“To love another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection, it is a magnificent task… tremendous and foolish and human.”
Source: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
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Louise Erdrich 25
writer from the United States 1954Related quotes
'Modus Vivendi' (p.29)
Gray's Anatomy: Selected Writings (2009)
Trees and Other Poems (1914), Delicatessen
Context: O Carpenter of Nazareth,
Whose mother was a village maid,
Shall we, Thy children, blow our breath
In scorn on any humble trade?
Have pity on our foolishness
And give us eyes, that we may see
Beneath the shopman's clumsy dress
The splendor of humanity!
“How glorious the splendor of a human heart that trusts that it is loved!”
Source: Sanitary Economy (1850), p. 17
Context: Abstract perfection should always be the direction aimed at by human efforts, however imperfect they may be; and the success of sanitary legislation will be indicated by the nearness or the distance of its actual practice from this perfect idea.
The Temper of Our Time (1967)
Context: Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.