I always do the first line well, but I have trouble doing the others.
MoliereRead
Esteem must be founded on some sort of preference. Bestow it on everybody and it ceases to have any meaning at all.
Interpretation
Esteem gains value through selectivity; universal admiration dilutes its significance.
Moliere's quote suggests that esteem or respect holds true value only when it is reserved for certain individuals based on preference and merit. When esteem is indiscriminately given to everyone without discernment, it loses its meaning and impact, as it no longer signifies anything special or noteworthy.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal value and self-worth.
I always do the first line well, but I have trouble doing the others.
Beauty without intelligence is like a hook without bait.
Betrayed and wronged in everything, I’ll flee this bitter world where vice is king, And seek some spot unpeopled and apart Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart. - Molière, The Misanthrope
Long is the road from conception to completion.
Oh, I may be devout, but I am human all the same.
Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.
I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I'll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there'd be no night!
It is interesting ... how weapons reflect the soul of the maker.
No thought is born in me that does not bear the image of death.
We are in the grip of a scientific materialism, caught in a vicious cycle where our security today seems to depend on regimentation and weapons which will ruin us tomorrow.
Help, master, help! here's a fish hangs in the net, like a poor man's right in the law; 'twill hardly come out.
For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.