The trouble with righting some wrongs is that it makes the remaining ones seem even more unbearable.
A. A. GillRead
Trying to learn to be a good man is like learning to play tennis against a wall. You are only a good man - a competent, capable, interesting and lovable man - when you're doing it for, or with, other people.
Interpretation
Being a good person means engaging with others, not just self-improvement.
A. A. Gill suggests that the journey of personal development, such as becoming a good man, cannot be undertaken in solitude. Just as tennis requires a partner to play against, character and virtue are cultivated through our interactions and relationships with others. It is in these connections that we truly grow and learn what it means to be a good and effective person.
In practice
In a speech about community service, one might say, 'As A. A. Gill expresses, trying to become a good person is truly a collective journey.'
The trouble with righting some wrongs is that it makes the remaining ones seem even more unbearable.
If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.
Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition.
Being able to afford everything you desire is not, by any means, the worst thing that can happen to you. But, depressingly, and more profoundly, neither is it the best.
America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.
Celebrity is a national drama whose characters' parts and plots are written by the tabloids, gossip columnists, websites and interactive buttons. The famous don't actually have to turn up to their own lives at all.
Nothing moves a woman so deeply as the boyhood of the man she loves.
They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades.
Affection is the most important thing. And the quality of affection - with your friends, your lovers, your family. But particularly for your own generation.
What interests me is why men think of women as witches. It's because they're so fascinating and exasperating, so other.
Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together for a common goal and help one another achieve it. No destructive lies. No ridiculous fears. No debilitating anger.
There is no more effective way to radicalize American Muslim youth than for political leaders to make public displays of prejudice against all Muslims. Suspicion will undermine their sense of identification with America and alienate some from both the culture and from politics.
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