Possible Not Easy Quotes & Sayings

It's not so easy... it's not possible. — Deyth Banger

The attachment to parental figures I am trying to describe here is an attachment to parents who have inflicted injury on their children. It is an attachment that prevents us from helping ourselves. The unfulfilled natural needs of the child are later transferred to therapists, partners, or our own children. We cannot believe that those needs were really ignored, or possibly even trampled on by our parents in such a way that we were forced to repress them. We hope that the other people we relate to will finally give us what we have been looking for, understand, support, and respect us, and relieve us of the difficult decisions life brings with it. As these expectations are fostered by the denial of childhood reality, we cannot give them up. As I said earlier, they cannot be relinquished by an act of will. But they will disappear in time if we are determined to face up to our own truth. This is not easy. It is almost always painful. But it is possible. In — Alice Miller

I think that there is a terrible possibility now, in the World. We may not brush it away, we must look at it. It is possible that They will not die. That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever - though we, of course, will keep dying as we always have. Death has been the source of Their power. It was easy enough for us to see that. If we are here once, only once, then clearly we are here to take what we can while we may. If They have taken much more, and taken not only from Earth but also from us - well, why begrudge Them, when they're just as doomed to die as we are? All in the same boat, all under the same shadow ... yes ... yes. But is that really true? Or is it the best, and the most carefully propagated, of all Their lies, known and unknown?
We have to carry on under the possibility that we die only because They want us to: because They need our terror for Their survival. — Thomas Pynchon

There was nothing in the fourth stack. Not even a possible. A hundred and sixty gone by. Neagley slid the final forty into place. Reacher watched Klopp. One card at a time, left thumb and index finger, held easy, not near and not far. Decent vision, with his glasses on. Genuine concentration. Not a bored blank stare or an impatient sneer. A calm focus. He was interrogating the photographs, one by one, point by point. Eyes, cheek bones, mouth. Yes or no. No, — Lee Child

To stay in recovery, you must be responsible for finding your own motivation. Remember, motivation may not be easy to come by at first. It will probably be a very small, timid part inside of you. When you find it, let that part be in charge. Let the minority rule and lead you to a life you never dreamed was possible — Jenni Schaefer

People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. — Haruki Murakami

I'm not an angry person. When I write, the lawyer in me tries to make it as easy to read as possible. — Joe Scarborough

In modern times much thought has been devoted to the methods used in constructing the Great Pyramid. Egyptologists marvel that such a task could have been accomplished before they were born, and our engineers say they would not have undertaken it with only some old copper tools and a complete lack of stainless steel machinery. It hardly seems possible that the ancient Egyptians were as smart as these experts. Still, they went right ahead and did it, and you can draw your own conclusions. The fact is that building a pyramid is fairly easy, aside from the lifting. You just pile up stones in receding layers, placing one layer carefully upon another, and pretty soon you have a pyramid. You can't help it.19 And once it is up, it stays there. Why wouldn't it? In other words, it is not the nature of a pyramid to fall down, and that explains why the Great Pyramid is still standing after all these years. — Will Cuppy

Well, I'd like to know how it's possible to make your living gambling, because at the table, the odds are .493."

"You're right," he said, "and I'll explain to you. I don't bet on the table, or things like that. I only bet when the odds are in my favor."

"Huh? When are the odds ever in your favor?" I asked incredulously.

"It's really quite easy," he said. "I'm standing around a table, when some guy says, 'It's comin' out nine! It's gotta be a nine!' The guy's excited; he things it's going to be a nine, and he wants to bet. Now I know the odds for all the numbers inside out, so I say to him, 'I'll bet you four to three it's not a nine', and I win in the long run. I don't bet on the table; instead, I bet with people around the table who have prejudices--superstitious ideas about lucky numbers. — Richard Feynman

I was always a feminist. My mother was a feminist; my grandmother was a feminist. I always understood women had to fight very hard to do what they wanted to do in the world - that it wasn't an easy choice. But I think the most important part is that we all want the right to be taken seriously as human beings, and to use our talents without reservation, and that's still not possible for women. — Erica Jong

