You have a conscience, and a conscience is a valuable attribute, but not if it begins to make you think you were to blame for what is far beyond the scope of your responsibility.
Interpretation
Conscience is important, but don't let it burden you with guilt for things outside your control.
In this quote, Philip Roth emphasizes the importance of having a conscience as a moral compass, but cautions against allowing it to lead to unwarranted guilt or self-blame for situations that are beyond one's own responsibility. It serves as a reminder that while self-reflection is valuable, one shouldn't carry undue weight for the actions or issues that are not directly under their influence.
In practice
In a discussion about mental health, one might reference this quote to highlight the importance of managing guilt.
American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.
I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.
Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself
When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life.
Do the things you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know.
No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
Correcting oneself is correcting the whole world. The Sun is simply bright. It does not correct anyone. Because it shines, the whole world is full of light. Transforming yourself is a means of giving light to the whole world.
It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
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