A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us.
Interpretation
A single event can reveal unexpected aspects of our personality or potential.
This quote emphasizes that particular experiences can catalyze profound transformations within us, unveiling parts of ourselves that we might not have been aware of. It suggests that life is full of surprises and that a unique moment can lead us to discover latent traits or strengths we didn't know we possessed.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing life's challenges.
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.
Caught in a racial uproar, people make all sorts of promises to make amends. Whatever they do tends to be heavy on symbolism and light on lasting change.
By changing the way you do routine things you allow a new man to grow inside you.
Great upheavals produce shock waves that widen cracks in political, economic, and security orders. Sometimes the old orders break. Yet it can be in the power of leaders and peoples to shape the directions of change.
'Middle class' used to be synonymous with secure, with steady, with boring, because middle-class people were people who were pretty much safe from the time they first started work on through retirement and until their deaths. No longer.
Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, "What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?" We have to hear that question from them, now.
I'd like to tidy up the entire planet. I would go anywhere if there were something that needs tidying.
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