QuoteProject
It was like something you have dreaded and feared and dodged for years until it seemed like all your life, then despite everything it happened to you and all it was was just pain, all it did was hurt and so it was all over, all finished, all right.
William Faulkner
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote reflects the fear and anticipation of inevitable suffering, which ultimately turns out to be a less daunting reality.

In this quote, William Faulkner captures the essence of enduring anxiety over an inevitable event that one has long feared. When the moment arrives, despite the buildup of dread, the reality of the experience is often just a manifestation of pain, leading to a sense of relief once it is finally over. It conveys the idea that the fear we carry can often be more burdensome than the actual event itself, highlighting the paradox of human anticipation and experience.

Themes

FearPainAnticipationLifeInevitable

In practice

Example use cases

In a motivational speech about overcoming challenges, one can use this quote to illustrate how fear can be more daunting than reality.

More from William Faulkner

When I have one martini, I feel bigger, wiser, taller. When I have a second, I feel superlative. When I have more, there's no holding me.
William FaulknerRead
I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
William FaulknerRead
When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...
William FaulknerRead
Maybe times are never strange to women: it is just one continuous monotonous thing full of the repeated follies of their menfolks.
William FaulknerRead
He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.
William FaulknerRead
Ever since then I have believed that God is not only a gentleman and a sport; he is a Kentuckian too.
William FaulknerRead

Similar quotes

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
Charlotte BronteRead
I hope the exit is joyful and i hope never to return.
Frida KahloRead
The rosy hearth, the lamplight's narrow beam, The meditation that is rather dream, With looks that lose themselves in cherished looks; The hour of steaming tea and banished books; The sweetness of the evening at an end, The dear fatigue, and right to rest attained, And worshipped expectation of the night,— Oh, all these things, in unrelenting flight, My dream pursues through all the vain delays, Impatient of the weeks, mad at the days!
Paul VerlaineRead
Percy’d heard stories about amputees who had phantom pains where their missing legs and arms used to be. That’s how his mind felt—like his missing memories were aching.
Rick RiordanRead
I think a man can keep on drinking for centuries, he'll never die; especially wine or beer...I like drunkards, man, because drunkards, they come out of it, and they're sick and they spring back, they spring back and forth...If I hadn't been a drunkard, I probably would have committed suicide long ago.
Charles BukowskiRead
Question not, but live and labour Till yon goal be won, Helping every feeble neighbor, Seeking help from none; Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone, Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own.
Adam Lindsay GordonRead

A little wisdom, now and then

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

Quote by William Faulkner | QuoteProject