Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.
Interpretation
People often avoid discussing certain topics because they are preoccupied with them mentally.
This quote by John Steinbeck highlights the contradiction between what people say and what they feel. When someone claims they do not wish to discuss a matter, it often indicates that the issue is consuming their thoughts, suggesting a deeper internal conflict that they perhaps wish to conceal or are unable to articulate.
In practice
In a discussion about mental health, one might use this quote to emphasize how people often struggle to talk about their inner battles.
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
At one point, as Samuel urges Adam to raise his boys well regardless of the blood that might be in them, Adam tells him, "You can't make a race horse of a pig." Samuel replies, "No, but you can make a very fast pig.
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
Again: there is nothing inherently superior about resistance. All our claims for the righteousness of resistance rest on the rightness of the claim that the resisters are acting in the name of justice. And the justice of the cause does not depend on, and is not enhanced by, the virtue of those who make the assertion. It depends first and last on the truth of a description of a state of affairs that is, truly, unjust and unnecessary.
You need seek God neither below or above.He is no farther away than the door of the heart.
"You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry."
Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.
OUR ORDINATION: Sir Isaac Newton, 1642 β 1747 About the times of the End, a body of men will be raised up who will turn their attention to the prophecies, and insist upon their literal interpretation, in the midst of much clamor and opposition.
Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.
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