When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that acts of kindness and beauty may go unnoticed, yet they remain valuable regardless of recognition.
John Lennon's quote reflects the idea that noble and beautiful actions can often go unrecognized by others, just as the magnificent sunrise occurs without an audience. It encourages individuals not to feel disheartened by a lack of acknowledgment for their good deeds, as the intrinsic value of these actions endures, similar to nature's beauty that exists independent of onlookers.
In practice
Sharing this quote at a community service event to inspire volunteers.
When I get older losing my hair many years from now. Will you still be sending me a Valentine. Birthday greetings, bottle of wine? If I'd been out till quarter to three would you lock the door? Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm sixty-four?
The writing of the Beatles, or John and Paul's contribution to the Beatles in the late sixties - had a kind of depth to it, a more mature, more intellectual approach. We were different people, we were older. We knew each other in all kinds of different ways than when we wrote together as teenagers and in our older twenties.
I put things down on sheets of paper and stuff them in my pockets. When I have enough, I have a book.
Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn't enough and you have to go and get shot or something.
I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.
I've been baking bread and looking after the baby...Everyone else who has asked me that question over the last few years says. 'But what else have you been doing?' To which I say, 'Are you kidding?' Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows, is a full-time job. After I made the loaves [of bread,] I felt like I had conquered something. But as I watched the bread being eaten, I thought, Well, Jesus, don't I get a gold record or knighted or nothing?
Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.
Anything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible... Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.
When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been...frighten ed enough to hold it back. It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.
A pioneer is not someone who makes her own soap. She is one who takes up her burdens and walks toward the future.
Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.
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