Yesterday I lived, today I suffer, tomorrow I die; but I still think fondly, today and tomorrow, of yesterday.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the inevitability of suffering and mortality while emphasizing the importance of cherishing past experiences.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's quote captures the essence of human existence, highlighting the continuous cycle of life, suffering, and death. It suggests that while we must confront hardships and the reality of our mortality, there is value in holding onto the positive memories and experiences of the past. This duality of existence encourages an appreciation for life, even in the face of inevitable challenges.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech to emphasize the importance of cherishing memories despite life's challenges.
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.
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.
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!
As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends.
When a person becomes a legend, the very thing that makes them human and knowable is killed off, so it's like being killed over and over and over again, for all eternity.
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.
You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State.
I believe that before anything else I'm a human being -- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that you have warrant for it in books; but I can't be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what's in books. I must think things out for myself and try to understand them.
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