Our misery is that we thirst so little for these sublime things, and so much for the mocking trifles of time and space.
Interpretation
We often desire trivial things instead of pursuing deeper, more meaningful experiences.
This quote highlights the paradox of human nature where individuals frequently seek temporary pleasures and superficial pursuits, neglecting the profound and sublime aspects of life that can provide true fulfillment and joy. It calls for a reevaluation of our priorities, encouraging us to yearn for deeper values rather than being distracted by insignificant, worldly matters.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth and focusing on what truly matters.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Pity is like a knife, sometimes, and it may pierce one who employs it more shrewdly than the victim it would save.
The stars had only one task: they taught me how to read. They taught me I had a language in heaven and another language on earth.
The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.
A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.
You don’t learn from successes; you don’t learn from awards; you don’t learn from celebrity; you only learn from wounds and scars and mistakes and failures. And that’s the truth.
Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
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