Wisdom quotes
Quotes to enlighten and inspire
The following quotes are from Laurent Grenier*, author of the book A REASON FOR LIVING (the way to fulfillment against great odds), which is part autobiographical, part philosophical. They are freely available for reprint on condition that they are left unaltered and are adequately referenced (with Laurent Grenier mentioned as the author, preferably with a link to his domain http://laurentgrenier.com if reprinting online). Thank you.
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“Don’t give up! Once you stop fighting, you start dying.”
“Love is like heat, absorbed and diffused. The one you give has its origin in the one you receive, firstly from the people who are the closest to you. No civilization can blossom without the affection of parents and friends nurturing its human roots.”
“Religion and wisdom help us accept the shortcomings of reality, either with the prospect of bliss after death or with an approach to life that is conducive to serenity.”
“… truth, or the conformity of thought to reality, is the sine qua non of vital efficacy. Health, pleasure, successful careers, and harmonious relationships require that we know the needs and capabilities of our nature, and the workings of the world. The absence of this knowledge leads to accidents, illness, suffering, failure, and death. Therefore, the first object of our desires should be truth, or the knowledge of ourselves and the world around us.”
“Anyone who wishes to be helpful should always remember that adults and teenagers, and even children who love to try their abilities in various occupations, hate to feel helpless.”
“It takes humility to welcome help and express gratitude heartily. And it takes delicacy to prevent an offer of help from being downright humiliating, though it is willy-nilly humbling.”
“… a wild bird put in a cage… grows more and more tame with time, until it finally adapts to captivity and resumes singing. Does this song hold the essence of earthly contentment, which involves confinement? I am alluding to the confines of reality…”
“…life is an opportunity to make the best of things when we cannot better them. It is rarely so bad that this best amounts to nothing good. It is usually worth living, though its value is often concealed by pain and strain, during a search for meaning that resembles a treasure hunt.”
“Although life comes with many strings attached – many determining factors, internal or external – humans are not mere puppets in the hands of circumstances. They may suffer, but they have the power to react against their suffering, unless they are mentally and physically incapacitated in the extreme. The more they passively claim to be the victim of a bad situation, the more they are an undeclared accomplice to it, for lack of struggling to better it or make the best of it.”
“The right way is a hard way. But then, a battle without struggle is a victory without glory. Pride is our prize.”
“… being defeated is never tantamount to losing the battle, except when it means death or such a severe disability that life is hopelessly reduced to coma or agony. Generally, if we suffer a defeat on one front, we can enjoy a victory on another.”
“Don’t whine, nor cuss; tackle the muss and clear it up, or grin and bear it!”
“… detriment and merriment can coexist when the former leaves room for something that makes life worth living, loving, despite everything. The secret is balance: The worse the detriment, the better this something must be to compensate for it and bring merriment.”
“Great achievers are often great sufferers who had the will and the ability to redeem their condition with a profound dignity and joy in the pursuit and attainment of a high goal. Other great sufferers, of lesser will and ability, either lived passively and bitterly or killed themselves. In short, suffering enervates the weak and motivates the strong.”
“If, in the struggle for survival and happiness, society is a cure for individual limitations (an imperfect cure to be sure, with side effects), it is also a pill hard to swallow. Civility is a smooth sugar coating that eases the swallowing. Give thanks to those who phrase their discontentment with delicacy and embellish it with a compliment and an encouragement. No nagging, no gagging.”
“…defeatists confuse their attitude with realism and suffer nullity or mediocrity rather than fight for excellence, which is possible, unlike perfection.”
“… although one may indulge in a fickle existence for a while, one must eventually commit and apply oneself to a particular relationship, study, or career, in spite of imperfections and difficulties, if one wishes to achieve something worthy of mention. Nothing good can come from a search for better that always leaves one thing for another.”
“… what value has the action of someone who is kind yet blind to the true needs of another? It has none, though kindness commands respect and forgiveness, inasmuch as it is genuine, accidentally useless or harmful, as opposed to superficial and essentially careless.”
“Mothers and motherlike others, beware! Overprotection contributes to infantilism and worthlessness…. You can do more by doing less, and too much is just as bad as not enough.”
“If you lead a happy life, of which you may be to some degree unmindful, never let a day pass without reflecting on the life of misery you could be leading instead. Imagine having lost everything and everyone you love. You will be happier for the realization that you are spared this misery.”
“Things that happen to us are merely the occasion for our feelings and responses, whose primary cause is our outlook. This mental interface between us and the world is the realm of liberty where we can indulge in foolishness and suffer the consequences, or strive for wisdom and enjoy its benefits.”
“… happiness does not require any specific circumstances or the satisfaction of any specific desires. It remains attainable as long as one can survive and experience pleasure, dignity, and usefulness in some way or other.”
“Life is like a diamond, as hard as it is precious. It has a cutting rule that divides the soul: Struggle and distress are the price of happiness. Resist the temptation to do nothing, which spares you the effort to achieve something good and the risk of losing it. Take up the challenge; rake in the pride!”
“Of course there are exceptional cases of infinite suffering and absolute despair that are truly absurd…. In all other cases, life is more favorable: If joyless, it is hopeful, like birth that represents a difficult passage from a familiar and pleasant type of existence to a strange one, both menacing and promising – worth living. I am backing my contention with contentment, though I know from experience what pain is in every sense of the word. Don’t people usually prefer life to death?”
May you learn to smile… at the present, which is a present indeed, worth unwrapping – now, not later. Why wait? Life is short and sometimes even shorter than expected. Haste it, don’t waste it!”