Managing in-home nursing is not always easy. It can be terribly frustrating sometimes, and it can take a while to feel like everything is under control, but success is possible. — Charisse Montgomery

it's easy to confuse progress with effectiveness. All progress is not true progress. It's possible to gain ground for many days, weeks, months, or even years but be going in a completely wrong direction. That's — Todd Henry

I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done. — Masanobu Fukuoka

A hundred years ago-even 20 or 30 years ago-it was possible, if not always easy, to close major business by calling on and satisfying a key decision-maker. Today, every piece of business entails multiple decisions, and those decisions are virtually never made by the same person. Not only do you have to contend with multiple decisions, but the people who make those decisions may not even work in the same place. — Brian Tracy

All things are possible with God, but all things are not easy. — George MacDonald

It's always best not to be thinking a hell of a lot while you're acting, because you want it to be as spontaneous as possible, not too intellectual. Just behaving and listening to other people who you're doing scenes with. I always like the latter when it looks easy, even though it may not be. — Gary Cole

What is happening is something new in my life. I think many people have a sense of shape, of unfolding, in their lives. This sense makes it possible for them to say: Yes, this new person is important to me: he, or she, is the beginning of something I must live through. Or: This emotion, which I have not felt before, is not the alien I believed it to be. It will now be part of me and I must deal with it.
It is easy now, looking back over my life to say: That Anna, in that time, was such and such a person. And then, five years later, she was such and such. A year, two years, five years of a certain kind of being can be rolled up and tucked away, or 'named' - yes, during that time I was like that. Well now I am in the middle of such a period, and when it is over I shall glance back at it casually and say: Yes, that's what I was. — Doris Lessing

Well, my love," said Alexia with prodigious daring to Lord Maccon, "shall we?" The earl started to move forward and then stopped abruptly and looked down at her, not moving at all. "Am I?"
"Are you what?" She peeked up at him through her tangled hair, pretending confusion. There was no possible way she was going to make this easy for him.
"Your love?"
"Well, you are a werewolf, Scottish, naked, and covered in blood, and I am still holding your hand."
He sighed in evident relief. "Good. That is settled, then. — Gail Carriger

Not all who demand your attention desire your happiness, many merely seeking a conveyance to their own. It is entirely easy when wrapped up with the petty to miss what is possible and what rows your ship to worthwhile dreams. But when two or more fall together to share the oars of what might be, dreams may find them in equal measure and as fast as the wake made. — Tom Althouse

Computer languages differ not so much in what they make possible, but in what they make easy. — Larry Wall

But she was finding it increasingly easy to believe that God, if there was a God, and if it was remotely possible that any godlike being who could order the disposition of particles at the creation of the Universe would also be interested in directing traffic on the M4, did not want her to fly to Norway either. — Douglas Adams

Life is not always easy. And that is a major reason why it is so precious. Many of life's best rewards are possible only because you must work your way through difficult challenges to get to them. If everything in life were easy, there would be no opportunity for real fulfillment. — Ralph Marston

It is not easy to compete when you have LD, but it is possible. — Henry Winkler

It's not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it's not possible to find it elsewhere. — Agnes Repplier

So the best thing is to really work on yourself and opening your own heart and just letting all that stuff [worrying] go. And it is possible. It's sometimes takes a lot of time; it's not easy. And a lot of sitting with yourself and trying to work with your own heart. — Alice Walker

We can joke, as Marlo Thomas did, that "a man has to be Joe McCarthy in order to be called ruthless. All a woman needs to do is put you on hold." Real change will come when powerful women are less of an exception. It is easy to dislike senior women because there are so few. If women held 50 percent of the top jobs, it would just not be possible to dislike that many people. — Sheryl Sandberg

I believe that the way we choose to live significantly affects the health of our bodies and the health of our planet. I do my best to eat and live as naturally as possible, but it's not always easy. At the same time, I want to live fashionably and surrounded by the highest quality. — Misty Hyman

It's not easy to learn a new existence...
...but if you're desperate enough...
...and mean enough...
...it's possible. — Stephen King

