Later, she would remember these years, and realize with astonishment that she had, by fifteen, decided on most of the assumptions she would carry for the rest of her life: that people were essentially not evil, that perfection was death, that life was better than order and a little chaos good for the soul. Most important, this life was all. Unfortunately, she forgot these things, and had to remember them the hard way.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the early life decisions and beliefs that shape an individual's worldview, as well as the journey of rediscovering those insights later in life.
Marilyn French's quote captures the essence of formative years where one develops core beliefs about life, humanity, and the balance between chaos and order. It highlights how these early assumptions can be forgotten over time, leading to a poignant realization later in life that the simplicity and truths perceived in youth can provide a guiding framework for adulthood, despite the challenges of forgetting them and having to relearn the lessons the hard way.
In practice
During a speech on personal growth, this quote is perfect to emphasize the importance of self-discovery.
S and M is only the expression in the bedroom of an oppressive-submissive relation which can happen also in the kitchen or at the factory, can happen between people of any gender. There is obviously something titillating about these relationships, but it isn't the sexual components that makes them ugly, they're uglier elsewhere. Nothing sexual is depraved. Only cruelty is depraved, and that's another matter.
To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.
In a great gasp, puts her head in her hands again and cries as if her throat were a cave, as if the howling winds came from her belly, she cries like a storm that will never end.
Women are afraid in a world in which almost half the population bears the guise of the predator, in which no factor - age, dress, or color - distinguishes a man who will harm a woman from one who will not.
When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That's progress?
'I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes,' she said. So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes.
Commonplaceness, the surrender to the average, that good which is not bad but still the enemy of the best - That is our besetting danger.
In this oasis of quiet, before the wonderful spectacle of nature, one easily experiences how profitable silence is, a good that today is ever more rare... In reality, only in silence does man succeed in hearing in the depth of his conscience the voice of God, which really makes him free. And vacations can help to rediscover and cultivate this indispensable interior dimension of human life.
When you have those two languages - an analytic one like English and a synthetic, very sensual thing like Russian, you get almost a psychotic sense of humanity that permeates nearly everything. It can help you understand, and it can discourage you, because you see how little can be done.
The limits of pleasure are as yet neither known nor fixed, and that we have no idea what degree of bodily bliss we are capable of attaining.
Talent, will and genius are natural phenomena like the lake, the volcano, the mountain, the wind, the star, the cloud.
When I was willing to let go of what I wanted, I received what was truly mine. I’ve realized that the latter is always the greater gift.
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