And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.
Arthur RimbaudRead
My wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you?
Interpretation
The quote reflects the relationship between personal understanding and the vast potential of life experiences.
Arthur Rimbaud emphasizes the contrast between his own perceived wisdom, which he likens to chaos and nothingness, and the incredible potential experiences that lie ahead for the listener. The quote suggests that while one may feel their own insights are insignificant, the future holds awe-inspiring possibilities that can be far greater than individual understanding.
In practice
In a discussion about the value of experience over theoretical knowledge, this quote encapsulates how personal insights can sometimes feel insignificant.
And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.
In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.
I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.
What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.
Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.
Further, there are things of which the mind understands one part, but remains ignorant of the other; and when man is able to comprehend certain things, it does not follow that he must be able to comprehend everything.
I think that in general it is a good plan occasionally to bear in mind the fact that people were in the habit of dreaming before there was such a thing as psychoanalysis.
Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. Those who really wish for help will get it; but for many modern people even the wish is difficult.
Life is short and the time of death is uncertain; so apply yourself to meditation. Avoid doing evil, and acquire merit, to the best of your ability, even at the cost of life itself. In short: Act so that you have no cause to be ashamed of yourselves and hold fast to this rule.
Everyone has his faults which he continually repeats: neither fear nor shame can cure them.
We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of moments that could have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.
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