That empty sick feeling came over me again. In a big school it was easy to fade into the background, but I didn't know if that would be possible here. I tried not to think about it anymore. — Dana Michelle Burnett

Kissing Ally would be so easy. Touching her, holding her, tasting her ... it'd be like breathing.
I want to breathe. I want to inhale her in every way possible. I want her life to sustain me, her heartbeat to synchronize with mine.
But I don't want to taint her. I don't want her to be like me. A cheater. A deviant. An outcast. She deserves better, and I'm not better. — S.L. Jennings

It would be easy to call it quits. Occasionally I have these moments, not often. There is nothing to do but sit still until they pass. Tantrums and passions I don't need, endurance is what I need. I have found that it is even possible to take a certain pleasure out of submission to necessity. That have I borne, this can I bear also. — Wallace Stegner

Those who are saying it's possible [to balance family and business] are often in a little bit of a rarefied place where they also have the money to do that. It's not quite such an easy stance to take when you don't have the same resources. I like to remind people that these are rich Manhattanites and to keep an eye on the fact that, especially with social media and these articles and these blogs, that that is not the reality for most women, unfortunately. — Mindy Kaling

Thence it is possible to arrive by easy stages at the happy notion, not uncommon among 'intellectuals', that taste consists of distaste, and that the loftiest of pleasures is that of feeling displeased; and thus to end by enjoying almost nothing in literature but one's own opinions, while oneself incapable of writing a living sentence. — F.L. Lucas

The break was in some ways a sign that Jefferson had transcended the simpler rhetorical categories of the post-1798 period. It was easy to speak theoretically and idealistically about politics when one is seeking power. The demands of exercising it once it is won, however, are so complex and fluid that ideological certitude is often among the first casualties of actual governing. Jefferson had achieved something that his Federalist foes would not have thought possible: He was, to some, no longer Republican enough. Jefferson was, in other words, a man who had displeased the extremes of his day - a sign that he had been guided not by dogma but by principled pragmatism. — Jon Meacham

I'm tired. Dead tired. So tired I can barely stay awake to write this. After helping Mr Bircher search for his head all night, I'm a little annoyed too. Dad doesn't help. He doesn't know what it's like for a girl my age, trying to fit in at school as much as possible, and trying to fit in all the dead people. It's not easy being a soul helper. — L.P. Donnelli

The killer .... is making it too easy... - Naaah, not possible... to be so easy! — Deyth Banger

Among people, particularly those I love, I so easily get talking and give out everything possible in conversation, so that it is not available for my work. It is a stupid piece of clumsiness that I am so wanting in the gift of sociability, the talent for easy but at the same time recreative conversations, in which one does not exert and expend oneself (Letters 1906-1907, p. 118). — Rainer Maria Rilke

It's not always easy, but it's always possible. — Kelly G. Wilson

It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him. — Jean Rostand

Is it easy to love God' asks an old author. 'It is easy,' he replies, 'to those who do it.' I have included two Graces under the word Charity. But God can give a third. He can awake in man, towards Himself, a supernatural Appreciative love. This is of all gifts the most to be desired. Here, not in our natural loves, nor even in ethics, lies the true centre of all human and angelic life. With this all things are possible. — C.S. Lewis

Today it is easy to smile at the expectations we nursed in those days as to the possible effect of such an attack. With two or three times the number of bombers carrying five times the bomb load, with improved bombsights and perfected methods of attack, the Allies could not destroy or even completely paralyze a city like Berlin. — Adolf Galland

It is possible for the assembly-line worker consigned to tightening the bolts on the transmission and the office worker who processes medical insurance claims to work with pride and efficiency, but it's not easy to maintain that attitude. — Paul Hawken

From a completely financial standpoint, digital is starting to crack as far as an independent filmmaker's access to getting your story out there - Amazon, iTunes, all of those. It makes the prospect of doing it yourself - not easy by any means - but possible, maybe for the first time. — Shane Carruth

