Our cure, to be no more; sad cure!
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the idea that sometimes the solution to suffering is simply to cease existence, which is a melancholic perspective.
This quote by John Milton highlights the paradox of seeking a cure for sorrow. It suggests that the ultimate escape from sadness might be the end of one's life itself, implying a deep sense of despair and the weight of emotional pain. Milton's words provoke contemplation about the nature of suffering and the extremes to which one might consider going to find relief.
In practice
This quote could be used in a literary discussion about the portrayal of despair in poetry.
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide; They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.
The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones.
Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss
The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.
Apt words have power to suage the tumors of a troubled mind.
why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.
Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.
Dislike what deserves it, but never hate: for that is of the nature of malice; which is almost ever to persons, not things, and is one of the blackest qualities sin begets in the soul.
One tended to lose one’s bearings in the presence of willful and persistent acts of craziness, and the more gentle the act, the crazier it seemed, as if rage and violence, being closer to the norm, were easier to accommodate.
We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hypothesis, by daydream, by scientific investigation those leaden walls that encase the human spirit, that define it and guard it and hold it forever inaccessible.
Both described at the same time how it was always March there and always Monday, and then they understood that José Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room.
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