“All observations of life are harsh, because life is. I lament that fact, but I cannot change it.”
Source: The Tent
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Margaret Atwood 348
Canadian writer 1939Related quotes
Author's Remarks.
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (2003)
Context: I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty. There are some ten thousand religious sects — each with its own cosmology, each with its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but are instruments of evil, besides. None of the ten thousand has yet persuaded me to make the requisite leap of faith. In the absence of conviction, I've come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable corollary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the bargain — which doesn't strike me as something to lament. Accepting the essential inscrutability of existence, in any case, is surely preferable to its opposite: capitulating to the tyranny of intransigent belief. And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why — which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive.
1949 election campaign speech https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1949-robert-menzies, delivered in Melbourne on November 10, 1949
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)
Speech in London (11 December 1891), quoted in The Times (12 December 1891), p. 7.
1890s
“I cannot be content with less than heaven;
Living, and comprehensive of all life.”
Festus (1839)
Context: I cannot be content with less than heaven;
Living, and comprehensive of all life.
Thee, universal heaven, celestial all;
Thee, sacred seat of intellective time;
Field of the soul's best wisdom: home of truth,
Star-throned.
Kap Maceda Aguila, "The Substance of Chiz", People Asia, 2006 June, p. 51, ISSN 0119-657X.
2006
Source: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (1995), p. xi
Re: Philosophy of Lisp programmers http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/70c2703e68baae46 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous
“Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.”
Act IV, sc. iv
Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787)