I think I give the impression of being a romantic, and I think inside I'm quite severe. But some might say they had the opposite impression of me.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the complexity of human personality, suggesting that people can have contrasting inner and outer selves.
Tom Stoppard's quote reveals the duality of human nature, where one's public persona may be vastly different from their internal experience. It highlights the idea that people often carry layers of complexity, leading to different perceptions from others. The reference to being both romantic and severe suggests that individuals can embody seemingly contradictory qualities, further emphasizing the nuanced nature of personality and the way we perceive ourselves versus how others perceive us.
In practice
During a psychology lecture about the duality of identity.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
When you make your peace with authority, you become authority.
We cannot suppose therefore that God has made an order of beings, with such mental qualities and powers, for the sole purpose of being used as beasts, or instruments of labour.
That which corrodes the souls of the persecuted is the monstrous inner agreement with the prevailing prejudice against them.
What should I believe? thought Shadow, and the voice came back to him from somewhere deep beneath the world, in a bass rumble: Believe everything.
Two kinds of people live a life without care: one kind are extremely worthy of praise, the other kind are extremely worthy of criticism. The first are those who care nothing for the pleasures of the world and the second (i.e. those who are deserving of criticism) care nothing for haya or modesty.
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