Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other.
Lawrence DurrellRead
I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the intrinsic nature of loneliness and time in shaping our experiences.
In this quote, Lawrence Durrell suggests that loneliness and time are essential elements of human existence that accompany us through lifeβs journey. Their presence is fundamental, implying that our understanding of life is deeply intertwined with these two companions, as they influence our thoughts and actions, leading us to deeper insights and experiences.
In practice
This quote can be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of existence.
Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other.
Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.
The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palm, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers - all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.
The heaviest impact of the work of art is in the guts. Art does not reason. It manhandles you and changes you.
Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.
We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.
The greatest human ideal is the great cause of bringing together the thoughts of Europe and Asia; the great soul of India will topple our world.
If the guy out in the woods with the Michigan Militia is a real estate negotiator, instead of some crackpot, and has a normal life, that's unnerving. You don't want to think it's as normal as the guy next door, hedging his lawn. It's easier to demonize or separate them off from 'us.'
The lives of African-Americans in this country are characterized by violence for most of our history. Much of that violence, at least to some extent, you know, done by the very state that's supposed to protect them.
Are wars... anything but the means whereby a nation's problems are set, where creation is stimulated - there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
What grieves me most in my past offenses, O my loving God, is not so much the punishment I have deserved, as the displeasure I have given You, Who are worthy of infinite love.
It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?
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