I never force myself to be devout except when I feel so inspired, and never compose hymns of prayers unless I feel within me real and true devotion.
Franz SchubertRead
No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the limitations of empathy and understanding between individuals.
Franz Schubert's quote reflects on the nature of human connections, suggesting that despite our efforts to understand each other's emotions, there is an inherent disconnect that often leaves us isolated in our experiences. It emphasizes that while we may attempt to bond and share our feelings, the depth of another's grief or joy is ultimately something we can never fully grasp, illustrating the complexity of interpersonal relationships.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the importance of emotional support among friends.
I never force myself to be devout except when I feel so inspired, and never compose hymns of prayers unless I feel within me real and true devotion.
You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves.
There is no such thing as happy music.
How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.
The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.
Watching him during the first several minutes of his delivery, Cecilia felt a pleasant sinking sensation in her stomach as she contemplated how deliciously self-destructive it would be, almost erotic, to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so unfathomably stupid. He would fill her with his big-faced children, all of them loud, boneheaded boys with a passion for guns and football and aeroplanes.
Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to you, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it—some motive—some trick.
You know what they say: A woman needs a man about as much as a fish needs a bicycle.
A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.
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