He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength.
Interpretation
Misfortune can lead to wisdom and strength, setting individuals apart positively.
This quote by Cormac McCarthy suggests that experiencing misfortune can provide individuals with unique insights and resilience. Rather than being solely viewed as a burden, these challenges are transformative events that ultimately contribute to one's strength and character, distinguishing those who have faced adversity from others in meaningful ways.
In practice
In a motivational speech to encourage resilience in tough times.
Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.
See the hand that nursed the serpent. The fine hasped pipes of her fingerbones. The skin bewenned and speckled. The veins are milkblue and bulby. A thin gold ring set with diamonds. That raised the once child's heart of her to agonies of passion before I was. Here is the anguish of mortality. Hopes wrecked, love sundered. See the mother sorrowing. How everything that I was warned of's come to pass.
What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.
The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.
Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.
Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.
Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
Do not, however, mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic.
If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just donβt do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.
He that will be angry for anything will be angry for nothing.
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