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He Thought About Himself And To The Young That Always Brings Sadness.
-Sherwood Anderson
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He Thought About Himself

Sherwood Anderson
...
He Thought About Himself And To The Young That Always Brings Sadness.

Understanding the Quote: "he thought about himself and to the young that always brings sadness...."

This quote by Sherwood Anderson reflects deeply on the theme of sadness. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Sadness, Young, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Sherwood Anderson interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson is celebrated for insightful thoughts on sadness and young. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 73887
Topic
Sadness
Young
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In The Beginning When The World Was Young There Were A Great Many Thoughts But No Such Thing As Truth. Man Made The Truths Himself And Each Truth Was A Composite Of A Great Many Vague Thoughts. All About In The World Were Truths And They Were All Beautiful.
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I Had A World, And It Slipped Away From Me. The War Blew Up More Than The Bodies Of Men....it Blew Ideas Away.
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Men
Ideas
I Feel That I Am Writing Out Of A Full Life. I Am A Rich Man, Rich In Men Known, In Adventures Had. I Am Rich With Living.
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Writing
Adventure
The Machines Men Are So Intent On Making Have Carried Them Very Far From The Old Sweet Things.
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Men
Machines
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World
Christ
As Time Passed And He Grew To Know People Better, He Began To Think Of Himself As An Extraordinary Man, One Set Apart From His Fellows. He Wanted Terribly To Make His Life A Thing Of Great Importance, And As He Looked About At His Fellow Men And Saw How Like Clods They Lived It Seemed To Him That He Could Not Bear To Become Also Such A Clod.
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Thinking
People
When A Man Publishes A Book, There Are So Many Stupid Things Said That He Declares He'll Never Do It Again. The Praise Is Almost Always Worse Than The Criticism.
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People
Imagination
You Can Make It All Right If You Will Only Be Satisfied To Remain Small," I Told Myself. I Had To Keep Saying It Over And Over To Myself. "be Little. Don't Try To Be Big. Work Under The Guns. Be A Little Worm In The Fair Apple Of Life.
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Voice
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Son
Men
On The Trees Are Only A Few Gnarled Apples That The Pickers Have Rejected. They Look Like The Knuckles Of Doctor Reefy's Hands. One Nibbles At Them And They Are Delicious. Into A Little Round Place At The Side Of The Apple Has Been Gathered All Its Sweetness. One Runs From Tree To Tree Over The Frosted Ground Picking The Gnarled, Twisted Apples And Filling His Pockets With Them. Only The Few Know The Sweetness Of The Twisted Apples.
Running
Doctors
Hands
Friends You Have, People You Love, Die And Are Born Again.
Death
People
Born Again
I Think The Whole Glory Of Writing Lies In The Fact That It Forces Us Out Of Ourselves And Into The Lives Of Others.
Lying
Writing
Thinking
A Man Needs A Purpose For Real Health.
Real
Men
Needs
Whereas God, For Reasons Of His Own, Sometimes Chooses To Let The Machine Answer. 'the Supreme Being Is Unavailable To Come To The Phone At This Time, But He Wants You To Know What Your Call Is Important To Him. In The Meantime, For Sins Of Pride, Press One. For Avarice, Press Two.
Pride
Phones
Two
I Think The Whole Glory Of Writing Lies In The Fact That It Forces Us Out Of Ourselves And Into The Lives Of Others.
Lying
Writing
Thinking
From Being Quite Sure Of Himself And His Future He Becomes Not At All Sure. If He Be An Imaginative Boy A Door Is Torn Open And For The First Time He Looks Out Upon The World, Seeing, As Though They Marched In Procession Before Him, The Countless Figures Of Men Who Before His Time Have Come Out Of Nothingness Into The World, Lived Their Lives And Again Disappeared Into Nothingness. The Sadness Of Sophistication Has Come To The Boy.
Sadness
Boys
Men
There Is A Note That Comes Into The Human Voice By Which You May Know Real Weariness. It Comes When One Has Been Trying With All His Heart And Soul To Think His Way Along Some Difficult Road Of Thought. Of A Sudden He Finds Himself Unable To Go On. Something Within Him Stops. A Tiny Explosion Takes Place. He Bursts Into Words And Talks, Perhaps Foolishly. Little Side Currents Of His Nature He Didn't Know Were There Run Out And Get Themselves Expressed. It Is At Such Times That A Man Boasts, Uses Big Words, Makes A Fool Of Himself In General.
Running
Real
Heart
The Life Of Reality Is Confused, Disorderly, Almost Always Without Apparent Purpose, Whereas In The Artist's Imaginative Life There Is Purpose. There Is Determination To Give The Tale, The Song, The Painting, Form -- To Make It True And Real To The Theme, Not To Life.
Song
Art
Determination
There Is Within Every Human Being A Deep Well Of Thinking Over Which A Heavy Iron Lid Is Kept Clamped.
Thinking
Iron
Heavy
You Won’t Arrive. It Is An Endless Search.
