Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.
Interpretation
Solitude suggests that even in isolation, we affect the lives around us and the choices we make have profound consequences.
In this quote, Barbara Kingsolver explores the intricate connections between individuals and their environment, emphasizing that solitude does not mean disconnection. Each quiet moment and choice made in solitude reverberates through the world, influencing relationships and interactions within the ecosystem, reminding us that every decision, no matter how small, carries the weight of its impact on others.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about the importance of community can highlight how our actions, even when alone, matter.
Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
Loss of social standing is an ever-present threat for individuals whose social acceptance is based on behavioral traits rather than unconditional human value.
There is just as much evil in all of us as there is good. We're all continuously guilty, even if we're not doing it intentionally to be evil. Here we are sitting in luxury hotels, living it up on the the backs of others in the third world. We all have a guilty conscience, but we do very little about it.
There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.
One of the earliest resurrection scenes in the Bible is that of Thomas demanding evidence - he wanted to see, to touch, to prove. Those who question and probe and debate are heirs of the apostles just as much as the most fervent of believers.
Prayer is the preface to the book of Christian living; the text of the new life sermon; the girding on of the armor for battle; the pilgrim's preparation for his journey. It must be supplemented by action or it amounts to nothing.
Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, When I give I give myself.
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