Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour: but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before.
Interpretation
Significant changes can be deeply distressing to individuals, impacting their perception of the world around them.
This quote by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley emphasizes the profound emotional and psychological impact of sudden changes on the human psyche. It suggests that such shifts can alter one's perception so dramatically that familiar experiences and surroundings no longer feel the same, highlighting a deep sense of loss and disorientation that accompanies transformation.
In practice
During a motivational speech about resilience, one might say this quote to emphasize how individuals cope with unexpected life changes.
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of a void, but out of chaos; the materials must in the first place be afforded; it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself.
The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and direct the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite, tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what - to a supporter or a destroyer.
What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.
I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine.
Heavy misfortunes have befallen us, but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small, but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.
Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein
Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.
The women's movement and the result that I get to benefit from and my generation gets to benefit from is that we might be doing housework, but we might not be. And we get to choose, and we get to negotiate and work that out with our prospective husbands or with our husbands.
I've thought about what is an alternative word to feminism. There isn't one. It's a perfectly good word. And it can't be changed.
The invisible is only another unexplored country, a brave new world.
By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world.
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
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