We die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars.
Interpretation
Life is a continuous cycle of growth and change, but we carry our experiences with us.
This quote reflects on the nature of existence, suggesting that as we age and accumulate experiences, we undergo gradual transformations while still holding onto the essence of who we are. The metaphor of dying a little each day implies that with every moment, we shed parts of our old selves, yet the scars we bear symbolize our past experiences that shape our identities.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a motivational speech about personal development.
Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man’s memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull.
As a child there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one...each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment.
All lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days, but those tales grow too and shake us just as fierce.
Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you'll find an edge to cut you.
There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.
Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.
Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.
What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes.
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