Language should almost break up or explode in its fruitless effort to contain so many meanings.
Interpretation
Language attempts to express complex ideas but often falls short of encapsulating all meanings.
In this quote, Eugene Ionesco suggests that language is a powerful yet limited tool in conveying the depth and multiplicity of human thought and emotion. He highlights the struggle of language to adequately capture the intricacies of meaning, implying that the richness of ideas often surpasses the ability of words to articulate them.
In practice
During a lecture on the complexity of human thoughts, this quote can highlight the difficulties of conveying emotions.
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.
No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings, an exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
The brightest light, the light of Italy, the purest sky of Scandinavia in the month of June is only a half-light when one compares it to the light of childhood. Even the nights were blue.
Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.
It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disasters to discuss the matter.
No one likes to admit they are racist or bear prejudices. Nor do they even like to be open and honest when they witness racist behaviour.
A dream has power to poison sleep.
I hope that people of all faiths will start looking for our too-invisible children who are crying out for help.
If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
It seemed to me that all things were possible on the island, all tyrannies and cruelties, though in small; and if, in despite of what was possible, we lived at peace with another, surely this was proof that certain laws unknown to us held sway, or else that we had been following the promptings of our hearts all this time, and our hearts had not betrayed us.
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