Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other.
Lawrence DurrellRead
I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the intrinsic nature of loneliness and time in shaping our experiences.
In this quote, Lawrence Durrell suggests that loneliness and time are essential elements of human existence that accompany us through lifeβs journey. Their presence is fundamental, implying that our understanding of life is deeply intertwined with these two companions, as they influence our thoughts and actions, leading us to deeper insights and experiences.
In practice
This quote can be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of existence.
Perhaps our only sickness is to desire a truth which we cannot bear rather than to rest content with the fictions we manufacture out of each other.
Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.
The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palm, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers - all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.
The heaviest impact of the work of art is in the guts. Art does not reason. It manhandles you and changes you.
Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.
We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.
Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.
How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?
There is no intrinsic worth in money but what is alterable with the times, and whether a guinea goes for twenty pounds or for a shilling, it is the labor of the poor and not the high and low value that is set on gold or silver, which all the comforts of life must arise from.
All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.
I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for - whether it's a field, or a home, or a country.
If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.
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