Everyone deserves to be the hero of a novel.
William NicholsonRead
To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well.
Interpretation
Pain serves as a powerful reminder to awaken us to reality.
This quote suggests that pain has a significant role in human experience, acting as a loud signal from a higher power to awaken us from a false sense of security and complacency. It implies that soft and gentle reminders are often ignored, and thus more intense experiences like pain are necessary to jolt us into awareness of our true circumstances and the importance of living authentically.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming adversity.
Everyone deserves to be the hero of a novel.
We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.
There is an intellectual function in us which demands unity, connection and intelligibility from any material, whether of perception or thought, that comes within its grasp; and if, as a result of special circumstances, it is unable to establish a true connection, it does not hesitate to fabricate a false one.
I do know my own mind,' protested Anne. 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.
It was like that all the time, in those years: an endless trip, a gaudy voyage. But powers decay. Time leaches the colors from the best of visions. The world becomes grayer. Entropy beats us down. Everything fades. Everything goes. Everything dies.
To me... it appears that there have been differences of opinion and party differences, from the first establishment of government to the present day, and on the same question which now divides our own country; that these will continue through all future time; that every one takes his side in favor of the many, or of the few, according to his constitution, and the circumstances in which he is placed.
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