Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the historical intertwining of trade and religious practices, particularly in Africa.
Wole Soyinka highlights the long-standing relationship between trading and religious beliefs, indicating that throughout history, these two spheres have influenced each other significantly. On the African continent, this relationship could be seen in how trade networks facilitated the spread of religious ideas, and vice versa, shaping the cultural and spiritual landscapes of societies.
In practice
In a discussion about the cultural practices of African communities, this quote illustrates the role of trade in shaping their spiritual lives.
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
A war, with its attendant human suffering, must, when that evil is unavoidable, be made to fragment more than buildings: It must shatter the foundations of thought and re-create. Only in this way does every individual share in the cataclysm and understand the purpose of sacrifice.
Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.
The winter moon becomes a companion, the heart of the priest, sunk in meditation upon religion and philosophy, there in the mountain hall, is engaged in a delicate interplay and exchange with the moon; and it is this of which the poet sings.
I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.
A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.
It is not all of life to live, nor yet all of death to die. For life and death are one, and only those who will consider the experience as one may come to understand or comprehend what peace indeed means.
I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry--poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs--is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song.
A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
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