I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence.
Theodore DreiserRead
People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Words often overshadow true feelings and intentions behind them.
The quote emphasizes that people tend to overvalue words, believing that speaking can create significant change. However, words often fail to capture the depth of genuine feelings and desires, suggesting that true communication comes from understanding and listening to the heart beyond mere verbal expressions.
Themes
CommunicationFeelingsWordsUnderstandingListening
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about emotional intelligence, one could use this quote to illustrate the importance of empathy over mere words.
More from Theodore Dreiser
All quotes →Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives' tales as to what is to become of him afterward, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave.
Theodore DreiserRead
And then he sank back and tried, as usual, not to think. He must succeed. That's what the world was made for. That's what he was made for. That was what he would have to do.
Theodore DreiserRead
Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
Theodore DreiserRead
If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circustance.
Theodore DreiserRead
Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.
Theodore DreiserRead
Similar quotes
If you haven't met Satan recently, you are probably going his way!
C. S. LewisRead
Because every portion of the body, mind, and spirit yearns for the integration of yin and yang, angelic intercourse is led by the spirit rather than the sexual organs. . . . Where ordinary intercourse unites sex organs with sex organs, angelic cultivation unites spirit with spirit, mind with mind, and every cell of one body with every cell of the other body.
LaoziRead
I think most of my approach to life has been like that, to find order in chaos, to be in the middle of a bunch of things happening at the same time, but find focus. I strive to be like the sun sitting in the middle of the solar system with all the planets spinning around it - millions of things going on. It's just sitting there being the sun, but exerting gravitational effect on everything. I think man should look at himself that way.
RzaRead
The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape
Rem KoolhaasRead
Odors have an altogether peculiar force, in affecting us through association; a force differing essentially from that of objects addressing the touch, the taste, the sight or the hearing.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead