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.
If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.
Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let Time try.
Who can hope to be safe? who sufficiently cautious?_x000D_ _x000D_ Guard himself as he may, every moment's an ambush.
It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity.
The just is close to the people's heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.
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