It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.
Interpretation
Our shared imperfections create deeper connections and empathy among us.
This quote emphasizes the idea that human connection is often rooted in our flaws and mistakes rather than our successes or virtues. It suggests that recognizing our common shortcomings fosters a sense of unity and sympathy, highlighting the value of vulnerability in building relationships.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of vulnerability in relationships.
Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.
Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard.
The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.
A cat's got her own opinion of human beings. She don't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.
Cats and their owners are on a private, exclusive loop of affection. Thus cats have become symbolic of a community eschewed and a hyper-engagement with oneself. They represent the profound danger of growing so independent in New York that it's not merely that you don't need anyone - it's that you don't know how to need anyone.
When someone says that I'm angry it's actually a compliment. I have not always been direct with my anger in my relationships, which is part of why I'd write about it in my songs because I had such fear around expressing anger as a woman.
Caring for others is an expression of what it means to be fully human.
In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd.
I don't think it's a good thing to talk about women's issues being exactly the same as the issues of trans women because I don't think that's true.
I am not sure that the inner world of teenage girls has changed. What's most important to kids today is still the same stuff.
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