Capacity for love in its higher forms seems to be peculiarly human although even in humans it is still peculiar.
Interpretation
The capacity for deep love is a unique aspect of humanity, though it remains complex and sometimes difficult to fully understand.
In this quote, Jeanette Winterson reflects on the unique human ability to experience profound love, suggesting that this capacity distinguishes us as a species. However, she also notes that even within humans, the nature of love can be intricate and peculiar, highlighting the complexities and nuances of emotional connections.
In practice
In a speech about emotional intelligence, one might quote this to highlight the intricacies of human connections.
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.
There is no harvest for the heart alone. The seed of love must be eternally re-sown.
To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive.
I think that if we can't go back, then we should try even harder to go forward. And I do want to go forward, to a place where loving someone because they have a gentle smile and a friendly hello is as easy as it once was.
If I am more alive because love burns and chars me, as a fire, given wood or wind, feels new elation, it's that he who lays me low is my salvation, and invigorates the more, the more he scars me.
Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.
Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.
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