If we make anything that lasts, it outlives us.
Interpretation
Creating enduring works allows our legacy to continue beyond our lifetime.
This quote emphasizes the idea that when we create something significant or meaningful, that creation can endure and have an impact long after we are gone. It suggests that our contributions to the world provide a form of immortality, allowing our thoughts, ideas, and efforts to persist in society.
In practice
In a graduation speech to inspire students about their future contributions.
What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.
In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest. Feel for yourself.
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.
My belief is that "recluse" is a code word generated by journalists... meaning, "doesn't like to talk to reporters."
A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep.
It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!
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