Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.
Douglas CouplandRead
When we constantly ask for miracles, we're unraveling the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracles would not be a world, it would be a cartoon.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that an abundance of miracles would distort reality, reducing life to a superficial spectacle.
Douglas Coupland's quote reflects on the nature of miracles and their place in our understanding of the world. It implies that if we were to constantly expect miracles, we would lose the essence of reality, which thrives on challenges and the mundane. A life devoid of struggle or contrast would render our experiences shallow and cartoonish, devoid of depth and meaning.
Themes
MiraclesRealityExpectationsLifePhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about the importance of gratitude, this quote can illustrate how appreciating the ordinary leads to a fuller life.
More from Douglas Coupland
All quotes →...we're told by TV and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change--and that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or think. they become messes and tend to remain messes.
Douglas CouplandRead
When the world throws you too much information, the only way you can stay sane or survive is to look for pattern recognition. Amidst all the blurs, is there a constellation that emerges, is there a straight line that's emerging?
Douglas CouplandRead
I'm not patient - and I'm getting more impatient as I get older - but I am disciplined about writing, and I want that on my tombstone: 'He wasn't patient, but he was disciplined.'
Douglas CouplandRead
If you waste five minutes of time a day, over the course of a year that adds up to one full work day. Think of five wasted minutes as a slow-release holiday drug. Savour it.
Douglas CouplandRead
When someone tells you they’ve just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they’re locked into jobs they hate; that they’re broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they’re fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It’s profoundly depressing.
Douglas CouplandRead
Similar quotes
It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth.
Niels BohrRead
The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind both in theory and practice.
Mikhail BakuninRead
You discarded most of the lies along the way but held on to the one that said life mattered.
Stephen KingRead
It is important also to consider, that the surest means of avoiding war is to be prepared for it in peace.
Joseph StoryRead
How we treat the vulnerable is how we define ourselves as a species.
Russell BrandRead
The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.
Ogden NashRead