The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever-recurring song of retaliation.
Interpretation
Human life has the potential for beauty, but it is often marred by our desire for revenge.
This quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. highlights the inherent beauty and potential in human existence, suggesting that our capacity for kindness and love is frequently overshadowed by our inclination towards retaliation and vengeance. It reflects on the cyclical nature of human conflict, where the pursuit of revenge negates the beauty of life and undermines our ability to create harmonious relationships.
In practice
In a speech about promoting peace, one might say this quote to encourage the audience to look beyond their grievances.
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
Music is the best consolation for a despaired man
We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
Israel... is one of the great outpost of democracy in the world
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
True repentance begins with KNOWLEDGE of sin. It goes on to work SORROW for sin. It leads to CONFESSION of sin before God. It shows itself before a person by a thorough BREAKING OFF from sin. It results in producing a DEEP HATRED for all sin.
For pain words are lacking. There should be cries, cracks, fissures, whiteness passing over chintz covers, interference with the sense of time, of space ; the sense also of extreme fixity in passing objects ; and sounds very remote and then very close ; flesh being gashed and blood sparting, a joint suddenly twisted - beneath all of which appears something very important, yet remote, to be just held in solitude.β β Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be.
There is a point at which even justice does injury.
Ive walked a lot in the mountains in Iceland. And as you come to a new valley, as you come to a new landscape, you have a certain view. If you stand still, the landscape doesnt necessarily tell you how big it is. It doesnt really tell you what youre looking at. The moment you start to move the mountain starts to move.
To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.