The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
Interpretation
Understanding the universe requires deciphering its hidden truths.
Peter De Vries' quote compares the universe to a safe that contains a combination needed to unlock its secrets. This suggests that while the universe holds profound knowledge and truths, accessing it requires effort, intelligence, and perhaps a bit of luck to discover the right understanding or perspective that will unlock these mysteries.
In practice
In a lecture about philosophy, one might say this quote to illustrate the complexities of understanding existence.
We must love one another, yes, yes, that's all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other. It may be the very recognition of all men as our brothers that accounts for the sibling rivalry, and even enmity, we have toward so many of them.
I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best -- it's all they'll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money -- provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don't need it.
There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.
Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy.
The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen.
How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarly, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.
In beautiful things St. Francis saw Beauty itself, and through His vestiges imprinted on creation he followed his Beloved everywhere, making from all things a ladder by which he could climb up and embrace Him who is utterly desirable.
We cannot forever hide the truth about ourselves from ourselves.
She had acquired some of his gypsy ways, some of his nonchalance, his bohemian indiscipline. She had swung with him into the disorders of strewn clothes, spilled cigarette ashes, slipping into bed all dressed, falling asleep thus, indolence, timelessness...A region of chaos and moonlight. She liked it there.
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