Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.
Peter S. BeagleRead
Whatever can die is beautiful β more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that mortality enhances the beauty of life, making it more precious than eternal existence.
Peter S. Beagle's quote reflects on the nature of beauty and mortality, positing that things which are transient and have an end are inherently more beautiful than those that are immortal. The idea is that the finite nature of life makes our experiences and relationships more cherished, contrasting the allure of eternal beings like unicorns, which, despite their beauty, lack the depth that comes from the inevitability of death.
Themes
MortalityBeautyLifeTransienceExperience
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be shared during a funeral to celebrate the beauty of a person's life.
More from Peter S. Beagle
All quotes βYour name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.
Peter S. BeagleRead
You were the one who taught me," he said. "I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you.
Peter S. BeagleRead
...because in a way it happened to someone else. I don't really speak that person's language anymore, and when I think about her, she embarrasses me sometimes, but I don't want to forget her, I don't want to pretend she never existed. So before I start forgetting, I have to get down exactly who she was, and exactly how she felt about everything. She was me a lot longer than I've been me so far.
Peter S. BeagleRead
I feel a whole country growing inside me, thousands of years, millions of people, stupid, crazy, shrewd people, and all of them me. I never felt like that before, I never felt that there was anything inside me, even myself.
Peter S. BeagleRead
Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.
Peter S. BeagleRead
Similar quotes
If a strong government finds that it can, with impunity, destroy a weak people, then the hour has struck for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give its judgment in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment.
Haile SelassieRead
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.
John Stuart MillRead
Some people take the view that the universe is simply there, and it runs along - it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe.
Roger PenroseRead
For a time Jack was angry; but when he had been without the jacket for a short while he began to realize that being half-clothed is infinitely more uncomfortable than being entirely naked. Soon he did not miss his clothing in the least, and from that he came to revel in the freedom of his unhampered state.
Edgar Rice BurroughsRead
It is our policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
George WashingtonRead
Liberty is not collective, it is personal. All liberty is individual liberty.
Calvin CoolidgeRead