Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life often entails sacrifices, and the survival of one being may depend on the death of another.
This quote reflects the inherent cycle of life and death, emphasizing that survival often comes at a cost, specifically the loss of other living beings. It suggests that all life on Earth is interconnected in this cycle, where the inevitable taking of life is a fundamental, and unavoidable aspect of existence.
Themes
SurvivalDeathLifeSacrificeInterconnectedness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about environmental ethics, highlighting the balance of ecosystems.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes →Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
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I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
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I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
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Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
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