...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
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.
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
All quotes →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.
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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.
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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?
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I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.
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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
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