Quotes About Context

Het is nooit prettig om je diepste overtuigingen in hun historische context geplaatst te zien worden.

In the world of identity, utterances have functions, separate from their meanings.

Oh, if Shakespeare says it, that's all right.

This is about safety. This has nothing to do with religion.

I saw and I met a lot of people who were in the field. It also provided a context in which I came to respect what the actor did, because I saw how difficult it actually was to do.

I didn't realize this was a sad occasion.

A real person, open-ended, can only be approached as a hypothesis. A character in fiction is demanded to be accountable. Some characters are more willing to offer a context. The young women in Jane Austen's novels, for instance, seek happiness and suffer when happiness is made unavailable, by situation, chance, or folly.

Any person who has information can connect with any other person who wants it, and anyone who wants to make it mean something in some context, can do so.

I really didn't say everything I said.

I think my books give people a language to have a conversation about God that's not religious. There isn't enough new literature that brings the conversation of God into a modern context. I love the Bible, but in the West we've analyzed it until it fits into a structure of control. We need more new stories. We need different ways of looking at things, and I think it's coming.

Nothing is inherently beautiful, sacred, or sexy; human feelings make it so.

But numbers alone don't count for much in history.

Nationalist isolationism is probably even more dangerous in the context of climate change than of nuclear war

There is nothing right and wrong until anyone defines it."

To the non-initiate, whose experience of sexuality and bodily pleasure may be distorted by negative cultural conditioning, the introduction of sexuality into a sacred context is often mistakenly misconstrued as the ordinary pursuit of sex for recreation.

You can't discuss the ocean with a well frog - he's limited by the space he lives in. You can't discuss ice with a summer insect - he's bound to a single season.

If you want to change a person, you've got to change the situation.

Here's what the moment of inspiration did. It assembled these cultural meanings in this particular package for this particular group at this particular cultural moment.

In Ghana, the pressing issues were economic, questions related to development and how it worked out in a political arena where all the players were black. (As I write "black" again, I need to acknowledge how meaningless the American term is in a West African context where so very much besides race matters—every day and fundamentally.)

Another way to think about metamessages is that they frame a conversation, much as a picture frame provides a context for the images in the picture. Metamessages let you know how to interpret what someone is saying by identifying the activity that is going on: Is this an argument or a chat? Is it helping, advising, or scolding? At the same time, they let you know what position the speaker is assuming in the activity, and what position you are being assigned.

the metamessage yields heart meaning.

Reuben, kalau kemerdekaan yang kamu maksud sejenis keinginan anak kecil yang ingin memberontak kepada ibunya untuk bisa makan es krim waktu sakit flu, itu memang omong kosong. Aku rasa, Tuhan atau kekuatan agung apapun itu, nggak akan memberi hadiah yang dangkal begitu. Menurutku, free will adalah kebebasan manusia untuk mengubah perspektif. Kamu jatuh miskin besok, apakah itu bencana atau berkat yang tersembunyi? Semuanya ada di tanganmu. Free will adalah kemampuan manusia mengubah konteks.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LISTENER? 1. Not interrupting. 2. Showing that you empathize: not criticizing, arguing, or patronizing. 3. Establishing a physical sense of closeness without invading personal space. 4. Observing body language and letting yours show you are not distracted but attentive. 5. Offering your own self-disclosures, but not too many, or too soon. 6. Understanding the context of the other person's life. 7. Listening from all four levels: body, mind, heart, and soul.

Your home should give you a sense of belonging and provide a context for interpreting your life's experiences. It should be a reference place that you look forward to returning to, an anchoring point from which you venture into the world, and a place where you know that your heart resides. To gain a sense of belonging to a place, it is essential to 'ground' yourself. Even if you move often, in each location imagine sinking your roots into earth.