Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.
Andre GideRead
The nationalist has a broad hatred and a narrow love.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that nationalists tend to embrace a wide-ranging resentment towards others while being limited in their capacity to love beyond their immediate group.
Andre Gide's quote points to the paradox of nationalism, where individuals might exhibit extensive animosity towards those outside their nation or identity while reserving affection for a select and often narrow circle. This highlights the dangers of such a mindset, as it can lead to division and intolerance, limiting human connection and mutual understanding across broader societies.
In practice
During a debate on nationalism, this quote can be used to illustrate the emotional divide it often creates.
Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.
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.
There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
Realize that illness and other temporal setbacks often come to us from the hand of God our Lord, and are sent to help us know ourselves better, to free ourselves of the love of created things, and to reflect on the brevity of this life and, thus, to prepare ourselves for the life which is without end.
Our sins, when laid upon Christ, were yet personally ours, not his; so his righteousness, when put upon us, is yet personally his, not ours.
I believe that the human motive to share is very powerful. The human motive to profit is also very powerful, and I think that the profit motive and the sharing motive are not exclusive.
Indeed, theological discourse offers its strange jubilation only to the strict extent that it permits and, dangerously, demands of it wokman that he speak beyond his means, precisely because he does not speak of himself. Hence the danger of a speech that, in a sense, speaks against the one who lends himself to it. One must obtain forgiveness for every essay in theology. In all senses.
Ultimately we want to use dream to liberate ourselves from all relative conditions, not simply to improve them.
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