We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.
I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.)
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the challenges of living by personal beliefs and the scrutiny one often faces from others.
In this quote, Jonathan Safran Foer illustrates the experience of being a vegetarian and how one's personal choices can provoke intense scrutiny from others. He highlights the tendency of individuals to focus on perceived inconsistencies in the choices of others, often more so than the individuals themselves care about those choices. This speaks to a broader philosophical discussion on how society engages with personal beliefs and the importance placed on them by others.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about dietary choices and the pressures of societal norms.
More from Jonathan Safran Foer
All quotes →Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn't see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.
She was not crying Which surprised me very much But I understand now That she had found places For her melancholy That were behind more masks Than only her eyes
What do babies dream of? She must be dreaming of the before-life, just as I dream of the afterlife.
A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter.
What is being awake if not interpreting our dreams, or dreaming if not interpreting our wake?
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The moment that you feel that just possibly you are walking down the street naked...that's the moment you may be starting to get it right.
If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?" I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?" To shrug.
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Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.
Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.