Quote

Laughter serves as a blocking agent. Like a bullet-proof vest, it may help protect you against the ravages of negative emotions that can assault you in disease.

Norman Cousins

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Norman Cousins
Age: 75 †
Born: 1915
Born: June 24
Died: 1990
Died: November 30
Journalist
Literary Critic
Peace Activist
Professor
Writer
Union City
New Jersey
Laughing
Agents
Vest
Emotion
Block
Vests
Joy
Emotions
Blocking
Help
Proof
Bullet
Happiness
Laughter
Assault
Helping
Negative
Bullets
May
Disease
Serves
Like
Protect
Agent
Ravages

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He who keeps his cool best wins.
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Words have to be crafted, not sprayed. They need to be fitted together with infinite care.
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You are younger today than you will ever be again. Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.
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The poet reminds men of their uniqueness and it is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate is a gain.
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We have everything we need, in fact, except the most important thing of all — time to think and the habit of thought.
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Since the human body tends to move in the direction of its expectations- plus or minus-it is important to know that attitudes of confidence and determination are no less a part of the treatment program than medical science and technology.
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I've learned that next to the atomic bomb, the greatest danger is defeatism, despair, and inadequate awareness of what human beings possess. I feel that any problem that can be defined is capable of being resolved. Out of this has come my conviction that no person knows enough to be a pessimist.
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The heart of the matter is that some people like to cause injury or death to living things. And many of those who do not are indifferent to those who do.
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Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?
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Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt.
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History is a vast early warning system.
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It is no longer correct to regard higher education solely as a privilege. It is a basic right in today's world.
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Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict.
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The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.
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Pessimism is a waste of time.
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For every low there is an equal but opposite high.
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Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and foreboding.
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The essence of man is imperfection. Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If we learn to embrace that new definition of failure, then we are free to start moving ahead - and failing forward.
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We are becoming a nation of sissies and hypochondriacs, a self medicating society easily intimidated by pain and prone to panic. We understand almost nothing about the essential robustness of the human body or its ability to meet the challenge of illness.
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Death is not the greatest tragedy in life. The greatest tragedy is what dies inside us while we live. We need not fear death. We need fear only that we may exist without having sensed something of the possibilities that lie within human existence.
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