You've been betrothed."
Her hand dropped from the unruly seam at her shoulder. She stared straight ahead at his sun-touched skin.
"To...Henry Lazar." It wasn't easy for him to say the name.
Valerie felt something fall to the floor of her stomach like a wet rag.
"No," she said, not wanting to believe him. "No, no," she told his chest.
Peter stood mute, wishing he could tell her what she wanted to hear.
"It's not possible," she said.
"It is. I'm telling you, it's done. — Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

If your boss asks you to do a task ... You'll stay late for work to make sure it's done. You'll be confident that your boss wouldn't have asked you if he/she didn't trust that you could do it. You wouldn't allow anyone or anything to distract you. No matter how hard it is, it's not an option, you'll find a way to make it happen. You'll not only find time, you'll try to get it done before the deadline. So, why when God gives you a task ... you allow fear to consume you, find excuses, allow distractions, care about what people think and assume it's impossible? If He gave it to you, He trusts you CAN get it done. Yes, they'll be distractions. And no it's not going to be easy, but know that it is POSSIBLE!!! Answer the call! — Yvonne Pierre

I don't think it's possible for the Fed to end its easy-money policies in a trouble-free manner. Recent episodes in which Fed officials hinted at a shift toward higher interest rates have unleashed significant volatility in markets, so there is no reason to suspect that the actual process of boosting rates would be any different. I think that real pressure is going to occur not by the initiation by the Federal Reserve, but by the markets themselves. — Alan Greenspan

It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind. — Charles Darwin

The natural environment is not particularly hospitable to human life ... the key to having a good environment is improving it through work ... Energy is fundamentally an environmental improver and if we classify it that way it makes sense out of a lot of these controversies ... It's our obligation and our right to make [our environment] as good for human beings as possible. With that view, it's very easy for people to understand precisely the reason it's good to alter it - because it doesn't naturally come the way we need it to be. — Alex Epstein

When stripping away our preconceptions and our previous knowledge is not possible , perhaps we can at least acknowledge that we are all biased. If we acknowledge that we are trapped within our perspective, which partially blinds us to the truth, we may be able to accept the idea that conflicts generally require a neutral third party-who has not been tainted with our expectations-to set down the rules and regulations. Of course, accepting the word of a third party is not easy and not always possible; but when it is possible, it can yield substantial benefits. And for that reason alone, we must continue to try. — Dan Ariely

Rest is not a place I collapse into when I've finally done enough work - it's the starting place, it's the way into the well-fitting, easy yoke of Jesus (Matthew 11:25-30). What if we began in rest? Would it be possible to do my work without getting all wound up or collapsing?

Does Jesus seem to you to be all wound up, straining and stressed, as he works? No he's continually abiding in a place of peace and joy, affirmation and acceptance. — Alan Fadling

To show you all my scars, is not to tell you that this Dunya would always leave you wounded, and bruised, and on knees, but to show you that see, healing is always possible. Healing is easy. Healing is beautiful. — Khadija Rupa

Victory is possible, sisters, not by figuring out how to make this an easy process, but by choosing - over and over and over again - the absolute power available through God's truth. — Lysa TerKeurst

Though Kaz's tone was easy, Matthias heard the dark anticipation in his words. He had often wondered how people survived this city, but it was possible Ketterdam would not survive Kaz Brekker. — Leigh Bardugo

It is not easy for us to change. But it is possible and it is our glory as human beings — M. Scott Peck

We have to have the money to do the work we want to do, as well as to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. Fat commissions are good, but not always easy to come by, and each new painting takes its time. So we need to find every way possible to earn extra income from our work. — Elizabeth Aston

people can respect someone without love but its not possible to love someone without respect and if its so easy to cheat beloved then its not respect.and if not respect then there is no love.so if person whom you trust lots if cheat on you then accept they don't love you — Mohammed Zaki Ansari

The men on the hills told her that she hated them, and they did everything they could to make it true. She did not fight very hard. It was an easy thing to do. She wonders whether it would have been possible to behave any differently. She hopes it is. She hopes that, somewhere in the city, there are people who are resisting the temptation to turn these men into devils, to say that all men are like them, to oppose their very existence the way they always said the people of Sarajevo did. — Steven Galloway

