When a grown man reaches forty, we change him for an old one. He has completely disappeared. There's only the most superficial resemblance between the two of them. Nothing is handed on from one to the other.
There are no elements so diverse that they cannot be joined in the heart of a man.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that even the most different and contrasting elements can find unity within a person's emotions and heart.
Jean Giraudoux's quote reflects on the human capacity for emotional connection and understanding. It implies that regardless of the diversity and differences one encounters in life—be it in ideas, cultures, or personal experiences—these elements can coexist and be harmonized within an individual's heart. This speaks to the essence of empathy, love, and acceptance that defines the human experience, suggesting that through compassion and emotional openness, one can embrace a wide range of perspectives and feelings.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about empathy and understanding in a multicultural society.
More from Jean Giraudoux
All quotes →A stock certificate is not a tool, like a shovel, or a commodity, like a pound of cheese. What we sell a customer is not a share in a business, but a view of the Elysian Fields. A financier is a creative artist. Our function is to stimulate the imagination. We are poets!
Everyone, when there's war in the air, learns to live in a new element: falsehood.
It's odd how people waiting for you stand out far less clearly than people you are waiting for.
It would be better if only the old men fought the wars. Every country is the country of youth. When its youth dies, it dies with them.
A man has only one way of being immortal on earth: he has to forget he is a mortal.
Similar quotes
I've always believed that we were, each of us, put here for a reason, that there is a plan, somehow a divine plan for all of us. I know now that whatever days are left to me belong to him.
As winter strips the leaves from around us, so that we may see the distant regions they formerly concealed, so old age takes away our enjoyments only to enlarge the prospect of the coming eternity.
The everyday cares and duties, which men call drudgery, are the weights and counterpoises of the clock of time, giving its pendulum a true vibration and its hands a regular motion; and when they cease to hang upon its wheels, the pendulum no longer swings, the hands no longer move the clock stands still.
No one, it has been said, will ever look at the Moon in the same way again. More significantly can one say that no one will ever look at the earth in the same way. Man had to free himself from earth to perceive both its diminutive place in a solar system and its inestimable value as a life -fostering planet. As earthmen, we may have taken another step into adulthood. We can see our planet earth with detachment, with tenderness, with some shame and pity, but at last also with love.
He who builds on the people, builds on the mud
War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.