You can't quantify human pain the way you can measure out sugar. Death comes one individual at a time.
Yann MartelRead
I wept heartily over this poor little deceased soul. It was the first sentient being I had ever killed. I was now a killer. I was now as guilty as Cain. I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious, and now I had blood on my hands. It's a terrible burden to carry. All sentient life is sacred.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the deep guilt and moral conflict experienced after taking a life, emphasizing the sanctity of all sentient beings.
In this quote, Yann Martel explores the profound emotional and ethical impact of taking another life, as experienced by a young boy who views himself as innocent and virtuous. The reference to Cain illustrates the weight of guilt and the acknowledgment that all sentient life is sacred, revealing the inner turmoil faced when one acts against their moral beliefs. It serves as a reminder of the responsibilities that come with the ability to make choices, especially when those choices lead to irreversible consequences.
Themes
GuiltSacredSentientLifeMoralChoiceInnocence
In practice
Example use cases
In a high school ethics class discussion about the value of life.
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
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.
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
Similar quotes
So long as large sums of money are involved - and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal - it is literally impossible to stop the traffic, or even to make a serious reduction in its scope.
Milton FriedmanRead
No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.
PythagorasRead
You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.
Edmund BurkeRead
Yes, hope is a strange thing. Peace at last. But at what price?
Khaled HosseiniRead
The media's power is frail. Without the people's support, it can be shut off with the ease of turning a light switch.
Corazon AquinoRead
Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage all around. Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering on them.
Peter SingerRead