You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.
Interpretation
True vitality comes from facing challenges and embracing the wild aspects of life.
This quote by Isak Dinesen suggests that true aliveness is found in experiencing the raw, untamed elements of existence. Living among lions symbolizes confronting fearsome obstacles and embracing the adventures that life presents, reminding us that real fulfillment often comes from stepping outside of our comfort zones and engaging with the world in a bold manner.
In practice
This quote can inspire a group of students during a motivational speech about taking risks.
I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
I was young, and by instinct of self-preservation I had to collect my energy on something, if I were not to be whirled away with the dusk on the farm-roads, or the smoke on the plain. I begun in the evenings to write stories, fairy-tales, and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times.
The lime trees were in bloom. But in the early morning only a faint fragrance drifted through the garden, an airy message, an aromatic echo of the dreams during the short summer night.
A visitor is a friend, he brings news, good or bad, which is bread to the hungry minds in lonely places. A real friend who comes to the house is a heavenly messenger, who brings the panis angelorum.
The Cicada sing an endless song in the long grass, smells run along the earth and falling stars run over the sky, like tears over a cheek. You are the privileged person to whom everything is taken. The Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts.
through the loveliness and power of her dream world she was now, in her old frock and botched shoes, very likely the loveliest, mightiest and most dangerous person on earth
I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I'd get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.
It's all a farce, - these tales they tell About the breezes sighing, And moans astir o'er field and dell, Because the year is dying.
Starting after 60, I thought, 'I'm not going to be able to write a book of poems on the 70s. It's going to be all moans and groans and complaints, and what is there to laugh about?' But I found plenty to laugh about.
It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.
He thought how sad it was to be an Animal who had never had a bunch of violets picked for him.
Sobriety is okay enough," Denny says, "but someday, I'd like to live a life based on doing good stuff instead of just not doing bad stuff. You know?
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