Pleasures, riches, honor and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow. O the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world.
Interpretation
True happiness and pleasure often come with challenges and pain.
This quote emphasizes the inseparable relationship between joy and sorrow, suggesting that every positive experience is accompanied by potential hardships. It reminds us of the inherent struggles in life and cautions against the unrealistic expectation of constant happiness in a world filled with difficulties.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience during tough times.
Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?
The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes
Absolute truth belongs to Thee alone.
Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!
It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man
Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried.
Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
No one wants to hear everything that's in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.
Songwriters might write cynical, world-wise lyrics and constantly talk about money, but most of us are downright naive when it comes to business.
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