"Many problems are minor when you solve them right away, but grow into an enormous conflict when you let them linger.
As a rule of thumb, fix it now."
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"Raise your ambitions. Lower your expectations.
The higher your ambitions, the bolder your actions.
The lower your expectations, the greater your satisfaction.
Achieve more and be happy along the way."
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Music teacher and conductor Nadia Boulanger, who trained many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, on focus:
"Anyone who acts without paying attention to what he is doing is wasting his life. I'd go so far as to say life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece."
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"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
