...as long as I felt I had to take some action, I was anguished, and when I gave up all responsibility and stopped trying to do anything at all, I was relatively at peace, even though the earth meanwhile was circling so far below us and we were so high up in a defective airplane that would have trouble landing. Lydia Davis
About This Quote

The quote, "as long as I felt I had to take some action, I was anguished, and when I gave up all responsibility and stopped trying to do anything at all, I was relatively at peace, even though the earth meanwhile was circling so far below us and we were so high up in a defective airplane that would have trouble landing." It’s true that we feel the need to accomplish something every day. We start out with a sense of urgency that keeps us going. But we can’t stay at this level of activity much longer than we can take the pressure. Eventually we begin to feel depressed and anxious and can’t seem to get started. The problem is that our minds have been trained to think in terms of accomplishment, so when we give up the struggle, we never learn how to cope with confusion or failure.

Source: Cant And Wont: Stories

Some Similar Quotes
  1. For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it. - Thomas Hobbes

  2. Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it! - Erich Maria Remarque

  3. Some, often without knowing it, suffered from being deprived of the company of friends and from their inability to get in touch with them through the usual channels of friendship, letters, trains, and boats. Others, fewer these, Tarrou may have been one of them, had... - Albert Camus

  4. Don't Gain The World & Lose Your Soul, Wisdom Is Better Than Silver Or Gold. - Bob Marley

  5. It is of the greatest important in this world that a man should know himself, and the measure of his own strength and means; and he who knows that he has not a genius for fighting must learn how to govern by the arts of... - Anonymous

More Quotes By Lydia Davis
  1. I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.

  2. What was happening to them was that every bad time produced a bad feeling that in turn produced several more bad times and several more bad feelings, so that their life together became crowded with bad times and bad feelings, so crowded that almost nothing...

  3. Art is not in some far-off place.

  4. I had reached a juncture in my reading life that is familiar to those who have been there: in the allotted time left to me on earth, should I read more and more new books, or should I cease with that vain consumption--vain because it...

  5. ...as long as I felt I had to take some action, I was anguished, and when I gave up all responsibility and stopped trying to do anything at all, I was relatively at peace, even though the earth meanwhile was circling so far below us...

Related Topics