How vainly men themselves amaze, / To win the palm, the oak, or bays; / And their incessant labours see / Crowned from some single herb or tree.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the futility of human effort in the pursuit of glory, as it often leads to trivial rewards.
In this quote, Andrew Marvell critiques the vanity and futility of human endeavors aimed at achieving recognition and accolades. He suggests that despite the intense labor and ambition that people invest in their pursuits, the rewards they receive are often insignificant, symbolized by a single herb or tree, rather than the grand achievements they aspire to, like the palm or the oak. This observation prompts a reflection on the nature of success and the often overlooked simplicity beneath it.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a speech about the true meaning of success and human ambition.
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green glade ... Such was that happy garden-state.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours be reckoned, but in herbs and flowers?
Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, while we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Annihilating all that's made, To a green thought in a green shade.
Self-preservation, nature's first great law, all the creatures, except man, doth awe.
Like the vain curlings of the watery maze,_x000D_ Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise,_x000D_ So Man, declining always, disappears_x000D_ In the weak circles of increasing years;_x000D_ And his short tumults of themselves compose,_x000D_ While flowing Time above his head does close.
Abolitionists believe that, as all men are born free, so all who are now held as slaves in this country were born free, and that they are slaves now is the sin, not of those who introduced the race into this country, but of those, and those alone, who now hold them and have held them in slavery from their birth.
Where would you like to live? In a state of conflict or a conflicted state?
However, if "free choice" means more than a small selection between pre-established necessities, and if the inclinations and impulses used in work are other than those preshaped by a repressive reality principle, then satisfaction in daily work is only a rare privilege.
You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.
Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.
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