Perhaps someone will have seen mine, the one I’m waiting for, just as I saw him, in a ditch when his hands were making their last appeal and his eyes no longer could see. Someone who will never know what that man was to me; someone whose name I’ll never know.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the depth of human connection and the impact of seeing someone in need, even if that person remains unknown.
In this poignant reflection by Marguerite Duras, the speaker contemplates the profound yet brief encounters that can shape our lives, especially when witnessing another's vulnerability. The quote emphasizes the emotional resonance of seeing someone in distress and how these moments, though fleeting, can create lasting impressions that transcend the boundaries of personal identification and relationship.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of empathy in our everyday lives.
Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.
What she said was always strange. It had happened long ago. It seemed insignificant. And yet it was something you remembered forever. The words as well as the story. The voice as much as the words.
I'm still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.
Stormy skies, says Ernesto. He grieved for them. Summer rain. Childhood.
A prolonged silence ensues. The reason for the silence is our growing interest one for the other. No one is aware of it, no one yet; no one? am I quite sure?
A house means a family house, a place specially meant for putting children and men in so as to restrict their waywardness and distract them from the longing for adventure and escape they've had since time began.
There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.
We all have a fundamental right to live free from fear, free from crime, and free from disorder - but while we share that right, we also share the duty to secure it.
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
It really does no good to ask questions that reflect opposition to the will of God. Rather ask, What am I to do?
Give up identification with this mass of flesh as well as with what thinks it a mass. Both are intellectual imaginations. Recognise your true self as undifferentiated awareness, unaffected by time, past, present or future, and enter Peace.
I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
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