...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
Sylvia PlathRead
I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the importance of choice in our emotional state, emphasizing active happiness versus passive sadness.
Sylvia Plath's quote reflects on the struggle between choosing an active, joyful life and succumbing to introspection that leads to sadness. It suggests that in navigating our emotions, we have the power to choose our path; however, the indecision or oscillation between these states can lead to inner turmoil.
In practice
In a motivational speech about mental health.
...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.
It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative--which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.
You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.
It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual.
To live your life in the fear of losing it is to lose the point of life.
At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze.
because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie.
There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass with a fragrant young woman and we quoted e.e. cummings back and forth.
What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
My dear, dear girl [. . .] we can't turn back the days that have gone. We can't turn life back to the hours when our lungs were sound, our blood hot, our bodies young. We are a flash of fire--a brain, a heart, a spirit. And we are three-cents-worth of lime and iron--which we cannot get back.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.