You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
If you've never wept and want to, have a child.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Having a child can evoke deep emotional experiences, including the potential for profound love and sorrow.
David Foster Wallace's quote suggests that parenthood is a profound emotional journey, filled with the capacity for tears and intense feelings. It implies that the experience of raising a child opens one up to the full spectrum of human emotions, bringing both joy and heartache, which can lead to personal growth and deeper connections.
Themes
ParenthoodEmotionsChildTearsLove
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the challenges and joys of parenthood.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes βEverything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
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It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
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Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
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Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
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Nothing is so much needed as a secure family life for a people seeking to rise out of poverty and backwardness.
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I now see that is a woman's God-given role to tend to the home and take care of the children: it's just that the entire planet is our home, and every child on it is one of our children.
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Some mothers in today's world feel "cumbered" by home duties and are thus attracted by other more "romantic" challenges. Such women could make the same error of perspective that Martha made. The woman, for instance, who deserts the cradle in order to help defend civilization against the barbarians may well later meet, among the barbarians, her own neglected child.
Neal A. MaxwellRead