why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?
Bernhard SchlinkRead
What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The distinction between sad and happy is irrelevant when acknowledging the truth of a story.
In this quote, Bernhard Schlink reflects on the complexity of emotions tied to true stories, suggesting that the categorization of experiences as solely sad or happy is superficial. His contemplation encourages readers to appreciate the authenticity of a narrative beyond the traditional emotional labels, emphasizing the importance of truth over emotional classification.
Themes
TruthEmotionPhilosophyNarrativeExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of storytelling, this quote could highlight the depth of personal experiences.
More from Bernhard Schlink
All quotes →The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nonetheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear.
Bernhard SchlinkRead
It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?
Bernhard SchlinkRead
She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats.
Bernhard SchlinkRead
Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.
Bernhard SchlinkRead
...I had to point at Hanna. But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. I tried to tell myself that I had known nothing of what she had done when I chose her. I tried to talk myself into the state of innocence in which children love their parents. But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible. ...And perhaps we are responsible even for the love we feel for our parents.
Bernhard SchlinkRead
Similar quotes
The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
Mark TwainRead
The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiRead
If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.
Friedrich SchillerRead
Every reign must submit to a greater reign.
Lucius Annaeus SenecaRead
Our technological society has no longer any place in it for wisdom that seeks truth for its own sake, that seeks the fullness of being, that seeks to rest in an intuition of the very ground of all being. Without wisdom, the apparent opposition of action and contemplation, of work and rest, of involvement and detachment, can never be resolved.
Thomas MertonRead