I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.
Virginia WoolfRead
Am I a weed, carried this way, that way, on a tide that comes twice a day without a meaning?
Interpretation
The quote reflects on existential uncertainty and the search for meaning in life.
In this quote, Virginia Woolf uses the metaphor of a weed to convey feelings of aimlessness and lack of direction. The imagery of being carried by a tide symbolizes the uncontrollable forces of life that can lead one to question their purpose and existence. This introspection raises profound queries about meaning and the struggle to find one's value in a seemingly indifferent world.
In practice
In a discussion about the search for personal identity, one might quote Woolf to emphasize the struggle for meaning.
I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.
Death is woven in with the violets,β said Louis. βDeath and again death.β)
He began to search among the infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents, sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea.
I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.
I do think all good and evil comes from words. I have to tune myself into a good temper with something musical, and I run to a book as a child to its mother.
London perpetually attracts, stimulates, gives me a play and a story and a poem, without any trouble, save that of moving my legs through the streets... To walk alone through London is the greatest rest.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?
My voice is born repeatedly in the fields of uncertainty.
Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language... It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.'
Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to people if they have uncultured souls.
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