Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.
Eugene IonescoRead
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores the concept of the 'death instinct' and suggests that embracing our mortality can lead to a more liberated existence.
Eugene Ionesco's quote delves into the philosophical idea that a fundamental aspect of living beings is the 'death instinct', which is often suppressed. He proposes that rather than fighting against this inherent desire for rest and freedom from suffering, we should acknowledge it and cultivate it, allowing ourselves to confront our fears and embrace the idea of mortality. This perspective argues that true liberation comes from accepting our existential realities.
Themes
DeathInstinctFreedomSufferingPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophy class discussing existentialism, a student might quote Ionesco to initiate a debate on mortality.
More from Eugene Ionesco
All quotes →No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
Eugene IonescoRead
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
Eugene IonescoRead
Language should almost break up or explode in its fruitless effort to contain so many meanings.
Eugene IonescoRead
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
Eugene IonescoRead
Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.
Eugene IonescoRead
Similar quotes
We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others... Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with...the other nations of the world.
Robert Baden-PowellRead
I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this?
Steven WeinbergRead
Death accompanies us at every step and enables us to use those moments when life smiles at us to feel more deeply the sweetness of life. The more certain the end, the more tempting the minute.
Theodor FontaneRead
No matter what lens you use, no matter what speed the film, no matter how you develop it, no matter how you print it, you cannot say more than you can see.
Paul StrandRead
I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
Smedley ButlerRead
The law of the Creator, which invests every human being with an inalienable title to freedom, cannot be repealed by any interior law which asserts that man is property.
Salmon P. ChaseRead