We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.
Interpretation
People often envy others without realizing they wouldn't actually want their lives.
This quote by Jean Rostand highlights the irony of human envy. It suggests that individuals frequently find themselves envious of others, often overlooking the fact that the lives they covet may come with challenges, burdens, or drawbacks they would not wish to endure. This reflection prompts a reconsideration of our sources of satisfaction and the true nature of happiness, encouraging a deeper understanding of what we genuinely value in life.
In practice
During a motivational speech about self-acceptance, one could reference this quote to encourage the audience to focus on their own unique paths instead of comparing themselves to others.
If a given scientist had not made a given discovery, someone else would have done so a little later. Johann Mendel dies unknown after having discovered the laws of heredity: thirty-five years later, three men rediscover them. But the book that is not written will never be written. The premature death of a great scientist delays humanity; that of a great writer deprives it.
Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.
Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.
When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.
A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.
God's willingness to answer our prayers exceeds our willingness to give good and necessary things to our children, just as far as God's ability, goodness and perfection exceed our infirmities and evil.
All religions promise a reward beyond life, in eternity, for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.
Biophilia, if it exists, and I believe it exists, is the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms.
But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?
We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe - nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself.
You need seek God neither below or above.He is no farther away than the door of the heart.
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