And if the City falls and one survives _x000D_ he shall carry the City within on the roads of exile _x000D_ he shall be the City
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring nature of one's identity and home.
This quote suggests that even in the face of destruction or loss, a person's essence, memories, and experiences remain intact. The metaphor of carrying the City within signifies that our connections to our roots and community continue to shape us, even when we are physically displaced. It speaks to the idea that our identity is not solely tied to a location but is something we carry with us no matter where we go.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming adversity, one might use this quote to illustrate how people can maintain their identity in difficult times.
Inanimate objects are always correct and cannot, unfortunately, be reproached with anything. I have never observed a chair shift from one foot to another, or a bed rear on its hind legs. And tables, even when they are tired, will not dare to bend their knees. I suspect that objects do this from pedagogical considerations, to reprove us constantly for our instability.
I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience.
Be courageous when the mind deceives you Be courageous In the final account only this is important
forgive me also that I didn't fight like Lord Byron for the happiness of captive peoples that I watched only risings of the moon and museums
We lead two lives, and the half of our soul is madness, and half heaven is lit by a black sun. I say I am a man, is the other that hides in me?
Capitalism is out of control, thanks in no small part to Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which said that a corporation is a person, even though it doesn't eat, drink, make love, sing, raise children or take care of aging parents. You can't have a people's democracy as long as corporations are considered people.
You can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered.
We're part of creating this world in which we live, but we're unaware of how we do that or even that we do that.
What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.
I toyed briefly with an image someone once mentioned to me, of a village in the shadow of a twin-peaked mountain. In the morning the sun rises. At lunch it sets behind the mountain. In the early afternoon it rises once more. The cocks crow for the second time, and later the sun sets again. No. One peak. Metaphors should not be belaboured.
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