. . . money . . . is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel, animals feel, and vice versa, but animals do not know about money.
Gertrude SteinRead
She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious. She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that what is considered 'normal' is often more complex and intriguing than what is termed 'abnormal'. It expresses a preference for the intricacies of the everyday over the unusual.
Gertrude Stein's quote reflects a viewpoint that the notion of normality carries its own complexities, making it both fascinating and worthy of exploration. By asserting her disdain for the abnormal, she highlights how the intricacies of conventional experiences often present deeper layers of meaning and interest that go unnoticed. Thus, the quote invites us to reconsider our own perceptions of normality and abnormality in life, suggesting that what is familiar may hold more depth than we initially recognize.
Themes
NormalAbnormalComplexityInterestPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the quirks of society, one might quote this to highlight the depth in what is seen as everyday life.
More from Gertrude Stein
All quotes βThe creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.
Gertrude SteinRead
If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.
Gertrude SteinRead
The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.
Gertrude SteinRead
I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.
Gertrude SteinRead
It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.
Gertrude SteinRead
Similar quotes
A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the 'noble', that is also Christian; hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the senses, of joy in general, is Christian.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
Don't be mysterious; there isn't the time.
E. M. ForsterRead
When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality.
Jean CocteauRead
It has been said that in the New Testament doctrine is grace; and ethics is gratitude; and something is wrong with any form of Christianity in which, experimentally and practically, this saying is not being verified. Those who suppose that the doctrine of God's grace tends to encourage moral laxity are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure.
J. I. PackerRead
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand RussellRead
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
Immanuel KantRead