We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
Tom RobbinsRead
Things. Cosas. Things attach themselves like leeches to the human soul, then they bleed out the sweetness and the music and the primordial joy of being unencumbered upon the land.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Material possessions can weigh down the spirit and diminish our joy in life.
In this quote, Tom Robbins expresses the idea that material things can become burdensome, much like leeches that drain the vitality from a person's soul. He suggests that these attachments to possessions can overshadow the inherent joy and freedom of existence, encouraging us to appreciate life unencumbered by material desires.
Themes
MaterialismFreedomJoyAttachmentLife
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about minimalism, one could say, 'As Tom Robbins reminds us, things can weigh us down and steal our joy.'
More from Tom Robbins
All quotes βThere are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.
Tom RobbinsRead
The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.
Tom RobbinsRead
I'm an outlaw, not a philosopher, but I know this much: there's meaning in everything, all things are connected, and a good champagne is a drink.' Bernard began to sing again. Timidly, Leigh-Cheri joined in. Between verses, they opened another bottle. The popping of its cork echoed throughout the great stone chamber. Of the three billion people on earth, only Bernard and Leigh-Cheri heard the popping of the cork and its echoes. Only Bernard and Leigh-Cheri passed out under the tablecloth.
Tom RobbinsRead
The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that. They wanted to hang a face on the Divine. They went so far as to attribute petty human emotions - anger, jealousy, etc - to it, not stopping to realize that if God were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago.
Tom RobbinsRead
On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.
Tom RobbinsRead
Similar quotes
As he was valiant, I honour him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him.
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And so was Luria, whose words now came back to me: βA man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibility, moral being ... It is here ... you may touch him, and see a profound change.β Memory, mental activity, mind alone, could not hold him; but moral attention and action could hold him completely.
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That which lives on reason lives against the spirit.
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The choicest gift of God to man, the gift of reason; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason; as if man could give reason to himself.
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Mind is repetitive, mind always moves in circles. Mind is a mechanism: you feed it with knowledge, it repeats the same knowledge, it goes on chewing the same knowledge again and again. No-mind is clarity, purity, innocence. No-mind is the real way to live, the real way to know, the real way to be.
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