We must beware the revenge of the starved senses, the embittered animal in its prison.
J. B. PriestleyRead
Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
Interpretation
Accidents reveal our true nature, and attempting to change them is futile.
This quote suggests that the unexpected events in life, or 'accidents,' are not just random occurrences but rather reflections of our true selves. Attempting to alter these accidents is an exercise in futility, as they often reveal our character and shape our identity, underscoring that who we are is revealed through our reactions to unforeseen circumstances.
In practice
A motivational speaker might use this quote to emphasize resilience in the face of unexpected challenges during their presentation.
We must beware the revenge of the starved senses, the embittered animal in its prison.
But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from...the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviare, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them.
A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow.
Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.
There is romance, the genuine glinting stuff, in typewriters, and not merely in their development from clumsy giants into agile dwarfs, but in the history of their manufacture, which is filled with raids, battles, lonely pioneers, great gambles, hope, fear, despair, triumph. If some of our novels could be written by the typewriters instead of on them, how much better they would be.
We plan, we toil, we suffer - in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs.
It is impossible to have a Jewish, democratic state and at the same time to control all of Eretz Israel. If we insist on fulfilling the dream in its entirety, we are liable to lose it all. Everything. That is where the extremist path takes us.
Man beholds the earth, and it is breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail.
Man is a part of the world, and his spirit is part of the spirit of the world. We are merely a peculiar mode of Being, a living atom within it, or, rather, a cell that, if sufficiently open to itself and its own mystery, can also experience the mystery, the will, the pain, and the hope of the world.
Then I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.
Thus it is that "Some things are increased by being diminished, others are diminished by being increased." What others have taught, I also teach; verily, I will make it the root of my teaching.
The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.
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