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.
The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?
We believe that what we possess we don't ultimately own. God is merely entrusting it to us. And one of the conditions of that trust is that we share what we have with those who have less. So, if you don't give to people in need, you can hardly call yourself a Jew. Even the most unbelieving Jew knows that.
A million years of evolution, Eric said bitterly, and what are we? Animals.
How do you judge the brightness of a light when you’re the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts.
And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prison as to innocent untroubled sleep.
We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.
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