Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.
Peter S. BeagleRead
Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.
Interpretation
Heroism is often defined by the challenges one faces and overcomes.
This quote suggests that the true measure of a hero lies not only in their accomplishments but also in the hardships and challenges they endure. Great sorrows and burdens enhance the hero's journey, making their achievements more significant and noteworthy, similar to the narrative arc of a fairy tale where struggles lead to triumph.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience and personal growth.
Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.
Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.
You were the one who taught me," he said. "I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you.
...because in a way it happened to someone else. I don't really speak that person's language anymore, and when I think about her, she embarrasses me sometimes, but I don't want to forget her, I don't want to pretend she never existed. So before I start forgetting, I have to get down exactly who she was, and exactly how she felt about everything. She was me a lot longer than I've been me so far.
Whatever can die is beautiful β more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?
I feel a whole country growing inside me, thousands of years, millions of people, stupid, crazy, shrewd people, and all of them me. I never felt like that before, I never felt that there was anything inside me, even myself.
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
...it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness! It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.
However gifted an individual is at the outset, if his or her talents cannot be developed because of his or her social condition, because of the surrounding circumstances, these talents will be still-born.
Ideas not coupled with action never become bigger than the brain cells they occupied.
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
In any moment, no matter how lost we feel, we can take refuge in presence and love. We need only pause, breathe, and open to the experience of aliveness within us. In that wakeful openness, we come home to the peace and freedom of our natural awareness.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.