You need the living, loving heart of living, loving men and women to quicken other hearts, which can live too and love too, and, in their turn, will quicken others which are dying now.
Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds - all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Focus on one problem at a time rather than overwhelming yourself with past, present, and future worries.
This quote by Edward Everett Hale emphasizes the importance of handling challenges one at a time. Many individuals burden themselves with multiple troubles, including those from the past, those occurring in the present, and those they anticipate in the future. By doing so, they create unnecessary stress and anxiety, which can hinder their ability to effectively cope with the issues at hand. The advice is to concentrate on the current trouble instead of letting oneself be overwhelmed by the totality of worries.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about stress management.
More from Edward Everett Hale
All quotes →'Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?' No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.
The Resurrection miracle is nothing to you and me if it is only an event of eighteen centuries bygone. Unless we can live the immortal life - unless we can receive God to his own home in these hearts of ours - the texts are nothing to us unless these daily lives illustrate them.
It seems as if, for every dragon head that is lopped off, two more terrible appear. Seems so. But in truth, Life is gaining all the while. Brute force, such power as there seems to be in things, cannot stand against ideas which are eternal.
Life seeks life and loves life. The opening of a catkin of a willow, in the flight of the butterfly, in the chirping of a tree-toad or the sweep of an eagle - my life loves to see how others live, exults in their joy, and so far is partner in their great concern.
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.
Similar quotes
We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.
One of my surgical giant friends had in his operating room a sign "If the operation is difficult, you aren't doing it right." What he meant was, you have to plan every operation You cannot ever be casual You have to realize that any operation is a potential fatality.
On matters beyond his ken a gentleman speaks with caution. If names are not right, words are misused. When words are misused, affairs go wrong. When affairs go wrong, courtesy and music droop, law and justice fail. And when law and justice fail them, a people can move neither hand nor foot. So a gentleman must be ready to put names in speech, to put words into deeds. A gentleman is nowise careless of words.
There's no such thing as good weather, or bad weather. There's just weather and your attitude towards it.
Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [...] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture.
Just because you’re allowed to use magic now you don’t have to whip your wands out for every tiny little thing!