This is my child. I planted it. I saw it grow. I loved it. Don't cut it down.
R.K. NarayanRead
We come together only to go apart again. The law of life can't be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother's womb. All struggle & misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. The law of life. No sense in battling against it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life is a cycle of coming together and parting, and resisting this cycle leads to struggle and loneliness.
R.K. Narayan's quote explores the inevitability of separation in life, suggesting that from the moment we are born, we are destined to experience both connection and disconnection. The quote indicates that much of our suffering stems from our resistance to this natural law of life, emphasizing the idea that embracing this cycle rather than fighting it could lead to a deeper understanding of our existence and the loneliness that accompanies it.
Themes
LifeSeparationLonelinessStruggleTruth
In practice
Example use cases
In a graduation speech to highlight the bittersweet nature of accomplishments.
More from R.K. Narayan
All quotes →Similar quotes
Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.
Oscar WildeRead
I do not think our successes can compete with those of Lourdes. There are so many more people who believe in the miracles of the Blessed Virgin than in the existence of the unconscious.
Sigmund FreudRead
Look... we're getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems. I can see through Eastern values just as you can see through our Western ones. Both of us, I am sure, have experienced ad nauseam the technical satisfactions of this wretched war. But now your own side is going to shoot you. Don't you think it's time to recognise that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?
John Le CarreRead
I looked at it [revolver] as if it reminded me of a crime I had committed with an irrepressible smile such as rises sometimes to people’s lips in the face of great catastrophes which are beyond their grasp, the smile that comes at times on certain women’s faces while they are saying they regret the harm they have done. It is the smile of nature quietly and proudly asserting its natural right to kill.
Anais NinRead
The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.
John UpdikeRead
Perspective [is] a luxury when your head [is] constantly buzzing with a swarm of demons.
Khaled HosseiniRead