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There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. Man is the more man - that is, the more divine - the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.
Miguel De Unamuno
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Interpretation

What this quote means

True love involves suffering, and we must choose between love and happiness.

Miguel De Unamuno suggests that genuine love is inherently tied to suffering. He argues that the depth of a person's capacity for love is linked to their ability to endure pain and anguish. In a world of choices, one has to reconcile the joy of love with the inevitable suffering it brings, highlighting the complexity of human emotions and relationships.

Themes

LoveSufferingHappinessAnguishCapacityRelationships

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about the complexities of love during a wedding ceremony.

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If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it, let us fight against destiny, even without hope of victory.
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Spiritual Love is born of sorrow. . . . For men love one another with spiritual love only when they have suffered the same sorrow together, when through long days they have ploughed the stony ground buried beneath the common yoke of a common grief. It is then that they know one another and feel one another and feel with one another in their common anguish, and so they pity one another and love one another.
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