...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.
Rohinton MistryRead
If time were a bolt of cloth,” said Om, “I would cut out all the bad parts. Snip out the scary nights and stitch together the good parts, to make time bearable. Then I could wear it like a coat, always live happily.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a desire to filter out negative experiences from one's life and focus on the positive ones.
Rohinton Mistry's quote uses the metaphor of time as a bolt of cloth to describe the human experience of selectively remembering or wishing to edit out the unpleasant moments in life. By envisioning a way to stitch the good parts together, it evokes a longing for a life that is predominantly filled with joy and happiness, suggesting that our perceptions of time are influenced by our memories and the way we choose to shape our narratives.
Themes
TimeLifeHappinessMemoriesExperiences
In practice
Example use cases
At a motivational seminar focused on embracing positivity.
More from Rohinton Mistry
All quotes →But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.
Rohinton MistryRead
What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time.
Rohinton MistryRead
If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it.
Rohinton MistryRead
There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.
Rohinton MistryRead
Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder
Rohinton MistryRead
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