Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.
Interpretation
Recognizing our emotions empowers us to pursue joy in all aspects of life.
This quote by Audre Lorde emphasizes the importance of emotional awareness and the profound impact it has on our lives. By acknowledging our capacity for deep feelings such as love and joy, we become motivated to cultivate these emotions across all areas of our existence, leading to a more fulfilling and joyful life.
In practice
This quote can inspire a group discussion on emotional intelligence at a workshop.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .
By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.
Always do I recall the parting words uttered by my old governor: "My boy, never . . ." I won't set 'em down. I disregarded them fool-like and paid, and paid; had I a son I'd hand 'em on and ram 'em home. What fools we be when young. We fancy we be wise, forgetting that the old boys have graduated in the 'varsity of the world, the greatest 'varsity of all, and each day we should learn from they.
What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualizat ion.
Armenian folklore has it that three apples fell from Heaven: one for the teller of a story, one for the listener, and the third for the one who 'took it to heart.' What a pity Heaven awarded no apple to the one who wrote the story down.
If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it's the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.