Many biblical verses are like inkblot tests, revealing more about us than about the text in question.
Harold S. KushnerRead
It is because you have the typical American habit of seeing everything as a test. You see the mountain as your enemy and you set out to defeat it. So, naturally, the mountain fights back and it is stronger than you are. We do not see the mountain as our enemy to be conquered. The purpose of our climb is to become one with the mountain and so it lifts us up and carries us along.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of harmony with challenges rather than viewing them as adversaries.
Harold S. Kushner's quote reflects on the differing perspectives people have towards challenges, represented by the metaphor of a mountain. Instead of perceiving obstacles as enemies to be defeated, he suggests that one should embrace these challenges and seek a harmonious relationship with them, which can lead to personal growth and elevation, akin to being lifted by the mountain itself.
Themes
ChallengePerspectiveGrowthHarmonyClimbMountain
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming life's challenges.
More from Harold S. Kushner
All quotes →I am quite confident that the most important part of a human being is not his physical body but his nonphysical essence, which some people call soul and others, personality... The nonphysical part cannot die and cannot decay because it's not physical.
Harold S. KushnerRead
That is why we have to make room in our lives for people who may sometimes disappoint or exasperate us. If we hold our friends to a standard of perfection, or if they do that to us, we will end up far lonelier than we want to be.
Harold S. KushnerRead
Pain is a part of being alive, and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbeatable, and we need to be taught that.
Harold S. KushnerRead
Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter.
Harold S. KushnerRead
We cannot live without the knowledge that someone cares about us.
Harold S. KushnerRead
Similar quotes
If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
As America has grown less economically equal, a citizen's ability to move upward has fallen behind that of citizens in other Western democracies. We are no longer the country where anyone can become anything.
George PackerRead
Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.
George WashingtonRead
I'm sure that everybody feels a kind of permanent anguish about what's going on in the world.
Doris LessingRead
Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.
Chinua AchebeRead
Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.
Dag HammarskjoldRead