To love what you do and feel that it matters - how could anything be more fun?
Katharine GrahamRead
The only way I can describe the extent of my anxiety is to say that I felt as if I were pregnant with a rock.
Interpretation
The quote expresses deep anxiety and the overwhelming feeling of carrying a heavy burden.
In this quote, Katharine Graham metaphorically compares her anxiety to being pregnant with a rock, illustrating the weight and discomfort that extreme anxiety can cause. The imagery emphasizes how debilitating anxiety feels, as if one is carrying an enormous, immovable burden that affects every aspect of life.
In practice
In a speech about mental health awareness, I might reference this quote to emphasize the hidden struggles many face.
To love what you do and feel that it matters - how could anything be more fun?
My mother seemed to undermine so much of what I did, subtly belittling my choices and my activities in light of her greater, more important ones.
The longer I live, the more I observe that carrying around anger is the most debilitating to the person who bears it.
The thing women must do to rise to power is to redefine their femininity. Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact power has no sex.
It took me a while to learn that certain people may have important skills that are not always blazingly apparent. Gradually I came to realize - slow as I may have been - that what mattered was performance, that sometimes people might have to be helped to develop, and that it takes all kinds to make an organization run properly.
News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is advertising.
One cannot run from a challenge without losing. To flee is signing a death warrant to dignity and character, and, having run, there is no return; one is a weakling forever. Meeting a challenge, though one may be defeated, gives strength, character, and a certain assurance that regardless of outcome, one will survive or go down fighting.
You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.
I would say to my soul, O my soul, this is not the place of despair; this is not the time to despair in. As long as mine eyes can find a promise in the Bible, as long as there is a moment left me of breath or life in this world, so long will I wait or look for mercy, so long will I fight against unbelief and despair.
Listen to me, kid. Don't forget that you are in a concentration camp. In this place, it is every many for himself, and you cannot think of others. Not even you father. In this place, there is no such thing as father, brother, friend. Each of us lives and dies alone. Let me give you good advice: stop giving your ration of bread and soup to your old father. You cannot help him anymore. And you are hurting yourself. In fact, you should be getting his rations.
My contention is that as long as you have other faculties-the emotional, psychological, intuitive faculties-you haven't lost yourself or even diminished yourself. Don't be ashamed when you're physically limited or dysfunctional; don't think that you're any less because of your condition. In fact, I feel I am even more myself than I was before I got this illness because I have been able to transcend many of the psychological and emotional limitations I had before I developed ALS.
Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare!
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