When I have one martini, I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have a second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there's no holding me.
William FaulknerRead
Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the existential idea that human suffering may be merely a fleeting and arbitrary manifestation of the cosmos.
In this reflection by William Faulkner, the character Ben's wail signifies deep emotional pain, yet it is portrayed as an ephemeral sound. This suggests that human anguish and injustice might be transient experiences in the vast timeline of reality, possibly influenced by cosmic forces beyond comprehension, highlighting the paradox of existence where profound human experiences can feel trivial in the grand scheme of the universe.
Themes
ExistentialSufferingSoundCosmosTime
In practice
Example use cases
During a reflective discussion on the meaning of life, this quote can illustrate the fleeting nature of our struggles.
More from William Faulkner
All quotes →I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
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When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...
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Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
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He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.
William FaulknerRead
Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.
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