The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.
William EmpsonRead
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that negative experiences or failures can linger and have a lasting detrimental effect on an individual.
William Empson's quote reflects on the idea that failures and negative experiences can permeate one's overall well-being, like poison in a bloodstream. It emphasizes that it is not merely the act of trying or failing that wears one down, but rather the accumulation of unresolved pain and disappointment that continues to affect a person long after the initial events have passed.
Themes
FailurePainMental_HealthWellbeingRecovery
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming personal struggles.
More from William Empson
All quotes βWaiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end. _x000D_ What is there to be or do?_x000D_ What's become of me or you?_x000D_ Are we kind or are we true?_x000D_ Sitting two and two, boys, waiting for the end.
William EmpsonRead
Similar quotes
So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
Marquis De SadeRead
I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.
Charles DickensRead
All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.
Charles BaudelaireRead
The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell.
Orson Scott CardRead
You take fantasies, which for thousands of years belonged to the religious realm - overcoming death or our merging with the universe - and you suddenly start talking about them in a more technical perspective as something that can be achieved, not after you die with the help of supernatural beings, but in this very life with the help of technology.
Yuval Noah HarariRead
Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.
Adlai E. StevensonRead