Part of our purpose in life is to build a legacy – a consistent pattern of building into the lives of others.
The man [who] is greatest and most blessed and joyful [is one] whose life most closely approaches the pattern of Christ. This has nothing to do with earthly wealth, power, or prestige. The only true test of greatness, blessedness, joyfulness is how close can a life come to being like the Master, Jesus Christ. He is the right way, the full truth, and the abundant life.
Of course, change requires change. Until there is a felt need for change, it is only an event not a pattern.
The step of obedience always precedes revelation. That pattern is evident all through the Scripture.
I never accepted the idea that I had to be guided by some pattern or blueprint.
Be a pattern to others and then all will go well.
Its likely that a general pattern of behavior among threatened human societies is to become more blindered, rather than more focused on the crisis, as they fall.
The castration of women has been carried out in terms of a masculine-feminine polarity, in which men have commandeered all the energy and streamlined it into an aggressive conquistadorial power, reducing all heterosexual contact to a sadomasochistic pattern.
I did not know that the first step in any domestic violence relationship is to seduce and charm the victim. I also did not know that the second step is to isolate the victim. The next step in the domestic violence pattern is to introduce the threat of violence and see how she reacts. We victims know something you [non-victims] usually don't. It's incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser, because the final step in the domestic violence pattern is to 'kill her'. Over 70% of domestic violence murders happens after the victim has ended the relationship.
That's what a conscience is made of, scar tissue. . . Little strips and pieces of remorse sewn together year by year until they formed a distinctive pattern, a design for living.
If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is plausible to decrease waste, to make better use of stocks available, and to develop substitutes. But what about the appetite itself? The major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialised countries
I still believe pattern fascinates on its own. And three-sevenths of a pattern, or even a smaller fragment, can fascinate still more--get us really hunkering down, trying to tease out the whole of the figure in the carpet.
Your actions become your habits. Don't let yourself make a pattern of slipups or they'll become habits!
If there were ever any half-bloods who needed to worry about that, it was Thalia and me. I wondered if maybe I should've sent Poseidon that seashell pattern tie for Father's Day after all. --Percy Jackson
At times the whole sky was ringed in shooting points and puckers of light gathering and falling, pulsing, fading, rhythmical as breathing. All of a piece. As if the sky were a pattern of nerves and our thought and memories traveled across it. As if the sky were one gigantic memory for us all.
Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides.
Loving the self, to me, begins with never ever criticizing ourselves for anything. Criticism locks us into the very pattern we are trying to change. Understanding and being gentle with ourselves helps us to move out of it. Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.
The infantile cowardice of our time which demands an external pattern, a nonhuman authority.
Language and emotions are too easily misread. For example, laughing can mean many things: laughing with you or at you. Does that laugh reflect joy, anger, or that she's about to fire you? Too many jobs require complex feelings, pattern recognition, common sense, and the human touch.
It sometimes seems to me that the whole course of English history was one of accident, confusion, chance and unintended consequences - there's no real pattern.