Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man.
Norman CousinsRead
The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the internal decay of a person's emotional and empathetic capacities while they are still alive.
Norman Cousins emphasizes the profound loss experienced when a person becomes emotionally numb or apathetic, despite physically existing. He suggests that the true tragedy of life lies in losing one's ability to feel deeply and connect with the experiences of others, which diminishes the richness of human existence. By pointing out the 'death' of genuine feeling and inspired responses, Cousins urges us to cherish our emotional awareness and the ability to empathize with others throughout our lives.
Themes
TragedyLifeEmotionAwarenessEmpathyGenuine Feeling
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about pursuing emotional authenticity.
More from Norman Cousins
All quotes →Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.
Norman CousinsRead
Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.
Norman CousinsRead
People are never more insecure than when they become obsessed with their fears at the expense of their dreams.
Norman CousinsRead
Reverence for life is more than solicitude or sensitivity for life. It is a sense of the whole, a capacity for inspired response, a respect for the intricate universe of individual life. It is the supreme awareness of awareness itself.
Norman CousinsRead
Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is.
Norman CousinsRead
Similar quotes
We are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names but we remain one nation.
Barack ObamaRead
Conservatives want live babies so they can train them to be dead soldiers.
George CarlinRead
To hell with the future. It's a man-eating idol.
Ivan IllichRead
God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them.
Khalil GibranRead
[Emigrants] will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.
Thomas JeffersonRead
Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead