Tracy Chapman Quotes

Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.

The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

One thing about pain: It proves you're alive.

And yet I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering- that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness.

Scott Fitzgerald said famously that "he who invented consciousness would have a lot to be blamed for." But he also forgot that without consciousness, he would have no access to true happiness or even the possibility of transcendence.

A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation.

I should be glad of loneliness And hours that go on broken wings,A thirsty body, a tired heart And the unchanging ache of things,If I could make a single song As lovely and as full of light,As hushed and brief as a falling star On a winter night.

[The artist] speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation--and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear…which binds together all humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.

I used to believe my art had to be about the things that brought me joy and gave me hope. But I learned that art can be found in all of life, even in pain.

I think life is perverse. It can be beautiful, but it won't.

Life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.

Only he with the hobbled foot fully knows the beauty of running. Only he with the severed ear can apprehend what the sweetest music must sound like. Our ailments complete us.

We are all students of the world; frail embodied consciousnesses struggling to understand, and be a meaningful part of this great, mysterious gift of life.

I got a bit obsessed with the whole English language and was writing journals and poetry. I've always been intrigued about psychology and philosophy and how people's minds work.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

We divide ourselves up into spirit and human, but essentially we are all a part of the same world.

The first and foremost reality is that suffering and death are not only enemies of life, but a means of reminding us of life's twin realities, love and hate.

At the core of everything that is hurtful to humanity is a lack of consciousness.

He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling unforeseen wing-footed wanderer.

The only thing that exists is torment, lyricism, and the magnificence of language.

Being a wizard gives you more power than most, but it doesn't change your heart. We're all human. We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.

Art is the highest expression of the human spirit.