Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.
Norman CousinsRead
The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the internal decay of a person's emotional and empathetic capacities while they are still alive.
Norman Cousins emphasizes the profound loss experienced when a person becomes emotionally numb or apathetic, despite physically existing. He suggests that the true tragedy of life lies in losing one's ability to feel deeply and connect with the experiences of others, which diminishes the richness of human existence. By pointing out the 'death' of genuine feeling and inspired responses, Cousins urges us to cherish our emotional awareness and the ability to empathize with others throughout our lives.
Themes
TragedyLifeEmotionAwarenessEmpathyGenuine Feeling
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about pursuing emotional authenticity.
More from Norman Cousins
All quotes →Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.
Norman CousinsRead
Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.
Norman CousinsRead
People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
Norman CousinsRead
Reverence for life is more than solicitude or sensitivity for life. It is a sense of the whole, a capacity for inspired response, a respect for the intricate universe of individual life. It is the supreme awareness of awareness itself.
Norman CousinsRead
Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.
Norman CousinsRead
Similar quotes
A farmer's horse is never lame, never unfit to go. Never throws out curbs, never breaks down before or behind. Like his master he is never showy. He does not paw and prance, and arch his neck, and bid the world admire his beauties...and when he is wanted, he can always do his work.
Anthony TrollopeRead
You have to address anger, fear, and then to think about what the alternatives are: hope, faith, a certain kind of brotherly love. And then you have to set yourself to cultivate those.
Martha NussbaumRead
We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.
Oliver SacksRead
If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?
George OrwellRead
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.
Oliver SacksRead
If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh (taking care of course to keep within the limits of what seems permissible to the world), we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ. When the flesh is satisfied it is hard to pray with cheerfulness or to devote oneself to a life of service which calls for much self-renunciation.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead