes."

"The analytical framework of this comprehensive field study of what it means to be an American examines how a person's personality, culture, technology, occupational and recreational activities affect a person's sense of purposefulness and happiness. The text evaluates the nature of human existence, formation of human social relations, and methods of communication from various philosophic and cultural perspectives. The ultimate goal is to employ the author's own mind and personal experiences as a filter to quantify what it means to live and die as a thinking and reflective person."

"Our sacrosanct obligation is to tend to our own personal wounds and furiously love the entire world irrespective if the world loves us back."

"Advancing towards a person's dreams with confidence enables a person to move beyond restrictive boundaries and meet with uncommon success. Liberated from personal insecurities and eliminating useless second guessing enables a person to live an imagined life."

"A person whom writes begins by putting down what they know about loneliness, shame, love, and heartache. In writing fully, they discover many other aspects of themselves that they never suspected including doubts, beliefs, ironies, and farcicalities."

"When I write, I enter a transpersonal state of consciousness, a lightheaded realm of mental imagination, a cognitive place where I can lithely finger the coherent and the absurd. I seek to cross over an intricate boarder where the conscious and unconscious minds meet, traversing the aperture where the real and the imaginary intermingle. I aspire to establish a detached vantage point where I can survey the entire human condition."

"Self-healing requires tremendous action, a willingness to go beyond the normative to discover something transcending."

"Self-mastery involves a studious account of all aspects of human life and developing a comprehensive philosophy for living without fear or anxiety throughout the remaining years of a person's life. A person must live within the limits of the human condition, which does not justify giving into all of our destructive impulses or living a pleasurable and guiltless life. Self-mastery does not require a person to live a life without passion; rather, it entails channeling vibrant personal passions into living in a virtuous manner of created beings."

"An examined life, an enigmatic investigation of reality, is required in order for a person to realize a transcendent spiritual journey. A contemplative soul is bound to live life more intensely than someone whom is concerned exclusively with living an external existence."

"Life is the constant process of self-creation. We constantly make and remake our personal version of the self. Personal introspection is critical to ascertain who we want to become by ascertaining what traits we wish to eradicate and what qualities we wish to embody."

"Each of us experiences the perpetual revival of the self. We constantly recast our connate emotional index by perceiving each encounter in life as a marvel, impedance, problem, disaster, or nothing at all. Living in the moment allows us to escape the lonely landscape of self-interest and be part of a larger world filled with beauty, reverence, and adoration."

"A writer is not born but made through study and sheer willpower and ability to embrace beauty and agony."

"Personal tranquility consists in the orderly structuring of the mind, which occurs whenever a person engages in the exquisite practice of contemplating personal experiences, harmonizing time spent with other people, reading great books, and working on self-improvement."

"We fear change because it insists we discard long held structures that no longer function suitably."

"People naturally impose a narrative story-line upon their experiences. Autobiographical writing allows a person to cast their experiences into a narrative thread and organize their thoughts based not upon conjecture but with applied reason."

"They say that the personal transformation that gives rise to self-realization " the transcendent function that leads to the highest echelon of human attainment " takes place on the border between consciousness and unconsciousness, and that when we dream we dissolve the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness. In other words, we dream a world into being, and we are the collective product of our lifetime of immanent dreams. If the oracles are correct, I dreamed you into being, and you represent the real point of intersection between dream and reality."

"A person must make peace with oneself before they will find peace with the world."

"Writing fiction or nonfiction is a lonely battle wrestling with sentences in an effort to put together an intelligible thought that speaks for the author."

"Personal dignity begins by accepting responsibility for our actions, acting humbly, and extending compassion to other people. Personal humility requires choosing living with quietness of the heart over living in the depths of animosity, despair, and discord."

"All forms of art are parallel expressions. Writing is not unlike painting or other artistic endeavors. Each artistic endeavor is an expression of the mystery of the world. The job of the artist is to deepen that mystery, express reverence for the mystery of life, and explore the enigmatic aspects of human nature."

"The artistic methods of poetry, painting, photography, and writing share certain commonalities of deep composition: spirit, rhythm, thought, and scenery."

"Writing a sincere narrative account of personal adversities and misfortunes is one way to become acquainted with the rifts of a person's inmost self, the smothered pieces of want that lie separate and undetected amid the customs, habits, vices, and tedium that encases us in the hubbub of daily living."

"A person lives a false life whenever they are afraid to make contact with his or her authentic self. A sensitive ego " one that protects a person from pain " can also prevent a person from maturing mentally and emotionally by causing a person to distort truths and refuse to admit unpleasant facts."

"The most important thing in life it to be true to ourselves, to never give up attempting to become the very finest version of what we wish to be, no matter how arduous that proves to be."

"When a person understands the problem that vexes them, and comprehends the choices that created them, they begin a journey of the mind seeking personal liberation from suffering."

"We are the product of our past. We start each day where we left off the day before. Changing the way we dress, where we work and live, or even changing a name does not alter our basic constitution. Transformation of the self requires a radical alteration in the way that we perceive the world and derive meaning."

"Only the shallowest person believes that they can attain true happiness by maximizing their wealth at any cost. In absence of morality, ethics, and a sustainable philosophy to guide us in an ethical search for happiness, we will always perceive life's random countervailing forces of adversity and unpleasantness as inflicting a great personal injustice upon us. Through application of a deeply embedded personal philosophy, we can push back against the negative implications of a life of suffering. We can use a philosophical stance to gain the perspective needed to say 'yes' to all of life, both its rosy path of ineffable joys and a blackened trail of tears. We must learn to accept life as it truly is and not waste precious time in wistfulness."

"Our ability to detect and measure the passage of time is burdensome. The conception and sensation of time bears down upon all of us. It weighs us down; it compresses our souls. There is a variety of ways to escape the dull passage of time or the fearfulness of our accelerating march towards death. We must choose our mechanisms for dealing with the inexorability of time and our finiteness. We can fill our void with work or pleasure, laughter or pain, and fretfulness or courage. We can seek a sense of purposefulness or acknowledge the meaninglessness of life. We can seek to escape the drudgery and pain of life through alcohol, drugs, or pleasure seeking, or by working to support our families and create artistic testaments to our worldly existence."

"Each person must implement their preferred problem solving method to address existential questions pertaining to life and death, living and loving, working and playing, resting and restructuring."