The wildest hope of a healthy person is to get back to his first Christmas party and be shy enough to be happy.
Evelyn Waugh: 'Yes, I was determined to have a happy Christmas'
'Did you?'
'I think so. I don't remember it much, and that's always a good sign, isn't it?'
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth.
Read more‘He was created of a mother whom He created. He was carried by hands that He formed. He cried in the manger in wordless infancy, He the Word, without whom all human eloquence is mute.’
I think unemployment is the great affliction of man. Even people with jobs are unemployed. In fact, most people with jobs are unemployed.
The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.
My advice to myself: Be yourself; there is no other you. Don't perform and achieve in order to accept and be happy with yourself. Accept and be happy with yourself and let your performance flow out of that self-acceptance and happiness. Don't hold yourself to an imaginary standard; the standard is you.
Facing it, always facing it, that's the way to get through. Face it.
If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and his motives may not be the highest.
Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Experience is the only wealth.
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
Dieu me pardonnera - c'est son metier.
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.
A loser doesn't know what he'll do if he loses, but talks about what he'll do if he wins, and a winner doesn't talk about what he'll do if he wins but knows what he'll do if he loses.
Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual; they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement. They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work.
Writing is a dreadful labour, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.
There is no such thing as talent.There is pressure.
Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
It's only work if somebody makes you do it.
Work is much more fun than fun.
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but that is the way to bet.
People used to laugh at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.
I've heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance.
“I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well, they aren’t laughing now.
Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
Read moreMy friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
I don't like work — no man does — but I like what is in work — the chance to find yourself.
It's never too late to be what you might have been.
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
Many people are so busy working that they forget to live.
Unimportant work expands to fill the time in which frightening things should be done.
Life isn't coursework, baby. It's one damn essay crisis after another.
Read moreBe polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody in the room.
When Sigmund Freud was asked how we can achieve happiness he said two things were necessary: the ability to love and the ability to work.
According to the internet this quotation appears nowhere in Freud’s published work but, even if he did not say it, it is close to things that he did say and, in any case, it is very true. Here are some more thoughts we particularly like on the subject of work.
Read moreRepatriate Romanians have almost always learnt a great deal abroad (in the Romanian expression, ‘through the air’) although they have not always forgotten enough. Some things are hard-wired into Romanians at a very early age. But though a few repats returned to out graft those who stayed at home, the majority come back wanting to do things in a transparent way and make their careers by hard work rather than influence peddling, baksheesh or blackmail.
Read moreI and the team at AppleSearch wish you a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.
In 2013 we were steadily busy, recruiting lawyers for leading international law firms on the Romanian market and finance directors for international firms in Romania and Serbia, as well as assignments in various sectors. We worked on a number of sales positions and worked for three investment funds. Our impression is that things are picking up slowly in Romania. We do not expect a dramatic change next year but our clients are cautiously optimistic that things will continue to improve slowly and so are we.
Read moreAdmitting a million Poles, even though in good manners, industry, church attendance and many other ways they put many of the British to shame, was certainly a mistake on the part of the UK. We know this because ministers said they expected tens of thousands to come. Still, if Britain and other Western European countries have decided that they need immigrants, and they have, they should be very grateful that the EU has a supply on hand of Romanian immigrants who share a European culture and will fit in easily. Probably no immigrants in the world assimilate as quickly as Romanians who seem not to stay together in clusters like other immigrant groups.
Read moreThe word ‘psychopath’ instills a pleasurable ripple of fear into anyone who saw a conscienceless killer in a Hollywood film such as Basic Instinct or The Silence of the Lambs. But psychopaths exist outside the movies. Only a fairly small minority are violent criminals, more are confidence tricksters but most are not criminals at all. Many hold positions of power (think of Saddam Hussein or Slobodan ). Psychopaths are also known as sociopaths and the syndrome is also named Anti-Social Behaviour Disorder.
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