Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of perseverance and not giving up on your dreams, even if they seem unattainable.
In this quote, Cormac McCarthy conveys a powerful message about the nature of dreams and aspirations. He warns against the complacency that comes from settling for an idealized version of reality that is disconnected from true fulfillment. The speaker insists on the necessity of striving for one's dreams, suggesting that true happiness comes from the pursuit of one's ambitions, rather than giving in to despair or resignation. This message serves as a reminder that perseverance is crucial, even when faced with challenges that make our dreams seem distant or impossible.
In practice
This quote can be used during a motivational speech at a graduation ceremony to encourage students to pursue their dreams.
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.
Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart
The most important investment you can make is in yourself. Very few people get anything like their potential horsepower translated into the actual horsepower of their output in life. Potential exceeds realization for many people...The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be.
In high school, in sport, I had a coach who told me I was much better than I thought I was, and would make me do more in a positive sense. He was the first person who taught me not to be afraid of failure.
Sonny Liston is great. But he'll fall in eight.
Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find "tomorrow" on the calendars of fools.
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