The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
Anais NinRead
I looked at it [revolver] as if it reminded me of a crime I had committed with an irrepressible smile such as rises sometimes to people’s lips in the face of great catastrophes which are beyond their grasp, the smile that comes at times on certain women’s faces while they are saying they regret the harm they have done. It is the smile of nature quietly and proudly asserting its natural right to kill.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores the idea of finding a complex blend of emotions in the face of regret and destruction.
Anais Nin's quote delves into the paradoxical nature of human emotions, especially as they relate to crime and the ensuing consequences. It suggests that there can be a strange, almost instinctive pleasure in the acknowledgment of harm caused, represented by a smile, which reveals a complex relationship between guilt, remorse, and nature's indifference towards life and death.
Themes
EmotionCrimeSmileRegretNature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the dual nature of humanity during a seminar on philosophy.
More from Anais Nin
All quotes →Anxiety is love's greatest killer, because it is like the stranglehold of the drowning.
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We celebrate peace. Yet we pay no attention to the ways of curing aggression in human beings. And when one sees in psychoanalysis hostility disappearing as people conquer their fears, one wonders if the cure is not there.
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The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.
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We have been poisoned by fairy tales.
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But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.
Anais NinRead
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