Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness.
Maurice MaeterlinckRead
The dog is the only living being that has found and recognizes an indubitable, tangible and definite god. He knows to whom above him to give himself. He has not to seek for a superior and infinite power.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that dogs inherently recognize a higher power or purpose without the need for questioning.
In this quote, Maurice Maeterlinck asserts that dogs possess a unique understanding of their place in the universe and a relationship with a higher power. Unlike humans who often search for meaning or divinity, dogs seem to naturally submit to their faith and loyalty to this higher presence, representing a simplicity and clarity in their acknowledgment of what is above them.
In practice
You could use this quote during a speech about the unconditional love of pets.
Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness.
No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another.
As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.
Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.
Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.
Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness.
I cannot accept that to be realistic means to tolerate misery, violence and hate. I do not believe that the hungry man should be treated as subversive for expressing his suffering. I shall never accept that the law can be used to justify tragedy, to keep things as they are, to make us abandon our ideas of a different world. Law is the path of liberty, and must as such open the way to progress for everyone.
The first holy truth in God 101 is that men and women of true faith have always had to accept the mystery of God's identity and love and ways. I hate that, but it's the truth.
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.