In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that true accomplishments are often achieved without external validation or affection.
Leonard Cohen's quote speaks to the idea that genuine achievements and meaningful actions are often realized when one does not rely on the approval or affection of others. It emphasizes the notion that personal motivation and integrity drive us to do good work, independent of external praise or love, suggesting a deeper truth that success and kindness often emerge from solitary effort or quiet reflection.
In practice
During a motivational speech about intrinsic motivation and personal growth.
What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.
I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.
Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach.
I heard of a man who says words so beautifully that if he only speaks their name women give themselves to him. If I am dumb beside your body while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips it is because I hear a man climb stairs and clear his throat outside our door.
I think what we like about music - and what we like about art in general....is that enterprise that stops our minds from spinning. Because we're always all over the place. A good song, a good lyric is a movie: it will just focus and calm and confer significance on this completely bewildering reality that all of us live in.
Most of the time one is discouraged by the work, but now and again by some grace something stands out and invites you to work on it, to elaborate it or animate it in some way. It's a mysterious process.
If you wish to shine like day, burn up the night of self-existence. Dissolve in the Being who is everything.
And then sometimes I think the people to feel saddest for are people who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder β people who closed the doors that leads us into the secret world β or who had the doors closed for them by time and neglect and decisions made in times of weakness.
Itβs terrible to lie in chains,_x000D_ To rot in dungeon deep,_x000D_ But itβs still worse, when you are free_x000D_ To sleep, and sleep, and sleep.
Trees bear fruits only to be eaten by others; the fields grown grains, but they are consumed by the world. Cows give milk, but she doesn't drink it herself - that is left to others. Clouds send rain only to quench the parched earth. In such giving, there is little space for selfishness.
It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.
Has there ever been anything filthier on earth than the saints in the wilderness? Around them was not only the devil loose around them- but also the swine.
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