If you send up a weather vane or put your thumb up in the air every time you want to do something different, to find out what people are going to think about it, you're going to limit yourself. That's a very strange way to live.
Jessye NormanRead
I knew that I was loved. And that's such an important thing. And, of course, at such an early age, you take it for granted. Of course your parents love you. Of course Mrs. Hubert across the street loves you and your godmother loves you and your grandparents love you.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses the deep value of knowing one is loved, often taken for granted in childhood.
Jessye Norman highlights the fundamental importance of love in a person's life, particularly during childhood. She reflects on how the love from family and community members is often assumed and taken for granted when we are young, yet it lays the foundation for our self-worth and emotional well-being.
Themes
LoveChildhoodFamilyCommunityEmotional Well-Being
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of family, one might use this quote to illustrate how foundational love is for growth.
More from Jessye Norman
All quotes →My parents said to us, practically on a daily basis, that we were as good as anyone else on this earth, and that we would simply have to work harder in order to show that.
Jessye NormanRead
Problems arise in that one has to find a balance between what people need from you and what you need for yourself.
Jessye NormanRead
I am grateful that my horizons were not narrowed at the outset.
Jessye NormanRead
As for my voice, it cannot be categorised - and I like it that way, because I sing things that would be considered in the dramatic, mezzo or spinto range.
Jessye NormanRead
It is still more likely that a woman's power would be seen as aggression, and a man's power would be seen as assertion.
Jessye NormanRead
Similar quotes
It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.
Eleanor RooseveltRead
Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.
VoltaireRead
Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.
D. H. LawrenceRead
Persistence only proves persistence-it does not prove love. The fact that a romantic pursuer is relentless doesn't mean you are special-it means he is troubled.
Gavin De BeckerRead
.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.
Alain De BottonRead
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Ambrose BierceRead