I have a house, I try to spend as little time in it as possible. Not always easy on the mind and body, but it's how I got myself to 80-plus countries. This kind of routine forces one to reinvent and improvise. The older I get, the more important this is to me. — Henry Rollins

You're going to make mistakes. The key is to learn from them as fast as possible and make changes as soon as you can. That's not always easy to do because ego and pride get in the way, but you have to put all that aside and look at the big picture. — Tiger Woods

I try to do as little as possible without looking like an idiot. Research is fun and easy. Writing is hard. So I try not to let the research become an excuse to not do the writing part. — Zachary Lazar

We should make it as easy as possible to be able to get a legal work visa - not citizenship, not a green card. Just a work visa, with a background check and a Social Security card so that applicable taxes would get paid. — Gary Johnson

In this world, the only easy path is the course of least resistance. This is the path always taken by a stream of water as it seeks lower and lower ground. It will never go over an obstacle, and even when it has to go around one, water will always find the easiest way around, the way that requires as little work as possible. This, you have have noticed, is what makes rivers crooked, and it makes men and women crooked too. The easy path never goes anywhere but downward, and spiritually, that is not the direction we want to go. Worthwhile destinations always take extra effort. — Gary Henry

I always stayed away from the studio environment as much as possible. But I just wanted to see if I could work in one. It's not easy. Just having an engineer's assistant around is enough for me to be uncomfortable. With more than one person there in the room, it feels strange. — Jack White

The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust - and those elements are universally accessible. Which does not mean that creative living is always easy; it merely means that creative living is always possible. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I think the world divides neatly into those who are excited by the managed induction of terror and those who are not. I do not find terror exciting. I find it terrifying. One of my basic goals is to subject my nervous system to as little total terror as possible. The cruel paradox of course is that this kind of makeup usually goes hand in hand with a delicate nervous system that's extremely easy to terrify. — David Foster Wallace

There is something better, if possible, that a man can give than his life. That is his living spirit to a service that is not easy, to resist counsels that are hard to resist, to stand against purposes that are difficult to stand against. — Woodrow Wilson

The road to success is not easy to navigate, but with hard work, drive and passion, it's possible to achieve the American dream. — Tommy Hilfiger

Literary fiction and poetry are real marginalized right now. There's a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol' "The audience is stupid. The audience only wants to go this deep. Poor us, we're marginalized because of TV, the great hypnotic blah, blah." You can sit around and have these pity parties for yourself. Of course this is bullshit. If an art form is marginalized it's because it's not speaking to people. One possible reason is that the people it's speaking to have become too stupid to appreciate it. That seems a little easy to me. — David Foster Wallace

If instead of arranging the atoms in some definite pattern, again and again repeated, on and on, or even forming little lumps of complexity like the odor of violets, we make an arrangement which is always different from place to place, with different kinds of atoms arranged in many ways, continually changing, not repeating, how much more marvelously is it possible that this thing might behave? Is it possible that that "thing" walking back and forth in front of you, talking to you, is a great glob of these atoms in a very complex arrangement, such that the sheer complexity of it staggers the imagination as to what it can do? When we say we are a pile of atoms, we do not mean we are merely a pile of atoms, because a pile of atoms which is not repeated from one to the other might well have the possibilities which you see before you in the mirror. — Richard Feynman

It has been long considered possible to explain the more ancient revolutions on ... the Earth surface by means of these still existing causes; in the same manner as it is found easy to explain past events in political history, by an acquaintance with the passions and intrigues of the present day. But we shall presently see that unfortunately this is not the case in physical history:-the thread of operation is here broken, the march of nature is changed, and none of the agents that she now employs were sufficient for the production of her ancient works. — Georges Cuvier

It was never easy to look into the future, but it is possible and we should not miss our chance. — Andrei Linde

It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility — George Santayana

We classify things as easy or difficult, but this is not right, tasks should be classified as possible or impossible and the possible ones can be easy or hard — Hatem A. Aly

