How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?
Vincent Van GoghRead
At one time, the earth was supposed to be flat. Well, so it is, even today, from Paris to Asnieres. But that fact doesn't prevent science from proving that the earth as a whole is spherical. No one nowadays denies it. Well...we are still at the stage of believing that life itself is flat, the distance from birth to death. Yet the probability is that life, too, is spherical and much more extensive and capacious than the hemisphere we know.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life is more complex and expansive than we often believe.
Vincent Van Gogh compares the once widely held belief that the earth is flat with the simplistic view of life as a linear journey from birth to death. He suggests that just as science has proven the earth to be spherical, our understanding of life should also evolve to recognize its depth and complexity, indicating that there is much more to life than the surface experiences we typically acknowledge.
Themes
LifeComplexityJourneySphericalDepth
In practice
Example use cases
In a graduation speech to encourage students to embrace the complexities of life.
More from Vincent Van Gogh
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The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings – not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.
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To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.
Vincent Van GoghRead
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