Tis better to have love and lust Than to let our apparatus rust.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that experiencing love and desire is preferable to living a stagnant, unfulfilled life.
Kurt Vonnegut's quote reflects the idea that embracing emotions like love and passion, even when they come with risks and complications, is far more valuable than leading a life devoid of emotional connections. It emphasizes the importance of experiencing life's pleasures and experiences rather than allowing oneself to become stagnant or unfulfilled.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a discussion about the importance of taking risks in relationships.
But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.
How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year.
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.
If you were music I would listen to you ceaselessly And my low spirits would brighten up.
Practicing love often means feeling through fear: intentionally opening yourself when you would rather close down, giving yourself when you would rather hide. Love means recognizing yourself as the open fullness of this moment regardless of its contents -- trenchant thoughts, enchanting pleasures, heavy emotions, or gnawing pains -- and surrendering all hold on the familiar act you call 'me'.
The best feeling in the world is knowing that you actually mean something to someone.
And as we drift into sleep, I feel something Iβve never felt before. A closeness that isnβt merely physical. A connection that defies the fact that weβve only just met. A sensation that can only come from the most euphoric of feelings: belonging.
Remember me and smile, for it's better to forget than to remember me and cry.
Maybe I didn't treat you Quite as good as I should have Maybe I didn't love you Quite as often as I could have Little things I should have said and done I just never took the time You were always on my mind You were always on my mind
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