“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”
― The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?”
― The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
“That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”
― When Breath Becomes Air
― When Breath Becomes Air
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
“May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful.”
― Upstream: Selected Essays
― Upstream: Selected Essays
“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
― When Breath Becomes Air
― When Breath Becomes Air
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