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.
It is a very solemn delusion when ministers think they are prospering, and yet do not hear of conversions.
Steam seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.
Let us take some event in the life of humanity. For instance, war. There is a war going on at the present moment. What does it signify? It signifies that several millions of sleeping people are trying to destroy several millions of other sleeping people. They would not do this, of course, if they were to wake up. Everything that takes place is owing to this sleep.
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
How could this world be so unlike the world that I believed I was living in? I can't describe it. Do I not want to describe it, or do I simply not possess the vocabulary?
Before we tackle the gangs and the basic story, we have to make sure that we have liberated ourselves from how we have been educated and make sure we are coming from a spirituality of our own choosing.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.