I could no more have stopped myself from feeling that sadness than you could stop yourself from smelling an apple that has been cut open on the table before you.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the inevitability of feeling certain emotions, much like the natural reaction to a strong sensory experience.
In this quote, Arthur Golden illustrates how emotions, particularly sadness, are involuntary and unavoidable. Just as one cannot resist the enticing smell of a freshly cut apple, one cannot easily suppress feelings of sadness when they arise. This comparison highlights the naturalness of emotional responses and the idea that some feelings are beyond our control.
In practice
In a discussion about dealing with loss, this quote could be used to illustrate how emotions cannot be easily controlled.
We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I never imagined such a thing could occur within our very selves.
An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.
As an American man of the 1990s writing about a Japanese woman of the 1930s, I needed to cross three cultural divides - man to woman, American to Japanese, and present to past.
For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.
The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.
He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.
Angry or not. It's a human emotion. But you can't walk around being angry all the time. What a dull person you'd have to be!
Tears come from the heart and not from the brain
Jealousy is the dragon in paradise; the hell of heaven; and the most bitter of the emotions because associated with the sweetest.
The saddest kind of sad is the sad that tries not to be sad. You know, when sad tries to bite its lip and not cry, and smile and say, "No I'm happy for you"? Thats when it's really sad.
You're not eating anything," said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed. I can't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?" I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say," responded Marilla. Weren't you? Well, did you ever try to IMAGINE you were in the depths of despair?" No, I didn't." Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's very uncomfortable a feeling indeed.
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
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