It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.
Lord ByronRead
But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.
Interpretation
Hope is a facade that can easily be stripped away to reveal the emptiness beneath.
In this quote, Lord Byron suggests that hope can be superficial, akin to makeup that conceals the true nature of existence. When confronted with reality, the allure of hope can fade, revealing a stark and perhaps disappointing truth about life and its challenges. This reflection compels one to consider the fragility of hope and the importance of recognizing the underlying realities that it often obscures.
In practice
During a talk about overcoming challenges, this quote can be used to illustrate the idea that hope may sometimes be merely an illusion.
It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.
For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn?
Absence - that common cure of love.
Her great merit is finding out mine; there is nothing so amiable as discernment.
But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.
INADMISSIBLE- Not competent to be considered. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible ... but there is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.
For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought.
Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.
How life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meaning of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow.
The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.
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