...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
Sylvia PlathRead
It was my last act of love (first words to her mother in the hospital after her first major suicide attempt)
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep, poignant connection between love and despair.
Sylvia Plath's quote highlights the profound complexities of love, particularly in moments of crisis. It suggests that even in the depths of suffering, love remains a powerful force, demonstrating the emotional bonds that can exist between individuals, particularly family members. In this context, the utterance serves as both a plea for understanding and a testament to the enduring connection between a daughter and her mother, even in the face of a life-threatening struggle.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a mental health awareness event to highlight the importance of familial love.
...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.
It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative--which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.
You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.
It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual.
Oh, why was he so handsomely blond, so courteously aloof, so maddeningly boring with his talk about Europe and books and music and poetry and things that interested her not at all - and yet so desirable?
The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.
One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.
Sometimes Iβm terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.
You rose into my life like a promised sunrise, brightening my days with the light in your eyes. I've never been so strong. Now I'm where I belong.
I used to say that if something happened to my mother, I wanted to die with her. That's because I loved her so much. I want to live so I can carry out the essence of what she has shown me: kindness and goodness.
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