I was thanking him for...well, for something I'm not sure I can explain even now. For showing me that something besides cruelty could be found in the world, I suppose.
Interpretation
This quote reflects gratitude for discovering kindness in a world often overshadowed by cruelty.
In this quote, Arthur Golden expresses a complex sense of thankfulness towards someone who has revealed a deeper layer of humanity amidst the harshness of the world. It highlights the importance of recognizing and appreciating the goodness that exists, even when it is difficult to articulate or fully comprehend.
In practice
During a speech about human resilience, you could use this quote to emphasize the importance of kindness.
We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I never imagined such a thing could occur within our very selves.
An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.
As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.
For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.
The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.
He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.
The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.
There is a certain kind of maturity that can be attained only through the discipline of suffering.
Is detachment the answer to freedom? No, because detachment is negative - it is to be without. The answer must be positive - I must replace what I have with something better.
Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes it is water. At that moment, all fear of death disappears.
The rich can buy everything but health, virtue, friendship, wit, good looks, love, pride, intelligence, grace, and, if you need it, happiness.
We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous as much through exile as homecoming, as much through loss as gain, as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due.
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