Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that the awareness of mortality begins at the moment of life itself.
Madeleine L'Engle's quote touches on the profound idea that the concept of death is integral to life. From the very moment of conception, we are aware, even if unconsciously, of the inevitability of our mortality. This existential awareness shapes our experiences, influences our choices, and adds depth to our understanding of life and its fleeting nature.
In practice
In a reflective conversation about life and mortality at a family reunion, this quote could spark a deeper discussion about the human experience.
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
The body is a boat that carries the soul in the ocean of the world. If it is not strong, or it has a hole, then it cannot cross the ocean, so the first duty is to fix the boat.
Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is always, therefore, represented as blind.
Well I do think there are people who are habitually negative and depressed and take the opposite approach because they imagine the worst, and their minds become dominated by that. They let their own emotions and expectations transform their perceptions of the world.
Every life has dark tracts and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas.
He saw a lawyer killing a viper on a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind of Cain and his brother Abel.
The price of liberty is something more than eternal vigilance. There must also be eternal advance. We can save the rights we have inherited from our fathers only by winning new ones to bequeath our children.
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