Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.
Interpretation
The quote warns about the limitations of intellectual knowledge, suggesting that it can lead to confusion and emotional disconnect.
Anne Sexton's quote reflects on the paradox of intellect, where an overabundance of knowledge can create a disconnection from genuine understanding and emotional depth. It suggests that while intellect can provide a sense of superiority, it may ultimately leave individuals feeling lost or emotionally unfulfilled, emphasizing the importance of balance between intellect and heartfelt wisdom.
In practice
In a discussion on philosophy, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of emotional intelligence alongside intellectual pursuits.
The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.
Do you like me?” No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven.
Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.
Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains.
I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float.
I am your dwarf. I am the enemy within. I am the boss of your dreams. See. Your hand shakes. It is not palsy or booze. It is your Doppelganger trying to get out. Beware...Beware...
When you are warm-hearted, there is no room for anger, jealousy or insecurity.
He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.
A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse.
Sober up, and you see and hear everything you'd been able to avoid hearing before.
My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance--this is why people tell me secrets--my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is ever lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound.
He who has lost his money-belt will go where you wish.
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