QuoteProject
At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.
Federico Garcia Lorca
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote suggests that the apparent joy in life is deceptive, masking deeper suffering rooted in societal constraints.

Federico Garcia Lorca reflects on the superficiality of happiness in the social life of individuals. While the rhythm of life may seem joyful at first glance, a deeper examination reveals a painful existence, akin to slavery, where both people and machines are bound by societal norms. This anguish drives individuals to seek escape through crime and gang affiliation, indicating that these actions may come from a place of desperation rather than mere malice.

Themes

AnguishSocietyFreedomSlaveryEscape

In practice

Example use cases

During a discussion on the impact of societal pressures in a psychology class.

More from Federico Garcia Lorca

The wounds were burning like suns at five in the afternoon, and the crowd broke the windows At five in the afternoon. Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon!
Federico Garcia LorcaRead
There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain's tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog.
Federico Garcia LorcaRead
The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.
Federico Garcia LorcaRead
Death laid its eggs in the wound
Federico Garcia LorcaRead
The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish.
Federico Garcia LorcaRead
New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world's greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines.
Federico Garcia LorcaRead

Similar quotes

The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.
Sonia SotomayorRead
Our environments shape the way we see ourselves. If you have been condemned to live in an area that is pretty evidently a rat-run, then sooner or later you're gonna come to the conclusion that you're a rat.
Alan MooreRead
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
Antoine De Saint-ExuperyRead
My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc.
David BohmRead
extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. this is how the human body reacts to extreme stress.
Malcolm GladwellRead
The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Federico Garcia Lorca | QuoteProject