You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Acceptance often comes from simply being worn out by the struggle against reality.
In this quote, David Foster Wallace suggests that acceptance is not always a result of clear understanding or deliberate choice, but rather a response that emerges from the exhaustion of fighting against what is. It highlights a human tendency to eventually yield to circumstances when the effort to resist becomes too great, reflecting on the complexities of human emotion and experience.
Themes
AcceptanceFatigueRealityStruggleEmotions
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a motivational talk about mental health to encourage awareness of acceptance.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes βEverything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
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It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
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Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
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Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like youβve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and itβs like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
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The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.
David Foster WallaceRead
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