I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity. I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not - more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving.
Interpretation
True serenity comes from focusing on loving others instead of seeking their love.
In this quote, Beverly Sills reflects on reaching a stage of personal maturity where external validation becomes less significant. She emphasizes that genuine contentment arises not from being loved, but from the ability to love others, which transforms one's perspective on life into one of selflessness and generosity.
In practice
This quote can inspire a community service event focused on helping others.
I began by listening to my mother's collection of Amelita Galli-Curci and Lily Pons records, and then was taken (at age eight) to hear Pons at a Met performance of Lakme. It was at that moment that I decided to become an opera star. Not just an opera singer, but an opera star!
I was always the first person in the theater all the time. If it was an eight-o'clock curtain, I was here at five-thirty, and it wasn't that I needed to vocalize, because I was all warmed up. I couldn't wait for it to begin.
A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.
I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar.
There is no shortcut to anyplace worth going.
Acts that proceed from your calm center are always more effective than acts that proceed from fear, guilt, or anger.
It is not a lucky word, this name impossible; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths.
Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.
it's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly.
Anxiety is the gap between the NOW and the THEN. So if you are in the NOW, you can't be anxious, because your excitement flows immediately into ongoing spontaneous activity.
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.