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Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

Book by Susan Cain · 6 quotes · Longing, Grief, Sorrow

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Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole Quotes

“Yet the moonlight sonatas of the world don't simply discharge our emotions; they elevate them. Also, it's only sad music that elicits exalted states of communion and awe. Music conveying other negative emotions, such as fear and anger, produces no such effect. Even happy music produces fewer psychological rewards than sad music, concluded Sachs, Damasio, and Habibi. Upbeat tunes make us want to dance around our kitchens and invite friends for dinner. But it's sad music that makes us want to touch the sky.”

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“So many of us love tragic drama, rainy days, tearjerker movies. We adore cherry blossoms--we even hold festivals in their honor--preferring them to equally lovely flowers because they die young. (The Japanese, who love sakura flowers most of all, attribute this preference to mono no aware, which means a desired state of gentle sorrow brought about by "the pathos of things" and "a sensitivity to impermanence").”

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“Longing itself is divine," writes the Hindu spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. "Longing for worldly things makes you inert. Longing for Infinity fills you with life. The skill is to bear the pain of longing and move on. True longing brings up spurts of bliss." At the heart of all these traditions is this pain of separation, the longing for reunion, and occasionally, the transcendent achievement of it.”

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