J. M. Coetzee Quotes
Quotes to Explore
-
Suffering turns men towards their creator.
-
At school, I'd refuse to take part in biology lessons when animals were being dissected. One time, the teacher announced that we would be gassing worms. So I ran around the room, gathered up all the worms and set them free in the fields. I just loved animals and couldn't bear the thought of them suffering.
-
There is no 'natural' order, only the way things are.
-
I was suffering from a peculiar and persistent sense that I was being pursued, and also the conviction that under the political order of the times, our lives had no meaning.
-
Suffering passes, while love is eternal. That's a gift that you have received from God. Don't waste it.
-
In Gnosticism, the physical world did not ultimately matter - which meant physical suffering did not matter either. Seeking 'enlightenment' meant cultivating an attitude of detachment, even indifference.
-
It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful... it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself.
-
In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.
-
We are not by nature cruel.
-
In 1998, I self-published online in order to get a traditional deal.
-
When you are suffering, you become more understanding about yourself, but also about other people's sufferings too. That's the first step to understand somebody is to understand their sufferings. So then love follows.
-
Suffering from dysentery at sea was no picnic.
-
The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope.
-
One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.
-
Obviously people read the books in order to be entertained.
-
Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.
-
There's nothing wrong in suffering, if you suffer for a purpose. Our revolution didn't abolish danger or death. It simply made danger and death worthwhile.
-
Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.
-
Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be. Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict with actuality can dash it-so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can satisfy it: a hope reaching out beyond this world.
-
The belief that one's suffering has a greater cosmic purpose, and is thus more exciting and more noble, well, it made a lot of sense to me.
-
We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
-
What I was is unimportant, what I am now is important.
-
If you don't like your definition of 'good enough', then feel free to change that, but the goal before shipping is merely that. Not perfect.
-
In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.
