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Ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.

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
Give
Effects
Anesthetic
Giving
Minutes
Anesthetics
Would
Least
Belly
Sleep
Aging
Hours
Genuine
Free
Ten
Pain
Effect
Two
Laughter

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It is well known that panic, despair, depression, hate, rage, exasperation, frustration all produce negative biochemical changes in the body.
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The greatest force in the human body is the natural drive of the body to heal itself - but that force in not independent of the belief system. Everything begins with belief. What we believe is the most powerful option of all.
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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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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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To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.
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For every low there is an equal but opposite high.
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The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war.
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The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's one devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.
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We are wide-eyed in contemplating the possibility that life may exist elsewhere in the universe, but we wear blinders when contemplating the possibilities of life on earth.
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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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Silence must be comprehended as not solely the absence of sound. It is the natural environment for serenity and contemplation. Life without silence is life without privacy. The difference between sanity and madness is the quality of our thoughts. Silence is on the side of sanity.
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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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Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life
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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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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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Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
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Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions
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He who keeps his cool best wins.
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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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Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.
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