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More Quotes by J. M. Coetzee
You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.
Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. It sees what is best in the beloved even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light.
His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.
Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?
He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.
If we are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we fear guilt or retribution.
Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.
I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground... And so are you. So are we all.
I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.
Was it serious? I don't know. It certainly had serious consequences.
