Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
Susan SontagRead
Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Lying serves as an easy way for individuals to protect themselves from truth or vulnerability.
This quote by Susan Sontag suggests that people often resort to lying as a basic instinct to shield themselves from harm or to avoid uncomfortable truths. Instead of facing difficult situations or acknowledging their real feelings, individuals might find solace in deception as a defense mechanism, implementing it as a means of self-preservation in interpersonal interactions.
Themes
LyingSelf-DefenseTruthDeceptionPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion about honesty in relationships, this quote could illustrate the temptation to avoid the truth.
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Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
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Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
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In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.
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It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.
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That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology.
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I want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock, faith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds are fictitious, like the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia’s Chair, the Big Dipper; the only thing real in them is the stars, and the only thing real in the creeds is the soul’s aspiration toward the Infinite.
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Realize that illness and other temporal setbacks often come to us from the hand of God our Lord, and are sent to help us know ourselves better, to free ourselves of the love of created things, and to reflect on the brevity of this life and, thus, to prepare ourselves for the life which is without end.
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