I don't care about age very much. I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the perception of aging and the wisdom that often accompanies it.
Chinua Achebe expresses that age should not be a primary concern when evaluating a person's worth or presence. He reminisces about the older individuals from his youth, suggesting that their wisdom, experiences, and vibrant personalities made them appear larger than life, emphasizing that true value lies in one's character and life experiences rather than merely their age.
In practice
In a speech about valuing elderly contributions to society.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.
Loving ourselves opens us to truly knowing ourselves as part of the matrix of existence, inextricably connected to the boundlessness of life... when we see that we are far bigger than the person that is delineated by family or cultural expectations, we realize we are capable of so much more than we usually dare to imagine.
Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.
No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.
You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.