You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of personal freedom in seeking one's own balance between pleasure and pain.
David Foster Wallace highlights the fundamental right of individuals to define and pursue their own vision of happiness, irrespective of societal norms. The idea that each person's quest for an optimal balance between pleasure and pain is 'utterly sacrosanct' suggests that this pursuit is sacred and paramount to the human experience, underscoring the value of personal autonomy and subjective well-being.
Themes
AutonomyPleasurePainHappinessFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about finding personal happiness.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes →Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
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It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
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Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
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Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
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Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead
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