If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.
Interpretation
Creating enduring works allows our legacy to continue beyond our lifetime.
This quote emphasizes the idea that when we create something significant or meaningful, that creation can endure and have an impact long after we are gone. It suggests that our contributions to the world provide a form of immortality, allowing our thoughts, ideas, and efforts to persist in society.
In practice
In a graduation speech to inspire students about their future contributions.
What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.
In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest. Feel for yourself.
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.
Beautiful things grow to a certain height and then they fail and fade off, breathing out memories as they decay.
Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.
Truly, there is a Christian note which makes the whole World vibrate, like an immense gong, in the divine Christ. This note is unique and universal, and in it alone consists the Gospel.
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve.
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