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
Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.
Interpretation
People are afraid of silence and solitude because they reveal the emptiness of life.
This quote suggests that silence and solitude serve as mirrors to our inner thoughts, exposing the existential fears and anxieties we may have about the meaning of life. The discomfort associated with these states highlights humanity's struggle with the inherent emptiness and profound questions that life presents when stripped of distraction and noise.
In practice
During a meditation session, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of embracing silence.
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.
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.
A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.
He who aims at making an entire and perfect oblation of himself, in addition to his will, must offer his understanding, which is a further and the highest degree of obedience.
If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?
In a world where ideas and ideals flow freely, we want what everybody else in an advanced society seems to have: a say in our future.
Psychologism is, I believe, correct only in so far as it insists upon what may be called 'methodological individualism' as opposed to 'methodological collectivism'; it rightly insists that the 'behaviour' and the 'actions' of collectives, such as states or social groups, must be reduced to the behaviour and to the actions of human individuals. But the belief that the choice of such an individualist method implies the choice of a psychological method is mistaken.
Death is a vast mystery, but there are two things we can say about it: It is absolutely certain that we will die, and it is uncertain when or how we will die. The only surety we have, then, is this uncertainty about the hour of our death, which we seize on as the excuse to postpone facing death directly. We are like children who cover their eyes in a game of hide and seek and think that no one can see them.
If you're living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It's in some ways very subtle, the differences in perceiving reality.
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