You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
Interpretation
Taking responsibility for the relationships and bonds we create is essential and enduring.
This quote emphasizes the idea that when we build connections and form relationships with others, we take on a lifelong obligation to care for those we have bonded with. The act of 'taming' implies that we have invested time and emotion into these relationships, making it our duty to nurture and protect them throughout our lives.
In practice
During a speech about mentorship, you could quote this to illustrate the long-term obligations that come with guiding another person.
Grown-ups love figures... When you tell them you've made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? " Instead they demand "How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? " Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.
Attitude is a paintbrush. It colors everything!
Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses.
In those days, I didn't understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contadictory! But I was too young to know how to love her.
When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey.
When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.
The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.
There are no experts in the company of Jesus. We are all beginners, necessarily followers, because we donβt know where we are going.
We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old. This seems to be close to the heart of that mystery. I know no more now than I ever did about the far side of death as the last letting-go of all, but now I know that I do not need to know, and that I do not need to be afraid of not knowing. God knows. That is all that matters.
To say that there is patriarchy in Arab culture is not denying women agency.
I want to feel my own nothingness, I want to give myself up in absolute resignation to God, to lie prostrate and passive at His feet, with no other disposition in my heart than that of merging my will into His will, and no other language in my mouth than that of prayer for the perfecting of His strength in my weakness.
Whereas it is difficult for everything to work out easily, A man cannot even afford to be a human
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