Bittersweet Quotes

“Part of this utopian vision—at least the part that has to do with world peace—derives from a field in social psychology called terror management theory. According to this theory, the fear of death encourages tribalism, by making us want to affiliate with a group identity that would seem to outlive us. Various studies have shown that when we feel mortally threatened, we become jingoistic, hostile to outsiders, biased against out-groups.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“The nausea is related to these aspects of grief, but its true source, I think, is the realization that made my son cry on the last day of third grade: What once was will never be again. Never again this teacher, never again this particular configuration of classmates, never again will you learn long division for the first time (even if you don’t care very much for math).”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Pennebaker found that that the people who wrote about their troubles were markedly calmer and happier than those who described their sneakers. Even months later, they were physically healthier, with lower blood pressure and fewer doctor’s visits. They had better relationships and more success at work.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“A person giving feedback can’t be mindful of its recipient’s equilibrium—until she’s achieved her own. •”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Charles Schulz once said that his Peanuts characters represented different aspects of himself. Philosophical Linus, crabby Lucy, insouciant Snoopy…and melancholic Charlie Brown, who was the heart of it all, the center of the strip, yet the one we could never admit to being. “I didn’t realize how many Charlie Browns there were in the world,” Schulz said. “I thought I was the only one.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Compared with German cards, which feature black-and-white designs and sayings like “In deep sadness” and “Words will not lighten a heavy heart,” American cards are colorful, with cheery proclamations like “Love lives on” and “Memories will bring comfort.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“They wanted positive words, upbeat words. There’s no law of metta governing which words to use, and Sharon’s a capacious soul. So in California, she switched her phrases to May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Love is the antidote to fear. Fear causes you to shrink and withhold; love opens you up. Do you tend to focus on your mistakes and shortcomings? Maybe you can shift your emphasis from one true place (“I have a lot of flaws and made a lot of mistakes today”) to another true place (“I have a lot of flaws and made a lot of mistakes, and I’m also worthy, and will try again tomorrow”). Maybe you’ll start giving that second true place more airtime.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“You’re not going to invite everyone to move in with you, she said. You’re still going to protect yourself. Not everyone’s going to be your friend. But you can wish everyone love.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Sadness is like a meditation on compassion. You have this burst of: There’s harm there, there’s need there. Then I leave the prison. I think about my brother, and it’s like a meditative state. I’ve always felt that way about the human condition. I’m not a tragic person. I’m hopeful. But I think sadness is beautiful and sadness is wise.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Our nervous systems make little distinction between our own pain and the pain of others, it turns out; they react similarly to both.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Most of all, bittersweetness shows us how to respond to pain: by acknowledging it, and attempting to turn it into art, the way the musicians do, or healing, or innovation, or anything else that nourishes the soul. If we don’t transform our sorrows and longings, we can end up inflicting them on others via abuse, domination, neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward each other.[*”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Whatever pain you can't get rid of, make that your creative offering.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Other studies have found that sad moods tend to sharpen our attention: They make us more focused and detail oriented; they improve our memories, correct our cognitive biases.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Yiddish word kvelling. It means “bursting with pride and joy for someone you love,” I explained, “especially a child.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“It’s like a cracked mirror now,” Lois says. “Something is always missing. The mirror doesn’t get put back the way it was, but if you work, you can get a piece of it back.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“You see, when I think of these events, it is not the sadness that I most remember. It is the union between souls. When we experience sadness, we share in a common suffering. It is one of the few times when people allow themselves to be truly vulnerable. It is a time when our culture allows us to be completely honest about how we feel. [Emphasis added.]”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“mean the strange exaltation that yearning can bring. According to recent research by Yaden, self-transcendence (as well as its milder cousins, such as gratitude and flow states) increases at times of transition, endings, and death—at the bittersweet times of life.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“bittersweet”: a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. The bittersweet is also about the recognition that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. “Days of honey, days of onion,” as an Arabic proverb puts it.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“The idea of longing as a sacred and generative force seems very odd in our culture of normative sunshine. But it’s traveled the world for centuries, under many different names, taking many different forms. Writers and artists, mystics and philosophers, have long tried to give voice to it. García Lorca called it the “mysterious power which everyone senses and no philosopher explains.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“The sixteenth-century artist Albrecht Dürer famously depicted Melancholy as a downcast angel surrounded by symbols of creativity, knowledge, and yearning: a polyhedron, an hourglass, a ladder ascending to the sky. The nineteenth-century poet Charles Baudelaire could “scarcely conceive of a type of beauty” in which there is no melancholy. This romantic vision of melancholia has waxed and waned over time; most recently, it’s waned. In an influential 1918 essay, Sigmund Freud dismissed melancholy as narcissism, and ever since, it’s disappeared into the maw of psychopathology. Mainstream psychology sees it as synonymous with clinical depression.[*1]”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“We aren't responsible for the sins of our parents. And neither must we bear their pain. This doesn't mean turning our backs on our forebears. We can send our love back to them, across the centuries. But on their behalf and ours, we can follow the bittersweet tradition, and transform their troubles into something better.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“The young delude themselves that the music will never stop playing. So it makes sense for them to explore rather than savor; to meet new people rather than to devote time to their nearest and dearest; to learn new skills and soak up information, rather than to ponder the meaning of it all; to focus on the future rather than to remain in the present.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“But even so, I cannot accept, will not accept, do you hear me as I whisper that I do not accept the brutal terms of life and death on this beautiful planet. But even so, but even so, but even so.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“The simple act of privately wishing people well has a way of changing the way we relate to them, and to the world.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Creativity has the power to look pain in the eye, and to decide to turn it into something better.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“There's something about sadness that removes the scales from our eyes.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“When you went to your favorite concert and heard your favorite musician singing the body electric, that was it; when you met your love and gazed at each other with shining eyes, that was it; when you kissed your five-year-old good night and she turned to you solemnly and said, "Thank you for loving me so much," that was it: all of them facets of the same jewel.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“Children splashing joyfully in puddles brings tears to grandparents' eyes because they know that one day the children will grow up and grow old.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“You don't have to believe in specific conceptions of God in order to be transformed by spiritual longing.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole