“Living in a bittersweet state, with an intense awareness of life's fragility and the pain of separation, is an underappreciated strength and an unexpected path to wisdom, joy, and especially communion.”

—  Susan Cain, book Bittersweet

Bittersweet, Chapter 8 at pp. 183-4

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 9, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Living in a bittersweet state, with an intense awareness of life's fragility and the pain of separation, is an underapp…" by Susan Cain?
Susan Cain photo
Susan Cain50
self-help writer 1968

Related quotes

Nicholas Sparks photo

“A joy as intense as pain”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Susan Cain photo

“The very highest states—of awe and joy, wonder and love, meaning and creativity—emerge from this bittersweet nature of reality. We experience them not because life is perfect—but because it's not.”

Susan Cain book Bittersweet

Bittersweet, Chapter 4 at pp. 92-93

Haruki Murakami photo

“From the moment of my birth, I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Paulo Coelho photo

“An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Susan Cain photo

“In fact, you could say that what orients a person to the bittersweet is a heightened awareness of finality.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Bittersweet Introduction at p. xxxiii

“We have become accustomed to living our life with joy amidst pain and challenges”

Dana Reeve (1961–2006) Actress, singer, activist

Access Hollywood Interview (May 2005)

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin photo

“All the communions of a life-time are one communion.
All the communions of all men now living are one communion.
All the communions of all men, present, past and future, are one communion.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Source: The Divine Milieu (1960), p. 124

Henry Miller photo

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Source: Wisdom of the Heart

Lois Lowry photo

“The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

“Now, these men weren’t idiots. They were geniuses who paid a high price for their genius because the rest of their thinking was other-world. A genius is someone who travels to truth by an unexpected path. Unfortunately, unexpected paths lead to disaster in everyday life.”

Alfred Bester book The Men Who Murdered Mohammed

in Hartwell ed. The World Treasury of Science Fiction, p. 268 (originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1958)
The Men Who Murdered Mohammed (1958)

Related topics