Wisdom Quote by Elena Ferrante — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“You still waste time with those things, Lenu? We are flying over a ball of fire. The part that has cooled floats on the lava. On that part we construct the buildings, the bridges, and the streets, and every so often the lava comes out of Vesuvius or causes an earthquake that destroys everything. There are microbes everywhere that make us sick and die. There are wars. There is a poverty that makes us all cruel. Every second something might happen that will cause you such suffering that you'll never have enough tears. And what are you doing? A theology course in which you struggle to understand what the Holy Spirit is? Forget it, it was the Devil who invented the world, not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Do you want to see the string of pearls that Stefano gave me?”

“I'm lying, yes, but why do you force me to give a linear explanation; linear explanations are almost always lies.”

“How heavy a body that has been traversed by death is, life is light, there's no need to let anyone make it heavy for us”

“There is no such thing as a neutral future. Every tomorrow reflects what we dare to protect today.”

“Praise not the day until evening has come, a woman until she is burnt, a sword until it is tried, a maiden until she is married, ice until it has been crossed, beer until it has been drunk.”

“If she could no longer be called beautiful, she possessed something better-a knowledge of beauty; it’s inflated value, it’s inevitable loss.”

“Sayings of the Prophet”

“There's a difference between intellect and intelligence. Noise propagates the former, silence the later. Intellect is inherited, intelligence is inherent.”

“Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.”