Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
One of the very first things I figured out about life...is that it's better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being hopeful leads to a more enjoyable life than being cynical.
This quote emphasizes the importance of maintaining a hopeful outlook on life. Barbara Kingsolver suggests that regardless of the challenges we face, adopting a positive and optimistic mindset makes our experiences more enjoyable, contrasting it with the dreariness of cynicism and negativity.
Themes
HopeOptimismLifePositivityCynicism
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming adversity.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes →Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
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I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
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I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
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Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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