Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.
Henry MillerRead
What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?
Interpretation
The way we discover truth is less important than the fact that we embrace and live by it.
Henry Miller's quote suggests that the process of finding truth is secondary to the importance of accepting and adhering to it once it is discovered. It highlights that regardless of how we come to realize what is true, the ultimate goal is to use that truth to guide our lives, emphasizing the value of authenticity and conviction in our beliefs and actions.
In practice
In a speech about personal authenticity, one could use this quote to encourage others to seek and live by their own truths.
Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.
I saw through to the last sign and symbol, but I could not read her face. I could see only the eyes shining through, huge, fleshy-like luminous beasts, as though I were swimming behind them in the electric effluvia of her incandescent vision.
The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
Great God! What have I turned into? What right have you people to clutter up my life, steal my time, probe my soul, suckle my thoughts, have me for your companion, confidant, and information bureau? What do you take me for? Am I an entertainer on salary, required every evening to play an intellectual farce under your stupid noses? Am I a slave, bought and paid for, to crawl on my belly in front of you idlers and lay at your feet all that I do and all that I know?
We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown.
To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
What good is a character who's always winking at the audience to let them in on the secret?
Death is not an ending, but a symbol of movement along the path upon which we are all traveling. As it may be painful to lose contact with the physical aspect of one we love, the Spirit can never be lost. We have been and always will be a part of each other.
Soon comes the cold, and the night that never ends.
Fool that I was, upon my eagle's wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, and now he mounts above me.
Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls, and through those holes we can get a glimpse of the other and sometimes even like what we see.
The death of a language. The word has the same kind of reluctant resonance as it has when we talk about the death of a person. And indeed, that's how it should be. For that's how it is. A language dies only when the last person who speaks it dies.
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