A story is like something you wind out of yourself. Like a spider, it is a web you weave, and you love your story like a child.
Katherine Anne PorterRead
They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that indulgence can sometimes lead to a profound inner experience resembling that of self-denial.
Katherine Anne Porter reflects on the paradox of how a life filled with excess can produce an appearance of suffering and spiritual depth that is often associated with asceticism. This observation implies that external appearances can be misleading, and that the true nature of a person’s inner spiritual state may not align with their lifestyle choices, encouraging us to question conventional ideas about morality and spirituality.
Themes
DissipationAsceticismSpiritualityLife ChoicesAppearance
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the meaning of life at a philosophy seminar.
More from Katherine Anne Porter
All quotes →Writing, in any sense that matters, cannot be taught. It can only be learned by each separate one of us in his own way, by the use of his own powers of imagination and perception, the ability to learn the lessons he has set for himself.
Katherine Anne PorterRead
You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.
Katherine Anne PorterRead
Miracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect them.
Katherine Anne PorterRead
Now and again thousands of memories _x000D_ converge, harmonize, _x000D_ arrange themselves around a central idea _x000D_ in a coherent form, _x000D_ and I write a story.
Katherine Anne PorterRead
Childhood is the fiery furnace in which we are melted down to essentials and that essential shaped for good.
Katherine Anne PorterRead
Similar quotes
Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.
Emile ZolaRead
Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.
Shimon PeresRead
We have a new generation of very rich people who want to do more with their money than buy a lot of expensive toys. They want to live meaningful lives.
Peter SingerRead
My,' she said. 'We're lucky that you found the place.' We're always lucky,' I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on too.
Ernest HemingwayRead
Essential characteristics of a gentleman: The will to put himself in the place of others; the horror of forcing others into positions from which he would himself recoil; and the power to do what seems to him to be right without considering what others may say or think.
John GalsworthyRead
There are many gods . . . gods of beauty and magic, gods of the garden, gods in our own backyards, but we go off to foreign countries to find new ones, we reach to the stars to find new ones--. . . . The god of the church is a jealous god; he cannot live in peace with other gods.
Rudolfo AnayaRead