When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.
Interpretation
People often feel dissatisfied with life when they set unrealistic expectations.
This quote by Ernest Renan suggests that dissatisfaction with life frequently arises from unrealistic demands or expectations placed upon it. When individuals expect too much from their circumstances or life itself, they are likely to encounter disappointment and frustration, leading to complaints about their experiences.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech about the importance of realistic goal-setting.
None of the miracles with which ancient histories are filled, occurred under scientific conditions. Observation never once contradicted, teaches us that miracles occur only in periods and countries in which they are believed in and before persons disposed to believe in them.
Man makes holy what he believes as he makes beautiful what he loves.
Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of a nation.
He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign.
Let us remember that sorrow alone is the creator of great things.
The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.
The value of a man is in his intrinsic qualities: in that of which power cannot strip him and which adverse fortune cannot take away. That for which he is indebted to circumstances is mere trapping and tinsel.
The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.
You cannot really have the world and hold on to it. It is all too temporary and the more you try to hold on to it, the more it actually holds you. By contrast, the more you hold on to the true and the good, the more you are free to really live.
There can be no perfect Europe in which Ireland is denied even the least of its national rights.
Greed's worst point is its ingratitude.
Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
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