Mark Slouka said this quote

“ Pleasure and pain are immediate; knowledge, retrospective. A steel ball, suspended on a string, smacks into its brothers and nothing happens: no shock of recognition, no sudden epiphany. We go about our business, buttering the toast, choosing gray socks over brown. But here's the thing: just because we haven't understood something doesn't mean we haven't been shaped by it. ”

Famous Quotes of Mark Slouka

Famous quotes of Mark Slouka from the classy quote

See all

The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult--to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization--not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the crucible in which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do, but how to be. Their method is confrontational, their domain unlimited, their product not truth but the reasoned search for truth, their success something very much like Frost's momentary stay against confusion.

~ Mark Slouka

I lost my father this past year, and the word feels right because I keep looking for him. As if he were misplaced. As if he could just turn up, like a sock or a set of keys.

~ Mark Slouka

...like a small stone deflected off a larger one, my brother had spun off toward the Almighty, though to my mind the events of that morning could just as well have cast him the other way.

~ Mark Slouka

The only thing your life teaches you is how to live your life. And that’s only if you’re very lucky. And you listen very hard.

~ Mark Slouka