I've observed over and over that people seem to get a much deeper sense of fulfillment out of something they've done as an act of service than out of the things they do for themselves.
Interpretation
Acts of service provide deeper fulfillment than self-serving actions.
This quote by Edward Norton emphasizes the profound sense of satisfaction and joy that individuals often experience when they engage in selfless acts of service. It suggests that true fulfillment derives not from personal gains but from positively impacting the lives of others, highlighting the importance and value of generosity and compassion in human experience.
In practice
In a speech about community engagement, one could invoke this quote to inspire people to volunteer.
Look, you've got a generation of people coming along who are going to form their own new relationship with the idea of supporting the causes that they care about or changing the world. And these people are not going to do it the way our parents do it.
Basically, I think 21st century conservation is moving toward preserving ecosystems by dealing with the needs of people.
I'm fascinated by the ways in which people express themselves, because their responses are often counter to what they're actually feeling. Like when they're frightened, they tend to freeze. When they're angry, it doesn't always come out as volume. There are wonderful contradictions in the way that people express their emotions.
I think there is a serious corruption in the idea sold through advertising that you can attain spiritual peace through lifestyle and the notion of building your happiness from the outside-in by acquiring things . . . which if you think about it, is the essence of advertising
Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.
In drama, I think, the audience is a willing participant. It's suspending a certain kind of disbelief to try to get something out of a story.
You got to take the crookeds with the straights. That's what Papa used to say.
Ya know, right now the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all I thank God I'm alive today, and I mean that. I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing.
Dreaming is the poetry of Life, and we must be forgiven if we indulge in it a little.
People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying school masters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years. Above all -- we were wet.
The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.
I can no more think of my own life without thinking of wine and wines and where they grew for me and why I drank them when I did and why I picked the grapes and where I opened the oldest procurable bottles, and all that, than I can remember living before I breathed.
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