The difficulty in life is the choice. And the most terrifying moment is when the choice is made and you must live inside it, with no guarantee that it was the right one.
Regret is a turbine of self-destruction, remorse an engine of renewal. Drawing on the etymological and cultural heritage of both words, historian Tiffany Watt Smith offers a revelatory distinction between the two, both subtle and profound.
1mo ago
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
2mo ago
The difficulty in life is the choice. And it is a difficulty because, in making a choice, we must leave behind the unselected remainder — which haunts us, sometimes, as the ghost of what we might have been.
The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived. She had lived — who could say now with what passion? — since she had loved him for himself…
We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.
At the end of my life, I know I won't be wishing I'd held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me.
6mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
