Science is history arranged according to the superstition and taste of the moment. The vocabulary of scholars has no wit, no salt. These heavy tomes have no soul, they are filled with distress.
Blaise CendrarsRead
Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Despair deepens one's understanding and appreciation of life after experiencing love and loss.
This quote suggests that true serenity comes from a deep understanding of sorrow and despair, which can only be fully appreciated by someone who has loved deeply and lost. The experience of love often brings joy, but it can also lead to profound heartache, and it is through this duality of existence that one can achieve a genuine state of peace and acceptance with the world.
Themes
DespairSerenityLoveSorrowUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
During a self-reflection meeting, one might say this quote to emphasize the complexity of human emotions.
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Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.
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I'm not an extraordinary worker, I'm an extraordinary daydreamer. I exceed all my fantasies-even that of writing.
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One's life, from being an exterior thing, grows inwards. Its intensity stays the same; and, d'you know, it's most mysterious, the corners in which the joy of living can sometimes hide away.
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