Capacity for love in its higher forms seems to be peculiarly human although even in humans it is still peculiar.
Interpretation
The capacity for deep love is a unique aspect of humanity, though it remains complex and sometimes difficult to fully understand.
In this quote, Jeanette Winterson reflects on the unique human ability to experience profound love, suggesting that this capacity distinguishes us as a species. However, she also notes that even within humans, the nature of love can be intricate and peculiar, highlighting the complexities and nuances of emotional connections.
In practice
In a speech about emotional intelligence, one might quote this to highlight the intricacies of human connections.
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 no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham.
Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.
The closer I'm bound in love to you, the closer I am to free.
We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.
She told her, while she kept it, 'Twould make her amiable and subdue my father Entirely to her love, but if she lost it Or made a gift of it, my father's eye Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt After new fancies.
Where, with your one rose you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?
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