How glorious it is - and also how painful - to be an exception.
Interpretation
Being unique can bring both joy and suffering.
This quote reflects the duality of exceptionalism, highlighting that while being different and standing out can be a source of pride and glory, it can also lead to feelings of isolation and pain. The struggle of being an exception to the norm reminds us that uniqueness comes with its own set of challenges and rewards.
In practice
This quote could be used in a graduation speech to inspire students to embrace their uniqueness.
Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!
You’re like a lighthouse shining beside the sea of humanity, motionless: all you can see is your own reflection in the water. You’re alone, so you think it’s a vast, magnificent panorama. You haven’t sounded the depths. You simply believe in the beauty of God’s creation. But I have spent all this time in the water, diving deep into the howling ocean of life, deeper than anyone. While you were admiring the surface, I saw the shipwrecks, the drowned bodies, the monsters of the deep
What I need is a woman who is something, anything: either very beautiful or very kind or in the last resort very wicked; very witty or very stupid, but something.
The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer
life is a deep sleep of which love is the dream
The only true language in the world is a kiss.
Keep the remembrance of your real nature alive, even while working, and avoid haste which causes you to forget. Be deliberate. Practice meditation to still the mind and cause it to become aware of its true relationship to the Self which supports it. Do not imagine that it is you who are doing the work. Think that is the underlying current which is doing it. Identify yourself with the current.
You must know for which harbor you are headed, if you are to catch the right wind to take you there.
Breach of promise is a base surrender of truth.
We tend to use knowledge as therapy.
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
I heard stories from my mother's mother who was an American Indian. She was spiritual, although she did not go to church, but she had the hum. She used to tell me stories of the rivers.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.