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.
Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to believe in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it.
XXVIII "Truth," said a traveller, "Is a rock, a mighty fortress; "Often have I been to it, "Even to its highest tower, "From whence the world looks black." "Truth," said a traveller, "Is a breath, a wind, "A shadow, a phantom; "Long have I pursued it, "But never have I touched "The hem of its garment." And I believed the second traveller; For truth was to me A breath, a wind, A shadow, a phantom, And never had I touched The hem of its garment.
A good conscience fears no witness, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it. But if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he who slights that witness.
The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.