Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our actions shape our dreams and identity, rather than the dreams shaping our actions.
This quote by Barbara Kingsolver emphasizes the idea that our daily activities and choices significantly influence our aspirations and the essence of who we are. Just as a dog chases rabbits and dreams of them, our passions and pursuits reflect our character and ultimately form our dreams, suggesting that personal agency plays a vital role in defining our lives.
Themes
DreamsActionsIdentitySoulChoices
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about pursuing passions and personal growth.
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.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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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If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.
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Let us be merciful in our mental judgments of our brothers and sisters, for, in truth, we are all one, and the more deeply they seem to err, the more urgent is the need for us to help them with the right thought, and so make it easier for them to get free.
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