Controlled hysteria is what's required. To exist constantly in a state of controlled hysteria. It's agony. But everyone has agony. The difference is that I try to take my agony home and teach it to sing.
Arthur MillerRead
I think the tragic feeling is invoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing -- his sense of personal dignity.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the deep emotional impact of witnessing a person's commitment to their dignity, even at great personal cost.
Arthur Miller reflects on the profound and tragic emotions that arise when observing a character willing to sacrifice everything to maintain their personal dignity. This speaks to the human condition and the intrinsic value of self-respect and honor, suggesting that such a fierce dedication can evoke both admiration and sorrow in onlookers, recognizing the high stakes involved in the struggle for one’s identity and worth.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a discussion on personal values and integrity.
Controlled hysteria is what's required. To exist constantly in a state of controlled hysteria. It's agony. But everyone has agony. The difference is that I try to take my agony home and teach it to sing.
The word "now" is like a bomb through the window, and it ticks.
Amos Oz is one of the finest novelists of this entire period. MY MICHAEL is a beautiful work of great depth and in some indescribable way lingers in the mind as a lyric song to his country's people as much as a moving love story.
Just remember, kid, you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away.
Oh,Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer.
The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost.
In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.
The guts carry the feet, not the feet the guts.
And in general, the residents of the town wondered why they all felt hollow just beneath the throat, the result of missing something they had never been able to name in the first place.
The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides.
It is not our job to apply laws that have not yet been written.
I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that ... you really must make the self. It is absolutely useless to look for it, you won't find it, but it's possible in some sense to make it. I don't mean in the sense of making a mask, a Yeatsian mask. But you finally begin in some sense to make and choose the self you want.
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