If smallness was fortune, then I had come across a treasure, infinitesimal and beyond value. I felt lucky. You had to decide what was estimable and precious in your life and set out to find it. The objects you valued defined you.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that true value is found in small, meaningful things, and that one's priorities shape their identity.
In this quote, Pat Conroy reflects on the notion that what we consider valuable in life goes beyond material wealth; instead, true treasure lies in the small, often overlooked aspects of our existence. The emphasis is on personal reflection and decision-making regarding what we cherish, suggesting that our values not only shape our experiences but also define who we are as individuals. It calls for a deeper exploration of what we deem precious, advocating for a conscious effort to seek out and appreciate these treasures.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech about appreciating life's simple pleasures.
It enclosed us in its laceries as we watched the moon spill across the Atlantic like wine from an overturned glass. With the light all around us, we felt secret in that moon-infused water like pearls forming in the soft tissues of oysters.
A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal.
Every woman I had ever met who walked through the world appraised and classified by an extraordinary physicality had also received the keys to an unbearable solitude. It was the coefficient of their beauty, the price they had to pay.
Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.
I loved my parents... but that can never change the fact that my father's violence ruined my childhood.
The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself.
It was the first and most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word -- on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray.
I believe our philosophy of conscious capitalism will eventually be widely adopted primarily because it is a better way to do business, and it creates more total value in the world for all of its stakeholders.
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.
The greatest myth about mass incarceration is that it has been driven by crime and crime rates. It's just not true.
Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy.
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