After a few (or many) bad relationships, its so easy to shut down, give up, and stop believing that the right person is out there for us. Our hearts yearn to fall in love, but our minds insist its not possible, and we enter into a tug-of-war with ourselves. Its as if one part of us is screaming, Yes! I deserve a great relationship! while another part insists, Ill never find him or her. When our beliefs contradict our desires, we experience an inner conflict that not only paralyzes us, but can actually prevent us from recognizing the possibilities for love that exist all around us. — Arielle Ford

People say that modern life has grown so complicated, so busy, so crowded that we have to hurry even to survive. We need not accept that idea. It is quite possible to live in the midst of a highly developed technological society and keep an easy, relaxed pace while doing a lot of hard work. We have a choice. — Eknath Easwaran

No matter where you once were, no matter how dark your storm, God doesn't want you to remain there. Overcoming may not be easy, but it's possible when you ask your Father to battle for you. — Dana Arcuri

You can do just about anything if you break it down into habits and execute on them. That's not to say that it's easy, only that it's possible. The key is to be honest about what's stopping you from success, take responsibility for it, and create new habits to correct. — Tynan

Grief is a stern teacher, but I am confident I could not have learned some lessons in any other way. For that, I am grateful. Grateful to God for loving me enough to stretch me and push me and crush me, to refine me in the furnace of affliction, to force me to stretch my faith beyond what I could see.
God loves me more than I can possible comprehend. He watches over me. He watches over all of us. But if the way were easy, how could we grow into who He wants us to be? How could our faith become unshakable? — Jennifer Beckstrand

Our neighbor and our world are the two roads out of Hell, i.e., out of pure egotism, that God has put in everyone's path to make salvation as easy as possible. Although natural lust misuses neighbors as objects rather than persons, using them rather than loving them; and although natural greed misuses things by loving them rather than using them, unnatural lust and greed are really forms of pride, which is the sin from Hell, not from the flesh or the world. In Hell there are no neighbors and no world. — Peter Kreeft

It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to usurpation on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Govt. from interference in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others.
[Letter to the Reverend Jasper Adams, January 1, 1832] — James Madison

For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people. — Paul Kriwaczek

A 'goto' in Perl falls into the category of hard things that should be possible, not easy things that should be easy. — Larry Wall

Do but take care to express yourself in a plain, easy Manner, in well-chosen, significant and decent Terms, and to give a harmonious and pleasing Turn to your Periods: study to explain your Thoughts, and set them in the truest Light, labouring as much as possible, not to leave them dark nor intricate, but clear and intelligible. — Miguel De Cervantes

Love makes things possible, not easy. — Sam Gayton

But is it really possible to please the world!' says some doubting reader. It is indeed. Nay, it is not only very possible, but very easy. The ways are crooked, and sometimes foul and low. What then? A man need but crawl upon his hands and knees, know when to close his eyes and when his ears, when to stoop and when to stand upright; and if by the world is meant that atom of it in which he moves himself, he shall please it, never fear. — Charles Dickens

MOST CITIES ARE designed on grids that fill them with hard angles. Not Amsterdam, which has a softness about it imparted by the watery curves of the 16th-century canals that fan out through the city. Though its gabled canal houses and narrow medieval streets give it an undeniable old-world charm, Amsterdam's thoroughly contemporary takes on arts, architecture and design show that it has modernity in a firm embrace. It's a city that invites wandering, with a tram system and a plenitude of bicycles (about as many as there are residents) that make navigating as fun as it is easy. Thanks to the locals, most of whom speak English, you'll feel instantly welcome and will be spared the indignity of trying to pronounce Dutch (don't even try). Spend as much time as possible on foot, the better to enjoy the city's theatrical quality: The huge, unshaded windows of the canal homes allow you to peer right in, testimony to the Dutch ethos of having nothing to hide. — Anonymous

Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking Program achieved for me a thing that I thought was not possible - to give up a thirty year smoking habit literally overnight. It was nothing short of a miracle. — Anjelica Huston

It takes a special courage to challenge the rigid confines of our accustomed story. It's not easy to radically alter our views about where happiness comes from but it's eminently possible. — Sharon Salzberg