We had yet to learn that the Devil created youth so that we could make our mistakes, and that God established maturity and old age so that we could pay for them.
Carlos Ruiz ZafonRead
It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality, at least for human beings. We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.
Interpretation
Humans often escape reality through dreams and imagination, as a way to cope with life's challenges.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon suggests that human beings cannot endure a continuous confrontation with reality without seeking refuge in dreams and imagination. He highlights the importance of our inner worlds, which provide us with comfort and escape from the harshness of life, emphasizing that daydreaming is a significant part of our existence.
In practice
During a motivational speech about creativity and imagination.
We had yet to learn that the Devil created youth so that we could make our mistakes, and that God established maturity and old age so that we could pay for them.
The haunting of history is ever present in Barcelona. I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me, Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it's a woman who's extremely vain.
I think today will be the day. Today our luck will change,' I proclaimed on the wings of the first coffee of the day, pure optimism in a liquid state.
We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.
Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.
Destiny doesn't do home visits... you have to go for it yourself.
Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go.
It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.
You in the West have been sold the idea that the only options in the Arab world are between authoritarian regimes and Islamic jihadists. That's obviously bogus.
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view. The palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.
What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.
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