Endless
Whereas God, For Reasons Of His Own, Sometimes Chooses To Let The Machine Answer. 'the Supreme Being Is Unavailable To Come To The Phone At This Time, But He Wants You To Know What Your Call Is Important To Him. In The Meantime, For Sins Of Pride, Press One. For Avarice, Press Two.
Pride
Phones
Two
In That High Place In The Darkness The Two Oddly Sensitive Human Atoms Held Each Other Tightly And Waited. In The Mind Of Each Was The Same Thought. "i Have Come To This Lonely Place And Here Is This Other," Was The Substance Of The Thing Felt.
Lonely
Two
Darkness
Her Thoughts Ran Away To Her Girlhood With Its Passionate Longing For Adventure And She Remembered The Arms Of Men That Had Held Her When Adventure Was A Possible Thing For Her. Particularly She Remembered One Who Had For A Time Been Her Lover And Who In The Moment Of His Passion Had Cried Out To Her More Than A Hundred Times, Saying The Same Words Madly Over And Over: "you Dear! You Dear! You Lovely Dear!" The Words, She Thought, Expressed Something She Would Have Liked To Have Achieved In Life.
Passion
Adventure
Men
It May Be Life Is Only Worthwhile At Moments. Perhaps That Is All We Ought To Expect.
Life
May
Moments
I'll Do Something, Get Into Some Kind Of Work Where Talk Don't Count. Maybe I'll Just Be A Mechanic In A Shop. I Don't Know. I Guess I Don't Care Much. I Just Want To Work And Keep Quiet. That's All I've Got In Mind.
Mind
Care
Want
He Thought About Himself And To The Young That Always Brings Sadness.
Sadness
Young
It May Be True Of All Relationships, Not Only Between Fathers And Sons, But Between Men And Women. Nothing Seems Fixed. Everything Is Always Changing. We Seem To Have Very Little Control Over Our Emotional Life.
Father
Son
Men
Sometimes I Think We Americans Are The Loneliest People In The World. To Be Sure, We Hunger For The Power Of Affection, The Self-acceptance That Gives Life. It Is The Oldest And Strongest Hunger In The World. But Hungering Is Not Enough.
Acceptance
Thinking
Self
It Is All Right You're Saying You Do Not Need Other People, But There Are A Lot Of People Who Need You.
People
Needs
Need You
If I Can Write Everything Out Plainly, Perhaps I Will Myself Understand Better What Has Happened.
Writing
Happened
Ifs
If Our Family Was Poor, Of What Did Our Poverty Consist? If Our Clothes Were Torn The Torn Places Only Let In The Sun And Wind. In The Winter We Had No Overcoats, But That Only Meant We Ran Rather Than Loitered.
Winter
Wind
Clothes
Many People Must Live And Die Alone, Even In Winesburg.
People
Dies
Many People Must Live And Die Alone, Even In Winesburg.
People
Dies
The Writer, An Old Man With A White Moustache, Had Some Difficulty Getting Into Bed.
Book
Men
White
Nothing Gives Quite The Satisfaction That Doing Things Brings.
Giving
Satisfaction
In Middle America Men Are Awakening. Like Awkward And Untrained Boys We Begin To Turn Toward Maturity And With Our Awakening We Hunger For Song. But In Our Towns And Fields There Are Few Memory Haunted Places. Here We Stand In Roaring City Streets, On Steaming Coal Heaps, In The Shadow Of Factories From Which Come Only The Grinding Roar Of Machines. We Do Not Sing But Mutter In The Darkness. Our Lips Are Cracked With Dust And With The Heat Of Furnaces. We But Mutter And Feel Our Way Toward The Promise Of Song.
Song
Memories
Maturity
All Good New Orleanians Go To Look At The Mississippi At Least Once A Day. At Night It Is Like Creeping Into A Dark Bedroom To Look At A Sleeping Child--something Of That Sort--gives You The Same Warm Nice Feeling, I Mean.
Children
Nice
Mean
Wait And Wait. Most People's Lives Are Spent Waiting.
People
Waiting
Only The Few Know The Sweetness Of The Twisted Apples.
Apples
Twisted
Sweetness
I Have Seldom Written A Story, Long Or Short, That I Did Not Have To Write And Rewrite. There Are Single Stories Of Mine That Have Taken Me Ten Or Twelve Years To Get Written.
Taken
Writing
Years
Learn To Draw. Try To Make Your Hand So Unconsciously Adept That It Will Put Down What You Feel Without Your Having To Think Of Your Hands. Then You Can Think Of The Thing Before You.
Thinking
Hands
Drawing
Everyone In The World Is Christ And They Are All Crucified.
World
Christ
On The Trees Are Only A Few Gnarled Apples That The Pickers Have Rejected. They Look Like The Knuckles Of Doctor Reefy's Hands. One Nibbles At Them And They Are Delicious. Into A Little Round Place At The Side Of The Apple Has Been Gathered All Its Sweetness. One Runs From Tree To Tree Over The Frosted Ground Picking The Gnarled, Twisted Apples And Filling His Pockets With Them. Only The Few Know The Sweetness Of The Twisted Apples.
