...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.
Rohinton MistryRead
Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories...they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, loss and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Only the details are different.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that while individuals may undervalue their personal experiences, in essence, everyone shares similar narratives of life’s struggles and desires.
Rohinton Mistry's quote reflects on the universal nature of human experiences. It emphasizes that despite our unique circumstances and individual stories, the fundamental themes of youth, loss, and a quest for redemption connect us all. Mistry highlights how, at the core, we all seek meaning and understanding through our shared struggles, ultimately living out similar narratives with distinct details. This idea urges us to recognize the collective human experience and the commonality of our stories across cultures and backgrounds.
Themes
LifeStoriesRedemptionLossYouth
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about resilience, one could quote this to illustrate the common human experience.
More from Rohinton Mistry
All quotes →But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.
Rohinton MistryRead
What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time.
Rohinton MistryRead
If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it.
Rohinton MistryRead
There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.
Rohinton MistryRead
Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder
Rohinton MistryRead
Similar quotes
The human mind delights in finding pattern—so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other habit of thought lies so deeply within the soul of a small creature trying to make sense of a complex world not constructed for it.
Stephen Jay GouldRead
This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path.
Sitting BullRead
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
Walt WhitmanRead
We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.
Charles R. SwindollRead
I finally understood: In order to contribute to Africa, I would have to know myself better and be clearer about my goals. I would have to be ready to take Africa on its own terms, not mine, and to learn my limits and present myself not as a do-gooder with a big heart, but as someone with something to give and gain by being there. Compassion wasn't enough
Jacqueline NovogratzRead
I am a child of my generation, and I rejoice that I live in such splendidly disturbing times.
Helen KellerRead