Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Conrad Aiken

Quote by Conrad Aiken

“Who is this little, this pathetic, this ridiculous Demarest? We laugh at him, and also we weep for him; for he is ourselves, he is humanity, he is God. He makes mistakes. He is an egoist. He is imperfect—physically, morally, and mentally. Coffee disagrees with him; angostura causes him anguish; borborigmi interrupts his sleep, causing in his dreams falls of cliffs and the all-dreaded thunderstone; his ears ache; his nostrils, edematous; frontal headaches… Nevertheless, like ourselves, whose disabilities differ from his only in details, he struggles—why? to avoid the making of mistakes, to escape the tyrant solipsism, and to know himself; like us, he endeavors to return to God. Let him cry out as he will, let him protest his skepticism ever so loudly, he is at heart, like every other, a believer in perfection!”

Quote by Conrad Aiken

Work

Blue Voyage

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Conrad Aiken
Conrad Aiken

Conrad Aiken (August 5, 1889 - August 17, 1973) was an American novelist and poet. Known for his unique literary style and profound exploration of the human psyche, Aiken's works often delve into themes of morality, philosophy, and the human condition. more

You May Also Like

“The Fool shook his head, smiling. 'No. Dragons are no better than humans. They are little different at all from men. They will hold up a mirror to humanity's selfishness. They will remind you that all your talk of owning this and claiming that is no more than the snarling of a chained dog or a sparrow's challenge song. The reality of those claims lasts but for the instant of its sounding. Name it as you will, claim it as you will, the world does not belong to men. Men belong to the world. You will not own the earth that eventually your body will become, nor will it recall the name it once answered to.”

“Images of suffering are humanizing to all but the hardened fanatic. Watch men die, struggling for dignity, and you cannot deny their humanity. If this is the politics of victimization, then all our impulses of empathy with strangers are the politics of victimization. We learn to care about those who are not like us not when we learn they want the same things we do, but when we learn that they feel pain in the same way we do.”

“People were so oversensitive to the supposed overfishing of sharks. As if it wasn't the height of hubris to decide that humanity needed to be put into the position of custodian to the height of apex predators. God had made man to fight and defeat his other creations. Why else would he have made his chosen children physically weak, but mentally strong? In the battle between man and shark, the shark should always have won. That it didn't, proved only that man was intended to be victorious and that he should be allowed to kill whatever he could before he, in turn, was killed.”

“I think all of us need to do a better job of seeing the humanity of people on the other side of the aisle. Because I think what happens in this country right now is: The left says to the right, “What do you know about pain, white straight man? My pain is real, as an L.G.B.T.Q. person.” And the right says to the left, “What do you know about pain, college-educated, cosmopolitan élite? My pain is real, in a post-industrial community ravaged by the opioid crisis.” And I know that, when I am upset, the worst thing that someone can say to me, even if it is said with the best of intentions, is “It’s not as bad as you think.” Any therapist will tell you that the first step to healing is to have your pain seen and validated. And I think all of us have to do a better job of recognizing that people don’t have to be right in our mind for what they’re facing to be wrong. And people don’t have to be right in our minds for us to try to right that wrong. That comes down to sort of a core recognition that every single person is more than just one thing about them. And every single person is more than even beliefs that might personally hurt many other people.”

“So much of our surprise, our fear, and our vindictiveness when faced with a pest is a result of our own ignorance. When we see a coyote in the street, a rat in our trash can, or a squirrel in the attic, we are at a loss. When we don't know what to do, we feel helpless. Vulnerable. When we realize how helpless we are, shame follows immediately behind. We want the problem—and the animal causing our shame—to go away.”