Running
Doctors
Hands
You Won’t Arrive. It Is An Endless Search.
Endless
There Is A Note That Comes Into The Human Voice By Which You May Know Real Weariness. It Comes When One Has Been Trying With All His Heart And Soul To Think His Way Along Some Difficult Road Of Thought. Of A Sudden He Finds Himself Unable To Go On. Something Within Him Stops. A Tiny Explosion Takes Place. He Bursts Into Words And Talks, Perhaps Foolishly. Little Side Currents Of His Nature He Didn't Know Were There Run Out And Get Themselves Expressed. It Is At Such Times That A Man Boasts, Uses Big Words, Makes A Fool Of Himself In General.
Running
Real
Heart
There Is This Thing Called Life. We Live It, Not As We Intend Or Wish, But As We Are Driven On By Forces Outside And Inside Ourselves.
Life
Wish
Driven
You Must Not Become A Mere Peddler Of Words. The Thing To Learn Is To Know What People Are Thinking About, Not What They Say.
Thinking
People
Peddler
As Time Passed And He Grew To Know People Better, He Began To Think Of Himself As An Extraordinary Man, One Set Apart From His Fellows. He Wanted Terribly To Make His Life A Thing Of Great Importance, And As He Looked About At His Fellow Men And Saw How Like Clods They Lived It Seemed To Him That He Could Not Bear To Become Also Such A Clod.
Men
Thinking
People
Next To Occupation Is The Building Up Of Good Taste. That Is Difficult, Slow Work. Few Achieve It. It Means All The Difference In The World In The End.
Mean
Building Up
Differences
Nothing Gives Quite The Satisfaction That Doing Things Brings.
Giving
Satisfaction
My Father, A Ruined Dandy From The South, Had Been Reduced To Keeping A Small Harness-repair Shop And, When That Failed, He Became Ostensibly A House-and-barn Painter. However, He Did Not Call Himself A House-painter. The Idea Was Not Flashy Enough For Him. He Called Himself A "sign-writer.
Father
Ideas
House
I Am A Lover And Have Not Found My Thing To Love. That Is A Big Point If You Know Enough To Realize What I Mean. It Makes My Destruction Inevitable, You See. There Are Few Who Understand That.
Mean
Lovers
Realizing
The Father Spent His Time Talking And Thinking Of Religion. He Proclaimed Himself An Agnostic And Was So Absorbed In Destroying The Ideas Of God That Had Crept Into The Minds Of His Neighbors That He Never Saw God Manifesting Himself In The Little Child That, Half Forgotten, Lived Here And There On The Bounty Of Her Dead Mother's Relatives.
Mother
Children
Father
Draw, Draw, Hundreds Of Drawings. Try To Remain Humble. Smartness Kills Everything.
Humble
Drawing
Trying
The Object Of Art Is Not To Make Salable Pictures. It Is To Save Yourself.
Art
Art Is
Save Yourself
Dare To Be Strong And Courageous. That Is The Road. Venture Anything.
Strong
Venture
Courageous
If Our Family Was Poor, Of What Did Our Poverty Consist? If Our Clothes Were Torn The Torn Places Only Let In The Sun And Wind. In The Winter We Had No Overcoats, But That Only Meant We Ran Rather Than Loitered.
Winter
Wind
Clothes
Draw Things That Have Some Meaning To You. An Apple, What Does It Mean? The Object Drawn Doesn't Matter So Much. It's What You Feel About It, What It Means To You. A Masterpiece Could Be Made Of A Dish Of Turnips.
Mean
Apples
Doe
Everyone Knows Of The Talking Artists. Throughout All Of The Known History Of The World They Have Gathered In Rooms And Talked. They Talk Of Art And Are Passionately,almost Feverishly, In Earnest About It. They Think It Matters Much More Than It Does.
Art
Thinking
Talking
Work Accomplished Means Little. It Is In The Past. What We All Want Is The Glorious And Living Present.
Mean
Past
Want
I Go About Looking At Horses And Cattle. They Eat Grass, Make Love, Work When They Have To, Bear Their Young. I Am Sick With Envy Of Them.
Horse
Envy
Sick
In Youth There Are Always Two Forces Fighting In People. The Warm Unthinking Little Animal Struggles Against The Thing That Reflects And Remembers
Struggle
Fighting
Animal
Interest In The Lives Of Others, The High Evaluation Of These Lives, What Are They But The Overflow Of The Interest A Man Finds In Himself, The Value He Attributes To His Own Being?.
Acceptance
Men
Evaluation
Her Thoughts Ran Away To Her Girlhood With Its Passionate Longing For Adventure And She Remembered The Arms Of Men That Had Held Her When Adventure Was A Possible Thing For Her. Particularly She Remembered One Who Had For A Time Been Her Lover And Who In The Moment Of His Passion Had Cried Out To Her More Than A Hundred Times, Saying The Same Words Madly Over And Over: "you Dear! You Dear! You Lovely Dear!" The Words, She Thought, Expressed Something She Would Have Liked To Have Achieved In Life.
Passion
Adventure
Men
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