I do not believe that God has created us under this dire necessity to toil, like beasts, to sustain life. I believe it is his will that we should hold absolute mastery over time, so as to devote it mainly to intellectual and moral improvement, domestic enjoyment, and social intercourse.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the belief that life should be more than mere survival; it should focus on personal growth and enjoyment.
In this quote, William Lloyd Garrison argues against the notion that human existence is merely about hard labor for survival, comparing such toil to that of beasts. Instead, he posits that the divine intention is for humanity to master their time, allowing for the pursuit of intellectual and moral development, personal happiness, and social interactions, which are essential for a fulfilling life.
In practice
This quote can be used during a motivational speech about work-life balance.
Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.
Surely, nothing can be more dangerous than the doctrine that the moral obligations of men change with the latitude and longitude of a place.
If the State cannot survive the anti-slavery agitation, then let the State perish. If the Church must be cast down by the strugglings of Humanity to be free, then let the Church fall and its fragments be scattered to the four winds of Heaven, never more to curse the earth.
Has not the experience of two centuries shown that gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice? Is there an instance, in the history of the world, where slaves have been educated for freedom by their task-masters?
The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.
Let not those who say that the path of obedience is a dangerous one claim to believe in the living and true God. They deny his omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. It is his will that the bands of wickedness should be loosed, the heavy burdens of tyranny undone, the oppressed set free.
Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
I cheat him, I deceive him, yet the world does not sink in sulphur-colored mists. Madness conquers. I can no longer put my mosaics together. I just cry and laugh.
If anti-Semitism is a variety of racism, it is a most peculiar variety, with many unique characteristics. In my view as a historian, it is so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category. I would call it an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive.
For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment that we can savor - and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible.
For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.
I don't believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.
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