Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the uncertainty and complexity of reality, suggesting that nothing can be taken at face value.
Guy De Maupassant's quote encapsulates a sense of skepticism about the nature of existence and truth. It reminds us that our perceptions are often clouded by doubt and that what we consider to be the 'truth' can frequently shift. By asserting that 'everything is false' and 'everything is possible,' the quote provokes thought about the fluidity of beliefs and the importance of questioning our assumptions.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the nature of truth and perception.
Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.
To love very much is to love inadequately; we love-that is all. Love cannot be modified without being nullified. Love is a short word but it contains everything. Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe the air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us. Love is not a word; it is a wordless state indicated by four letters.
breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die.
Whatever one wishes to say, there is one noun only by which to express it, one verb only to give it life, one adjective only which will describe it. One must search until one has discovered them, this noun, this verb, this adjective, and never rest content with approximations, never resort to trickery, however happy, or to vulgarism, in order to dodge the difficulty.
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.
To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.
She mixes religion with desertion to make it sound noble.
When the buying stops, the killing can too.
When totalitarian regimes are established, they at least have the illusion of the single-minded purpose. But once they establish the stature that's necessary for a totalitarian regime, they tend to flail.
Money must serve, not rule! The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the poor. I exhort you to generous solidarity and a return of economics and finance to an ethical approach which favours human beings.
The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.
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