Oh, he was just angry, we tell ourselves when someone blurts out something he later apologizes for. But a word, once spoken, lingers forever; to keep peace we pretend to forget, but we never do. Strange that a spoken word can have such lasting power when words carved on stone monuments vanish in spite of all our efforts to preserve them. What we would lose persists, lodged in our minds, and what we would keep is lost to water, moths, moss.
Interpretation
Spoken words can have lasting effects, often more than physical inscriptions, impacting our memories and relationships.
This quote emphasizes the profound impact that spoken words can have on individuals and relationships. While we might try to brush aside hurtful comments by attributing them to anger or temporary emotions, the reality is that such words leave a lasting impression on our minds. In contrast, physical representations of words, like those on monuments, often fade and disappear over time. The quote poignantly highlights the idea that while we might strive to preserve certain memories or words, it is often the painful or damaging words that remain etched in our minds.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a workshop on effective communication to highlight how words can affect people.
Now I felt the long-forgotten urgency of lovemaking, when it seems one's human selves leave, to be replaced by hungry beasts bolting their food. Gone are the civilized beings who talk of manners and journeys and letters; in their places are two bodies straining to give birth to a burst of inhuman pleasure followed by a great, floating nothingness. An explosion of life followed by death - in this we live, and in this we foreshadow our own sweet deaths.
Was it always my nature to take a bad time and block out the good times, until any success became an accident and failure seemed the only truth?
Information work is thinking work.
My grandfather has been very depressed lately. He just doesn't know what to do. He says it's late in the game, and he's afraid that life has him beaten." "Tell him to take out the goalie.
Your fellow man is your mirror. If your own face is clean, the image you perceive will also be flawless. But should you look upon your fellow man and see a blemish, it is your own imperfection that you are encountering - you are being shown what it is that you must correct within yourself.
My father always told me that in this world we are going to make a truckload of mistakes, but the best mistake we can ever make is to err on the side of mercy
When people do not ignore what they should ignore, but ignore what they should not ignore, this is known as ignorance.
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