When a grown man reaches forty, we change him for an old one. He has completely disappeared. There's only the most superficial resemblance between the two of them. Nothing is handed on from one to the other.
Jean GiraudouxRead
There are no elements so diverse that they cannot be joined in the heart of a man.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that even the most different and contrasting elements can find unity within a person's emotions and heart.
Jean Giraudoux's quote reflects on the human capacity for emotional connection and understanding. It implies that regardless of the diversity and differences one encounters in life—be it in ideas, cultures, or personal experiences—these elements can coexist and be harmonized within an individual's heart. This speaks to the essence of empathy, love, and acceptance that defines the human experience, suggesting that through compassion and emotional openness, one can embrace a wide range of perspectives and feelings.
Themes
DiversityUnityEmotionConnectionUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about empathy and understanding in a multicultural society.
More from Jean Giraudoux
All quotes →A stock certificate is not a tool, like a shovel, or a commodity, like a pound of cheese. What we sell a customer is not a share in a business, but a view of the Elysian Fields. A financier is a creative artist. Our function is to stimulate the imagination. We are poets!
Jean GiraudouxRead
Everyone, when there's war in the air, learns to live in a new element: falsehood.
Jean GiraudouxRead
It's odd how people waiting for you stand out far less clearly than people you are waiting for.
Jean GiraudouxRead
It would be better if only the old men fought the wars. Every country is the country of youth. When its youth dies, it dies with them.
Jean GiraudouxRead
A man has only one way of being immortal on earth: he has to forget he is a mortal.
Jean GiraudouxRead
Similar quotes
My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one cannot remove, one must fast and pray.
Mahatma GandhiRead
I emphasize in it [my Orientalism] accortdingly that neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other.
Edward SaidRead
The modern world lies under a pervasive sense of anguish, of being abandoned, or at least experiencing God as absent. Yet events that seem to turn our lives upside down and inside out are part of God's redemptive plan, not only for us, but for the world in which we live. God may be preparing a great awakening for the world, if God can find enough people to cooperate in this mysterious plan.
Thomas KeatingRead
In our universe there is God and there are people and things. We were made so that we should worship God, love people and use things. However if we worship ourselves, we will ignore God, start loving things and begin to use people.
Warren W. WiersbeRead
Since no daily responses are given from heaven, and the Scriptures are the only record in which God has been pleased to consign His truth to perpetual remembrance, the full authority which they ought to possess with the faithful is not recognized unless they are believed to have come from heaven as directly as if God had been heard giving utterance to them.
John CalvinRead
The enduring lesson is war is a disaster. Whoever wins, tremendous loss of life, property - a set back for civilisation.
Lee Kuan YewRead