Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selflessness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?
Interpretation
This quote conveys the idea that our self-identity is constructed and to change it, we must invent a new identity from our current self, which raises questions about the nature of selfhood.
Robert Penn Warren's quote explores the complex relationship between our self-identity and the processes required for personal transformation. It suggests that while we are bound by the definitions we've constructed for ourselves, changing our identity necessitates a re-examination of our essence and core values. The paradox lies in the notion that to create a new self, we must utilize the self that exists, raising profound questions about the nature of identity and self-evolution.
In practice
This quote can be used in a personal development seminar to inspire participants to rethink their self-identity.
...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.
The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.
And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.
So little time we live in Time,_x000D_ _x000D_ And we learn all so painfully,_x000D_ _x000D_ That we may spare this hour's term_x000D_ _x000D_ To practice for Eternity.
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure.
Those who live to live forever, never fear dying.
It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
A Christian is not someone who never goes wrong, but one who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin again, because the Christ-life is inside him.
Language is the house of the truth of Being.
Lo, for I to myself am unknown, now in God's name what must I do?
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