Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.
Paul ValeryRead
That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
Interpretation
Consensus does not guarantee truth; commonly accepted beliefs may be incorrect.
Paul Valery suggests that just because something is widely accepted and embraced by society does not necessarily mean it is true. This statement encourages critical thinking and questioning of established norms, indicating that popular belief can sometimes lead to false conclusions.
In practice
During a debate about societal norms, one might use this quote to highlight that popular opinion isn't always correct.
Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.
The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.
The world acquires value only through its extremes and endures only through moderation; extremists make the world great, the moderates give it stability.
It would be impossible to "love" anyone or anything one knew completely. Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object.
You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it in everyday language, and which does not give rise to any difficulty when it is engaged in the rapid movement of an ordinary sentence becomes magically embarrassing, introduces a strange resistance, frustrates any effort at definition as soon as you take it out of circulation to examine it separately and look for its meaning after taking away its instantaneous function.
Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being helpless prey to impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, drops him, promises and betrays, and -crowning injury- inflicts on him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.
The day of the absolute is over, and we're in for the strange gods once more.
Through our scientific and technological genius we've made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers-or we will all perish together as fools.
Man only becomes independent of this physical world when he learns to consider the objects around him as symbols. He must, for this reason, seek to acquire a moral relationship to them.
I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.
Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance. We may hate a person because he reminds us of someone we feared and disliked when younger; or because we see in him some gross caricature of what we find repugnant in ourself; or because he symbolizes an attitude that seems to threaten us.
We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.
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