In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.
Interpretation
Individuals have the power to create their own success, irrespective of external circumstances.
This quote by Octavia Butler emphasizes the importance of self-agency in shaping one's destiny. It suggests that while challenges and negative events may occur in life, it is ultimately up to each person to take charge of their life, make positive choices, and forge their own path to success and happiness. Reliance on external forces or luck is insufficient; personal responsibility and action are crucial for achieving one's goals.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a motivational speech about taking control of one's life.
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
However great the work that God may achieve by an individual, he must not indulge in self-satisfaction. He ought rather to be all the more humbled, seeing himself merely as a tool which God has made use of.
After meditating for some years, I began to see the patterns of my own behavior. As you quiet your mind, you begin to see the nature of your own resistance more clearly, struggles, inner dialogues, the way in which you procrastinate and develop passive resistance against life. As you cultivate the witness, things change. You don't have to change them. Things just change.
When the defects of others are perceived with so much clarity, it is because one possesses them oneself.
For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one idea leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander.
A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.
The ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound knowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering or disorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence.
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