You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
The fact that the most powerful and significant connections in our lives are (at the time) invisible to us seems to me a compelling argument for religious reverence rather than skeptical empiricism as a response to life's meaning.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that the most important aspects of life might not always be visible or understandable, advocating for a sense of reverence towards these mysteries.
David Foster Wallace emphasizes that the most profound and influential connections in our lives often remain unseen and unidentified at first. He argues that rather than approaching these elements with skepticism or solely empirical analysis, one should cultivate a sense of reverence and spiritual openness. This perspective allows for a richer understanding of life's meaning, acknowledging the depth and complexity that isn't always immediately apparent.
Themes
ConnectionsInvisibleLifeMeaningReverence
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about personal growth, one might use this quote to highlight unseen relationships that shape our development.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes →Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
David Foster WallaceRead
It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
David Foster WallaceRead
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
David Foster WallaceRead
Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
David Foster WallaceRead
Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead
Similar quotes
Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.
Leon TrotskyRead
You and your sins must separate, or you and your God will never come together.
Charles SpurgeonRead
It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.
A.J. AyerRead
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David ThoreauRead
In Hollywood, 'under development' means 'all I have is the title.'
Roger EbertRead
But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning. And I remember everything that happened that day becasue it has happened many times in my life. The same innocence, trust, and restlessness; the wonder, fear, and lonliness. How I lost myself. I remember all these things. And tonight, on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon, I also remember what I asked the Moon Lady so long ago. I wished to be found.
Amy TanRead