You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Yann MartelRead
I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Trust can blind us to the intentions of others until we experience betrayal.
This quote reflects the fragile nature of trust and how it can lead us to overlook harmful intentions. The speaker's realization comes only after experiencing betrayal, indicating that an excessive trust in others can leave us vulnerable to disappointment and pain. It serves as a reminder to evaluate our relationships and be aware of who we truly rely on.
Themes
TrustBetrayalVulnerabilityRelationshipsAwareness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of discerning trust in relationships.
More from Yann Martel
All quotes →Come aboard if your destination is oblivion- it should be our next stop. We can sit together. You can have the window seat if you want. But it's a sad view.
Yann MartelRead
Fiction and nonfiction are not so easily divided. Fiction may not be real, but it's true; it goes beyond the garland of facts to get to emotional and psychological truths.
Yann MartelRead
The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.
Yann MartelRead
Art is a gift: you create and then you give away. How readers receive that gift is their business. If they hate it, that’s their response to it. Others respond by liking it. Either way, that is their interaction with the book, which is no longer mine.
Yann MartelRead
If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.
Yann MartelRead
Similar quotes
No wisdom that she may gain by experience and reflection hereafter, will compensate the loss of her present hilarity.
William CowperRead
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl SandburgRead
If we become aware of what's happening before we act, behaviour becomes a function of choice rather than a result of an impulse or trigger. You begin to control your world more as opposed to the outside world controlling you.
Marshall GoldsmithRead
Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king--every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone. Once you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too, must the striving count more than the gain.
Lloyd AlexanderRead
Habits of thinking need not be forever. One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals choose the way they think.
Martin SeligmanRead
Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods.
ConfuciusRead