Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
Interpretation
Life can often be dull, but it's important to find joy and avoid expressing negativity.
John Berryman suggests that while life may feel uneventful or mundane, especially in the company of friends, openly admitting to such feelings can dampen the spirit of companionship. Instead, the quote encourages us to focus on the positive aspects and seek out meaning and enjoyment in our experiences, even when they seem ordinary.
In practice
During a speech about embracing life's challenges, one could use this quote to illustrate the importance of a positive outlook.
There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still).
We must travel in the direction of our fear.
The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business.
One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be.
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatedly) 'Ever to confess you're bored means you have no inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing.
Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.
I don't regret anything I've ever done; as long as I enjoyed it at the time
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.
By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream
I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom. This, and this, and this, I said to him. I did not have to fear that I spoke too much. I did not have to worry that I was too slender, or too slow. This and this and this! I taught him how to skip stones, and he taught me how to carve wood. I could feel every nerve in my body, every brush of air against my skin.
In her opinion, the parrots were annoying arrogant. You could buy the most beautiful one in town, she observed, but that won't make it love you. You could feed it, care for it and exclaim over its loveliness, but there was nothing to guarantee that it would stay home with you. There had to be a lesson in there somewhere.
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