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I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.
Gertrude Stein
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote suggests a preference for introspection and self-reflection over external distractions.

Gertrude Stein’s quote reflects on the difference between experiencing beauty and turning one's attention inward. It implies that the value of a beautiful view is often overshadowed by the importance of personal contemplation and the inner experience that comes from focusing on one's thoughts and feelings rather than on the outside world.

Themes

ViewIntrospectionReflectionInner PeacePerspective

In practice

Example use cases

During a motivational speech about the importance of self-reflection.

More from Gertrude Stein

. . . money . . . is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel, animals feel, and vice versa, but animals do not know about money.
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The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.
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If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.
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The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.
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I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.
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It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.
Gertrude SteinRead

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