We know all their gods; they ignore ours. What they call our sins are our gods, and what they call their gods, we name otherwise.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the subjective nature of belief and morality, suggesting different cultures interpret gods and sins in diverse ways.
Natalie Clifford Barney's quote delves into the complexities of how different societies conceptualize divinity and morality. It highlights that what one culture perceives as sinful may be revered by another as sacred, indicating that our understanding of gods and sins is deeply rooted in our cultural contexts. It thus calls attention to the relativity of values and beliefs, implying that there is no absolute truth in notions of good and evil across different societies.
In practice
A speaker at an interfaith dialogue could use this quote to illustrate the need for understanding diverse belief systems.
Once we are self-aware, we must choose purposes and principles to live by; otherwise the vacuum will be filled, and we will lose our self-awareness and become like groveling animals who live primarily for survival and propagation. People who exist on that level aren't living; they are "being lived".
Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.
The world was conquered through the understanding of dogs; the world exists through the understanding of dogs.
He might have been encased in a thick glass bubble, so separate did he feel from his three dining companions. It was a sensation with which he was only too familiar, that of walking in a giant sphere of worry, enclosed by it, watching his own terrors roll by, obscuring the outside world.
Christianity, whatever else it is, is an explosion. Unless it is sensational there is simply no sense in it. Unless the Gospel sounds like a gun going off it has not been uttered at all.
A man who is seeking for realization is not only going around searching for his spectacles without realizing that they are on his nose all the time, but also were he not actually looking through them he would not be able to see what he is looking for!
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