The greedy search for money or success will almost always lead men into unhappiness. Why? Because that kind of life makes them depend upon things outside themselves.
Andre MauroisRead
A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that our past experiences and memories are as integral to our identity as our physical body.
Andre Maurois highlights the inescapability of our past in shaping who we are. Just as we cannot detach from our physical form, we cannot easily free ourselves from the memories, choices, and influences of our past, which continue to define our present and future.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about how our past experiences shape our current decisions.
The greedy search for money or success will almost always lead men into unhappiness. Why? Because that kind of life makes them depend upon things outside themselves.
It is better to teach a few things perfectly than many things indifferently...
Lost Illusion is the undisclosed title of every novel.
We can talk frankly about our defects only to those who recognise our qualities.
Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.
If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.
Life in freedom is not easy, and democracy is not perfect.
As a person of color, I was trained from very early on to see 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Gilligan's Island,' or 'Hamlet' and look beyond the specifics of it - whether it be silly white people on an island or a family living in Nowheres or a Danish person - to leap past the specifics and find the human truths that have to do with me.
Hollywood is a strange place if you're in trouble. Everybody thinks it's contagious.
The advocates of retaliatory wars will continue to assume a much simpler reality with their hoary oppositions: Religious and secular, backward and enlightened, free and unfree. But if we are to admit how deeply and irrevocably interconnected our world is, then we must find new ways to break the cycle of counter-productive violence.
Every moment a taste of that beauty in our mouths, another stashed in a pocket. Impossible to say what: no cypress so handsome, no sunlight, a lonely hiddenness. Other pleasure gathers a crowd, starts a fight, lots of noise there. But soul beauty stays quiet..his amazing whereabouts unknown inside my heart.
What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.
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