A Quote by Philip Roth
Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
The playfulness that I talk about comes very slowly. You cannot just jump out of your seriousness which you have accumulated for lives. Now it has a force of its own. It is not a simple matter to relax; it is one of the most complex phenomena possible, because all that we are taught is tension, anxiety, anguish. Seriousness is the very core the society is built around. Playfulness is for small children, not for grown-up people. And I am teaching you to be children again, to be playful again. It is a quantum leap, a jump...but it takes time to understand.
Seriousness is a sickness... Existense is pure playfulness
In using the terms play and playfulness, I do not intend to suggest any lack of seriousness; quite the contrary. Anyone who has watched children, or adults, at play will recognize that there is no contradiction between play and seriousness, and that some forms of play induce a measure of grave concentration not so readily called forth by work.
I'm happy. I've had a great career. I adore my family. My closest friends from decades ago remain my closest friends.
I teach you joy, not sadness. I teach you playfulness, not seriousness. I teach you love and laughter, because to me there is nothing more sacred than love and laughter, and there is nothing more prayerful than playfulness. I don't teach you renunciation, as it has been taught down the ages. I teach you: Rejoice, rejoice, and rejoice again! Rejoicing should be the essential core of my sannyasins.
There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and smile.
Take life easily, lovingly, playfully, non-seriously. Seriousness is a disease, the greatest disease of the soul and playfulness the greatest health.
I want to be taken playfully, not seriously - not with a long British face, but with beautiful laughter. Your laughter, your playfulness is the recognition that you have understood me. Your seriousness shows that you have misunderstood me, you have missed it - because seriousness is nothing but sickness. It is another name of sadness; it is a shadow of death. And I am all for life. If it is needed for your laughter, your dance, even to reject me, then reject me - but don't reject the dance and the song and the life, because that is my teaching.
All your seriousness is about sandcastles. And you yourself will leave them one day, trampling them down, and you will not look back. The people who take it seriously miss the beauty of playfulness.
I actually don't hang out with any celebrities. My closest friends are old friends. And my real close friends, none of them are actors.
Of all deadly sins, this is the most deadly, namely, that any one should think he is not guilty of a damnable and deadly sin before God.
What I am today, is from Houston and my friends, my closest friends, we all went to high school together.
A solution of two national states - a Jewish state, Israel; an Arab state, Palestine. The Palestinians are our closest neighbors. I believe they may become our closest friends.
It's great because all of my friends from elementary school are still my closest friends.
My whole effort here is to keep you as non-serious as possible, for the simple reason that meditation, all kinds of meditation, can make you too serious and that seriousness will create a spiritual disease and nothing else. Unless a meditation brings you more laughter, more joy, more playfulness, avoid it. It is not for you.
I am privileged to count many Muslims among my friends - some are amongst my closest friends.
Related Authors
Charles Bukowski Quotes
American
Novelist
Charles Dickens Quotes
English
Novelist
Chuck Palahniuk Quotes
American
Novelist
Ernest Hemingway Quotes
American
Novelist
George Eliot Quotes
British
Novelist
George Orwell Quotes
British
Novelist
George R. R. Martin Quotes
American
Novelist
Jane Austen Quotes
British
Novelist
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
German
Novelist
Margaret Atwood Quotes
Canadian
Novelist
Nicholas Sparks Quotes
American
Novelist
Paulo Coelho Quotes
Brazilian
Novelist
Sarah Dessen Quotes
American
Novelist
Stephenie Meyer Quotes
American
Novelist
Veronica Roth Quotes
American
Novelist
Victor Hugo Quotes
French
Novelist