In deference to such spectacular carnage it is perhaps perverse to dwell upon one person's death, but we are creatures so constituted that the passing of one friend or one acquaintance has a profounder effect that that of 100,000 strangers. If there is any metaphorical truth in the Jewish proverb that he who saves one life saves the whole world, then there is equal metaphorical truth in the proposition that when one person dies, the whole world dies with them.
Interpretation
The death of an individual affects us more deeply than the loss of many unknown strangers.
This quote reflects on the profound impact that the death of a single person can have on others, emphasizing our emotional connection to those we know and care about. It highlights the idea that while mass tragedies may evoke widespread concern, the personal loss of a friend or loved one resonates on a deeper, more intimate level, illustrating the value of individual lives and relationships in the larger context of humanity.
In practice
In a eulogy, to emphasize the impact of the deceased on those who loved them.
...but then the general trouble with ignorance is always that the ignorant person has no idea that that's what they are. You can be ignorant and stupid and go through your whole life without ever encountering any evidence against the hypothesis that you're a genius.
Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms. You blush in each other's presence, you both hover in places where you expect the other to pass, you are both a little tongue-tied, you both laugh inexplicably and too long, you become quite nauseatingly girlish, and he becomes quite ridiculously gallant. You have also grown a little stupid.
When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.
This is the strangest life I've ever known.
Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is.
Everybody needs four things in life: Something to do, someone to love, someone to believe in and something to hope for.
Life is short. Kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly
One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second
By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream
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