J. M. Coetzee Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Suffering turns men towards their creator.
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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.
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There is no 'natural' order, only the way things are.
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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.
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Suffering passes, while love is eternal. That's a gift that you have received from God. Don't waste it.
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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.
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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.
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In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture.
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We are not by nature cruel.
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In 1998, I self-published online in order to get a traditional deal.
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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.
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Suffering from dysentery at sea was no picnic.
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The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope.
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One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.
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Obviously people read the books in order to be entertained.
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Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.
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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.
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Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.
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Suffering is a kind of ecstasy in a way. Having pain all the time makes me terribly, terribly grateful for every moment I've got.
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Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us.
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Please choose the way of peace.. In the short term there may be winners and losers in this war that we all dread. But that never can, nor never will justify the suffering, pain and loss of life your weapons will cause.
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Sad to think that we won't have any new stories from John Updike, one of the last century's masters. But so many here in the two volumes of his collected stories, 186 by my count, stories to read, reread, savor over the course of a cold season. Updike's genius in the short form spills out of these many, many pages.
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In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.
