Source: A Brief History of Everything (1996), p. 42
Context: Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity — a total embrace of the entire Kosmos — a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
“Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.”
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Upon being asked to offer the young son of a member of Parliament advice, cited in Wilfrid Meynell, Benjamin Disraeli: An Unconventional Biography (1903), p. 83.
Sourced but undated
Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist
"To Juan at the Winter Solstice" from Poems 1938-1945 (1946)
Poems
“There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling”
Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist
"To Juan at the Winter Solstice" from Poems 1938-1945 (1946).
Poems
Context: There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether as learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser guards belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.
“The world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.”
Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven
“The story of one person is the story of all of humanity.”
Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym
Source: The Devil and Miss Prym
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) American speculative fiction writer
“So then it is eternal and infinite and one and all alike.”
Melissus of Samos (-470–-430 BC) Eleatic philosopher
Fragments of Melissus's On Nature, Fragment 7
“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”
Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer
As quoted in The Human Condition (1958) by Hannah Arendt. This appears as part of a statement in a 1957 interview where she speaks of a friend's comments about her:
I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy.
Interview with Bent Mohn in The New York Times Book Review (3 November 1957)
Paraphrased variant : All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.
“There are two stories for every life; the one you live & the one others tell”
Mitch Albom (1958) American author
Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven
