It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.
Interpretation
Our shared imperfections create deeper connections and empathy among us.
This quote emphasizes the idea that human connection is often rooted in our flaws and mistakes rather than our successes or virtues. It suggests that recognizing our common shortcomings fosters a sense of unity and sympathy, highlighting the value of vulnerability in building relationships.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of vulnerability in relationships.
Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.
Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard.
The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.
A cat's got her own opinion of human beings. She don't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.
She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company.
And verily, a woman need know but one man well, in order to understand all men; whereas a man may know all women and understand not one of them.
Neither old people nor sour people seem to make friends easily; for there is little that is pleasant in them.
Women are not going to be equal outside the home until men are equal in it.
As much progress as we think we've made with legislation, litigation and education, anti-Semitism still continues to be the No. 2 hate crime in the United States. You can't eliminate it, but you can try to keep a lid on it.
She gathers my half of the blankets around her and curls up against the wall. She will sleep for hours more, dreaming endless landscapes and novas of colour both gorgeous and frightening. If I stayed she would wake up and describe them to me. All the mad plot twists and surrealist imagery, so vivid to her while so meaningless to me. There was a time when I treasured listening to her, when I found the commotion in her soul bitter-sweet and lovely, but I can no longer bear it.
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