To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost every one is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.
Interpretation
Judgments about a person are often shaped by personal preferences rather than objective truth.
Petrarch reflects on the nature of judgment, suggesting that people's opinions about one another are largely subjective. He implies that, regardless of the reality of a person's character or actions, individuals will often form impressions based on their personal biases and preferences, resulting in varied and extreme opinions that may not align with the truth.
In practice
During a speech about personal growth, one might reference this quote to illustrate how perceptions can be misleading.
Gold, silver, jewels, purple garments, houses built of marble, groomed estates, pious paintings, caparisoned steeds, and other things of this kind offer a mutable and superficial pleasure; books give delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.
Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.
I looked back at the summit of the mountain, which seemed but a cubit high in comparison with the height of human contemplation, were in not too often merged in the corruptions of the earth.
Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.
I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.
They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.
I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.
Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.
Anytime I meet people who got to make the deliberate choice, whose parents chose Canada, I'm jealous. Because I think being able to choose it, rather than being Canadian by default, is an amazing statement of attachment to Canada.
His overriding life necessity was not love, it was his profession…He had come to medicine not by coincidence or calculation but by a deep inner desire. Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity. Every Frenchman is different. But all the actors the world over are similar.
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