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I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second.
Mary Oliver
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote highlights the distinct prioritization of the sacred over the practical in Indian culture.

Mary Oliver reflects on her experience in India, suggesting that the culture places a higher value on spirituality and holiness than on pragmatic usefulness. This perspective invites a deeper appreciation for the beauty and significance of life beyond mere functionality, encouraging a holistic view that embraces both the sacred and the practical.

Themes

IndiaSpiritualityHolinessCultureUsefulness

In practice

Example use cases

This quote is perfect for a travel blog discussing cultural insights.

More from Mary Oliver

I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.
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At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all.
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I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.
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For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
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If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like.
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Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
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