The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anais NinRead
We celebrate peace. Yet we pay no attention to the ways of curing aggression in human beings. And when one sees in psychoanalysis hostility disappearing as people conquer their fears, one wonders if the cure is not there.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the contradiction between celebrating peace and ignoring the roots of aggression in humanity.
Anais Nin highlights the paradox of society's focus on celebrating peace while neglecting to address the underlying causes of aggression within individuals. She suggests that understanding and overcoming personal fears through psychoanalysis can lead to a reduction in hostility, proposing that internal healing is key to external harmony.
In practice
This quote would be ideal for a psychology seminar discussing the importance of mental health in achieving social peace.
The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anxiety is love's greatest killer, because it is like the stranglehold of the drowning.
The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.
We have been poisoned by fairy tales.
But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.
I gathered poets around me and we all wrote beautiful erotica. As we were condemned to focus only on sensuality, we had violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica became a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery.
Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.
The faith of those who live their faith is a serene faith. What you long for will be given you; what you love will be yours for ever. Since it is by giving alms that everything is pure for you, you will also receive that blessing which is promised next by the Lord: the Godhead that no man has been able to see. In the inexpressible joy of this eternal vision, human nature will possess what eye has not seen or ear heard, what man's heart has never conceived.
It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.
If people who cherish freedom, who know the importance of mutual respect and are aware of the imperative necessity to establish a constructive and critical debate, if these people are not ready to speak out, to be more committed and visible, then we can expect sad, painful tomorrows. The choice is ours.
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.
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