Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Barbara Kingsolver on meaningful
Barbara Kingsolver213 quotes“Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.”
Filed under
More from Barbara Kingsolver
I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer’s block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don’t. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver How pointless life could be, what a foolish business of inventing things to love, just so you could dread losing them.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver It’s the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver For Lou Ann, life itself was a life-threatening enterprise.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver Time cures you first, and then it kills you.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down.” – Mrs. Brown
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver I made it to the childbearing phase without TV dependence, then looked around and thought, Well gee, why start now? Why get a pet python on the day you decide to raise fuzzy little gerbils?
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you’ll behave to other people.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It’s more like conversation, raising new questions and inspiring you to answer them for yourself.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver The happiest people are the ones with the most community.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver She kept swimming out into life because she hadn’t yet found a rock to stand on.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.
Barbara KingsolverBarbara Kingsolver
Original quotes
From our community writers
Caught inside my mind trapped between its horrid lines losing precious time.
Carmen AmadosCarmen Amados Some women will have you look at life differently.
Eleni SophiaEleni Sophia The biggest reward often require the largest risks.
Nicole BrownNicole Brown Being with you is familiar, like playing guitar after some time; the theory is there but my fingers have forgotten the chords.
AstaAsta Late-night conservations, Breathtaking memories, and an endless sky full of unseen dazzling stars. That’s how I want to remember us.
AurthurAurthur Nothing is more terrifying than falling in love.
Helena DegnHelena Degn People who cannot see through souls will keep searching for beauty in faces and will never find it.
Shilpa GoelShilpa Goel There is someone out there waiting to love you in all the ways you deserve.
Ashley PrzywolskiAshley Przywolski
Meet the writers
More on meaningful
life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; … it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it’s as though you aren’t there.
Alan AldaAlan Alda the world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. it quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it.
Alain Robbe-GrilletAlain Robbe-Grillet I have not been part of an active counterculture movement, as it is not the approach that I have personally pursued to create a qualitatively beneficial and meaningful impact on society.
Al SeckelAl Seckel Competition in its best form is a test of self. It has nothing to do with medals.
Al OerterAl Oerter When a company is able to establish a dominant market position, consumers lose meaningful choices.
Al FrankenAl Franken I don’t discuss my family with the press; I discuss my family with my family. If you notice, when you hear something sensational in the press about me.
Al B. Sure!Al B. Sure! Of course, there [in China] has to be chaos. It has to be crazy, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong about it except this government, which is really incapable of doing anything meaningful.
Ai WeiweiAi Weiwei Many people are going to use [Beijing National Stadium], which makes it more meaningful. If we don’t design it, somebody else has to design it.
Ai WeiweiAi Weiwei