Zadie Smith Quotes

It doesn't escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else's.

And so, irritants, it is with this that I leave you. You are spared so that you can think of what it really is to live in a world that engenders a pain for which there is no comfort. Here is your product! You have the rest of your lives to think of this. And I suggest you think quickly, for a long life is never a guarantee.

I think of myself as quite a confused kind of person, because I think there's so many great things about the world, but there are so many awful things too. I feel very guilty a lot of the time about enjoying my life so much when there are people living in such misery.

I have a great deal of joy in my life, and I'm very fortunate. That combination makes you aware of just how wonderful life can be on the one hand and how dreadful it can be for people on the other. You can't be happy in isolation.

Tragedy takes us to the very state of consciousness which, were we to hold to it, would go far toward preventing further tragedies.

The more I speak and travel, I realize I don't have it that bad. There are so many people that have it so much worse than I do.

I think my eyes were knocked open and they don't close. I sometimes wish I could close them and look away.

Since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.

I hear the birds singing. Listen. I hear them in their cage. The others-all our kind who know of her-they think of her as heartless, but she wasn't heartless. She was only aware of things which I didn't learn till so many decades had passed. She knew secrets that only suffering can teach.

Pleasure is sweetest when 'tis paid for by another's pain.

One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other.

I find it difficult to feel responsible for the suffering of others. That's why I find war so hard to bear. It's the same with animals: I feel the less harm I do, the lighter my heart. I love a light heart. And when I know I'm causing suffering, I feel the heaviness of it. It's a physical pain. So it's self-interest that I don't want to cause harm.

It's not that I'm a very good person. It's that I think I should at least look at the ways in which I am not a good person, the ways in which I so readily become the person who would not notice that the wonderful clothing I'm wearing someone is probably dying for.

All the great things that I get to be curious about, see, and experience because I'm sensitive to the world, it also opens up these areas where there's a lot of pain and suffering. You're just aware, aware, aware.

When you have a toothache, you think that not having a toothache will make you very happy. But when you don't have a toothache, often you are still not happy. If you practice awareness, you suddenly become very rich, very very happy.

As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?

Ich glaube sogar, durch Leidensk a« mpfe k o« nnten dieTiere zu Menschen werden. I believe that by suffering even animals could be made human.

You're only young once, they say, but doesn't it go on for a long time? More years than you can bear.

Some day, the world will discover that, without thought, there can be no love.

One very powerful and effective way to work with this tendency to push away pain and hold on to pleasure is the practice of tonglen.  In tonglen practice, when we see or feel suffering, we  breathe in with the notion of completely feeling it, accepting it, and owning it.

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so.

I recognize as a man there's a lot of things that I don't have to think about. But I'm thinking about them now.

To perceive is to suffer.

If there is no enjoyment in this world, there would not be so much suffering. As suffering really is the frustration of our attempts to enjoy.