Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness.
Maurice MaeterlinckRead
The dog is the only living being that has found and recognizes an indubitable, tangible and definite god. He knows to whom above him to give himself. He has not to seek for a superior and infinite power.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that dogs inherently recognize a higher power or purpose without the need for questioning.
In this quote, Maurice Maeterlinck asserts that dogs possess a unique understanding of their place in the universe and a relationship with a higher power. Unlike humans who often search for meaning or divinity, dogs seem to naturally submit to their faith and loyalty to this higher presence, representing a simplicity and clarity in their acknowledgment of what is above them.
In practice
You could use this quote during a speech about the unconditional love of pets.
Remember that happiness is as contagious as gloom. It should be the first duty of those who are happy to let others know of their gladness.
No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own: and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another.
As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.
He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully
The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.
Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
The simplicity of the universe is very different from the simplicity of a machine. The simplicity of nature is not that which may be easily read but is inexhaustible. The last analysis can no wise be made.
Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on.
The fact is, the most painful and tragic lesson of the 20th century was that regimes based on racial superiority and religious hatred can't be trusted to keep their word to the international community.
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