You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.
Isak DinesenRead
Up in this air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.
Interpretation
This quote speaks to the feeling of belonging and the refreshing vitality experienced in nature.
Isak Dinesen's quote reflects the profound sense of peace and contentment that comes from being in a place where one feels truly at home. The imagery of breathing easily in the air of the highlands suggests rejuvenation and clarity, as well as an inner assurance that one is exactly where they are meant to be, highlighting the importance of connecting with nature and oneself.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of nature in our lives.
You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.
I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
I was young, and by instinct of self-preservation I had to collect my energy on something, if I were not to be whirled away with the dusk on the farm-roads, or the smoke on the plain. I begun in the evenings to write stories, fairy-tales, and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times.
The lime trees were in bloom. But in the early morning only a faint fragrance drifted through the garden, an airy message, an aromatic echo of the dreams during the short summer night.
A visitor is a friend, he brings news, good or bad, which is bread to the hungry minds in lonely places. A real friend who comes to the house is a heavenly messenger, who brings the panis angelorum.
The Cicada sing an endless song in the long grass, smells run along the earth and falling stars run over the sky, like tears over a cheek. You are the privileged person to whom everything is taken. The Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts.
If I can, by a lucky chance, in these uneasy days, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sadness; if I can, how and then, prompt a happier view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow-beings and himself, surely, I shall not have written in vain.
And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?
It was the combination of hard work and a hand up that allowed me to become one of the first women to fly in combat missions and achieve my American Dream.
Inspiration is that state in which mind and heart are connected. When you feel inspired you find yourself thrust into a world where ordinary objects and events are full of light, as if illuminated from within. This inner light is truth, and when you suddenly see the truth, we gain insight, clarity, and joy.
I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want people to feel sorry for me. I didn't want people to see me as disabled. I wanted to live a life of adventure and stories.
I remember being young in the 1960s... we had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world.
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