We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.
Alexandre DumasRead
In this world, all--men, women, and kings--must live for the present. We can only live for the future for God
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of living in the present moment while acknowledging a higher power's role in shaping the future.
Alexandre Dumas highlights the necessity of focusing on the present in our lives, suggesting that regardless of our status or identity, all individuals should prioritize the current moment. While we often think about what lies ahead, it is ultimately our faith in God that guides our future, emphasizing a duality of living fully now while trusting in a divine plan.
In practice
During a motivational speech about mindfulness, one could quote Dumas to emphasize living in the moment.
We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.
There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.
I do not often laugh, sir, as you may perceive by the air of my countenance; but nevertheless, I retain the privilege of laughing when I please.
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.
Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather.
It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising
There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.
The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.
I love the broad margin to my life.
This paranoid Islam, which blames outsider, 'infidels', for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world.
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