The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that both life and death are profound and often overwhelming concepts that can be difficult to confront directly.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld's quote highlights the idea that the sun and death represent two extremes in human experience. While the sun embodies the brightness and vitality of life, death signifies the inevitable end that everyone must face. The inability to look steadily at either suggests a universal truth about the discomfort and complexity of these concepts, prompting reflection on our relationship with existence and mortality.
Themes
LifeDeathPhilosophyMortalityExistence
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on existentialism, one might quote, 'Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily' to provoke thought about the nature of life.
More from Francois De La Rochefoucauld
All quotes βOld men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
Similar quotes
Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
Woodrow WilsonRead
I think patriotism, by its very definition, is love of country. But we seem to have become a country where the highest thing we're reaching for is tolerance.
Cory BookerRead
Everything that happens today is like something in the past, but it's also unlike things in the past. We never know until an event happens if it's the similarities or differences that matter more.
H. W. BrandsRead
By whomsoever no evil is done in deed, or word, or thought, him I call a Brahmin (holy man) who is guarded in these three.
Gautama BuddhaRead
Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action.
Sigmund FreudRead
In my youth I regarded the universe as an open book, printed in the language of equations, whereas now it appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which in our rare moments of grace we are able to decipher a small segment.
Arthur KoestlerRead