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...
Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideasl The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves--along with the renewed courage to try them out.
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim.
A spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.
Hell is full of good intentions and wills.
You know, many people have said that I'm on the edge and I'm maverick for some of the big operations that I've done. I'm not at all. I pray; I ask God to give me wisdom, 'Should I do it?', guidance in terms of how to do it, who to consult with. All those kind of things are incredibly important.
Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
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