Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.
Interpretation
Life offers continuous opportunities for renewal and change, regardless of endings.
In this quote, Andre Gide emphasizes the cyclical nature of life where every ending can also represent a new beginning. He invites us to view lifeβs transitions not merely as conclusions, but as fresh opportunities that can lead to growth and new experiences, encouraging an optimistic perspective on change.
In practice
Use this quote in a graduation speech to inspire students about future opportunities.
Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.
Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.
Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals.
It is the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing.
It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.
I intend to bring you strength, joy, courage, perspicacity, defiance.
It's sobering to contemplate how much time, effort, sacrifice, compromise, and attention we give to acquiring and increasing our supply of something that is totally insignificant in eternity.
The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.
I have a deep sympathy with war; it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.
If God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.
What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?
A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest - but if devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.
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