A Quote by V. S. Naipaul
We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves.
Related Quotes
However superficial prevailing views of heredity seem to be, it must be admitted that a person is indeed the bearer of inherited characteristics. This is the one aspect. He must often battle against these inherited traits and rid himself of them in order to bring to fulfillment the talents laid into him before he entered earthly existence.
We are attracted to people who have traits we want in ourselves, and usually we are unattracted to people with traits that we share.
Each race (or variety) is characterized by a more or less distinct combination of inherited morphological, behavioral, physiological traits.
Prayer is not a substitute for work. First we have to do all we can ourselves to understand a situation. Then when we ask for help, sometimes it is very evident, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes we may well be helped by not getting a decision.
I was born in the island of Ireland. I have Irish traits in me - we don't all have the traits of what came from Scotland, there is the celtic factor... and I am an Irishman because you cannot be an Ulsterman without being an Irishman.
A testimony is a most precious possession because it is not acquired by logic or reason alone, it cannot be purchased with earthly possessions, and it cannot be given as a present or inherited from our ancestors. We cannot depend on the testimonies of other people. We need to know for ourselves. President Gordon B. Hinckley said, ‘Every Latter-day Saint has the responsibility to know for himself or herself with a certainty beyond doubt that Jesus is the resurrected, living Son of the living God.
Sometimes, we need to be strangers to ourselves. Then the hidden light in our soul will illuminate what we need to see.
Inherited aptitudes and traits of temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any individual's scheme of life.
We cannot give what we do not have: We cannot bring peace to the world if we ourselves are not peaceful. We cannot bring love to the world if we ourselves are not loving. Our true gift to ourselves and others lies not in what we have but in who we are.
There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once,--for the root is faith,--I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say.
I learn from everyone by observing traits that makes them successful and traits that bring them down, and try to incorporate only the best traits into my professional career.
Traits acquired during one's lifetime - muscles built up in the gym, for example - cannot be passed on to the next generation. Now with technology, as it happens, we might indeed be able to transfer some of our acquired traits on to our selected offspring by genetic engineering.
Most of us remain strangers to ourselves, hiding who we are, and ask other strangers, hiding who they are, to love us.
My father's death has given me a lot. It has given me a lifelong love of women, of their grittiness and hardness - traits that we are not supposed to value as feminine. It has also given me a love of men, of their vulnerability and tenderness - traits that we do not foster as masculine or allow ourselves to associate with masculinity.
Our senses are woefully limited. Our brains are but tiny candles flickering in an infinity of darkness. Our only wisdom is to admit that we cannot understand, and since we cannot understand we must do the best we can with faith. which is our only talent. The greatest act of faith we are capable of is that of loving another more than we love ourselves, and occasionally we can be quite good at it.
Our spirit grows and develops traits in each incarnation that it passes through, and then collects and carries the essence of those traits into future lifetimes. In Buddhist Yoga we refer to our multi-life karmic traits as samskaras.
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