QuoteProject
I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.
Sylvia Plath
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Life is filled with desires and limitations; we can't experience everything we wish to.

In this quote, Sylvia Plath expresses a profound yearning to explore the entirety of human experience, including the desire to read, learn, and live various lives. However, she recognizes the inherent limitations that prevent us from doing so, highlighting the bittersweet nature of human existence, where our aspirations often exceed our capabilities, leading to a sense of longing and confinement.

Themes

LifeExperienceLimitationsDesiresYearning

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech about pursuing dreams despite life's constraints.

More from Sylvia Plath

...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
Sylvia PlathRead
The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.
Sylvia PlathRead
It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative--which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.
Sylvia PlathRead
You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
Sylvia PlathRead
I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.
Sylvia PlathRead
It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual.
Sylvia PlathRead

Similar quotes

Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.
Elizabeth StroutRead
The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.
Curtis SittenfeldRead
Even for a girl like me, then, there comes a day when she can stop surviving and start living. To survive, you have to look good or talk good. But to end your story well-- here is the truth-- you have to talk yourself out of it.
Chris CleaveRead
Life is a play that does not allow testing. So, sing, cry, dance, laugh and live intensely, before the curtain closes and the piece ends with no applause.
Charlie ChaplinRead
The living are more demanding; the dead can wait.
Primo LeviRead
It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.
Laura Ingalls WilderRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.