Being someone who had had a very difficult childhood, a very difficult adolescence - it had to do with not quite poverty, but close. It had to do with being brought up in a family where no one spoke English, no one could read or write English. It had to do with death and disease and lots of other things. I was a little prone to depression.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on overcoming a challenging upbringing marked by adversity and emotional struggles.
Sherwin B. Nuland discusses his difficult childhood and adolescence, highlighting the impact of poverty, language barriers, and personal loss. He acknowledges the emotional toll these experiences had on him, including a predisposition to depression. Ultimately, the quote speaks to resilience in the face of adversity and the complexities of personal growth influenced by one's background.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming hardships, one might quote Nuland to illustrate personal resilience.
Where nothing in a person's earlier years lends itself to an old age devoted to continuing intellectual and physical pursuits, a late-life interest in Tolstoy or even crossword puzzles is unlikely to appear, no matter the urging by well-intentioned social workers or people like me who write books about it.
Where the despair of loneliness and poverty haunts every hour, the optimism to embark on new projects cannot find a place to alight on the brain's cortex. Poverty itself is an enormous obstacle to an enlightened and enlightening - not to say healthy - old age.
I think when you think of death as being part of the life cycle and recognize that death is an inevitability for our species because the world has to be renewed with each death, then the hope becomes when it is renewed it will be renewed by people on whom I have had some influence for good.
Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.
The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it. This is a form of hope that we can all achieve, and it is the most abiding of all. Hope resides in the meaning of what our lives have been.
The dignity we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives.
Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervour.
You give up your childhood. You miss proms and games and high-school events, and people say it's awful... I say it was a good trade. You miss something but I think I gained more than I lost.
How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here? Said louisa as she touched her heart.
Sometimes the lights all shining on me, other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it's been.
This is the Hour of Lead- Remembered, if outlived, As freezing persons, recollect the Snow- First-Chill-then Stupor- then the letting go---
I remember watching the mascara tears flood the ivories and I thought, "It's OK to be sad." I've been trained to love my darkness.
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