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!
Mistakes are joyful, truth infernal.
The light is the left hand of darkness.
One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty.
We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.
Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.
There is indeed the possibility that the evolutionary process has, in gray antiquity, bred into us an excess of aggression.
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