“… courage is of paramount importance, since it can turn things around from a miserable existence, without the advantage of extraordinary abilities, to a prosperous life marked by great contentment and distinction. Conversely, cowardice and laziness can transform the good fortune of a gifted person, born with a silver spoon in her or his mouth, into the wealthy unhappiness of a contemptible idler.”
“…the knowledge of life enhances the experience of it.”
“Our human condition is a burdensome collection of necessities and duties that command us to act sensibly and honorably, or else… Rectitude is servitude. A master at living is a happy slave.”
“…be careful not to look on the black side of things. As surely as your existence is dark with despair, there is light here below you have yet to see, not with your eyes, but with your mind: the light of wisdom, which is necessary to find happiness. Beware of the blindness that accompanies youth. It is your worst handicap and you shall overcome it by degrees as you grow older, wiser and happier, more enlightened.”
“True, perfection is nowhere on earth to be enjoyed. Life is full of difficulties and impossibilities, which can discourage us from living, but it is full of opportunities as well. May you learn to love it as I did….”
“…just as life is an essential condition for all human experiences and realizations, good health is indispensable for living fully. The less one is healthy, the less one has vitality for pursuing a higher purpose, such as prosperity and usefulness to others.”
“Being unable to lead one’s life according to one’s idea of how it should be led is sheer misery. The liberal society is superior to all others precisely because it acknowledges this fact and only restrains people when they prove seriously harmful.”
“Love others as yourself because others are as much you as yourself: You and the social circumstances that are the cradle of your civilized life are one and indivisible, like a plant and its roots. No mystery, no revelation, just common knowledge. People helping people is a natural phenomenon that stems from a proverbial understanding: United we stand; divided we fall.”
“Today I concede without reservation that the absurdity of my reality was an illusion that my adaptation to this reality could dispel. The lack of meaning was a want of awareness. What I failed to see was the flexibility of my nature. More than an individual (in terms of my habits), I was a human being capable of shaping and reshaping my individuality in accordance with my changing situation.”
… the meaning of life is not dependent on a particular way of life, but on the conformity of one’s way to the present possibilities. Similarly, a door key is not useful in itself, but in relation to a lock that it opens because it matches it. The key to happiness therefore consists in having our desires match our reality. We are locked out of happiness when we refuse to do this and fiddle in vain with the wrong key – that is, the key to misery.”
“Such is the crazy law of luck and unhappiness it would be smart to violate: The more fortunate you are, the more you risk bellyaching over trifles and feeling disgruntled despite your good fortune.”
“Things are good in some measure if they are not bad in the extreme, and we should rejoice at that, just as we may wish to improve these things, possibly open to improvement.”
“’Hang on in there!’ I now say to you. The greater the difficulty, the greater the merit once this difficulty is overcome. A beautiful smile, truly serene, is a most admirable masterpiece when it prevails over a situation many would deem pitiful…. This illustrates that contentment is largely independent of a person’s state of affairs, or is this person’s doing from within. Beatitude is an attitude.”
“…there is more to humans than meets the eye. Their human nature relates preeminently to the ideas and ideals that underlie what they say and do, and concern their mind, as opposed to what they say and do, which belongs to the material world and could be mimicked by a futuristic robot.”
“Philosophical questioning often starts with an existential void that one is desperate to fill with meaning.”
“Sages forever strive to be at one with truth. Their ideal – which they pursue earnestly but never achieve to perfection – is to grow into supreme human beings whose knowledge and behavior coincide with the nature of things and their earthly mission: with life and love.”
“As I strayed from the right path, in the wasteland of morbid reveries, I soon discovered I was sinking into quicksand. The longer I wallowed in these reveries, the harder it became for me to drag myself from them. I was losing the battle for want of fighting it.”
“Anything that draws one away from the business of living and being worthy – such as drugs, alcohol, distractions of all descriptions, and sleep when the intent is oblivion, not to mention the idea of killing oneself – is a means of escaping, a little death, and death itself is the ultimate escape.”
“Of course it is a lot worthier to elevate oneself than to abase someone else. It is also a lot harder, and nature spontaneously levels everything the easy way. Moral excellence relates to culture, is an acquired trait, by virtue of which a human is courageous and just, worthy of praise.”
“Vengeance and violence are one and the same thing. Both are resentful and harmful. Both are reprehensible. The harm inflicted does not remedy the harm suffered; it simply compounds one harm with another, and invites yet another harm.”
“… justice should not serve to avenge people. It should serve to prevent crime and protect the public, by intimidating or incarcerating those who are a menace to others except under threat or behind bars. It should never push the severity of this mandate to the point of cruelty, in which case it would be a perversion of justice, an ominous sign of barbarity.”
“How much can we collectively be civilized – that is, mutually respectful and helpful, in the knowledge that this high goal can unite our wills toward a common good of colossal proportions? In other words, what is the ceiling of our possible civilization, which implies responsibility and solidarity, an elevation of life to love? Nobody knows the limit, so none should be set but the sky!”
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“Freedom relates to individuals who live with other individuals and cannot harmoniously do so without a minimum of mutual respect.”
“Generally, in a loving environment, human beings show humanity as naturally as fruit trees give fruit in the summer. Love is to these beings as sunshine is to these trees. It helps them grow into what they are meant to grow into (unless their nature is flawed from the start, which is an exception to the rule): beautiful and bountiful creations, as opposed to ugly and puny aberrations.”
“… beware of love; it can be possessive and manipulative, selfish and devilish! Yes, some angels have horns, unnoticeable at first sight under their pretty hair; their paradise is hell.”
“True love is in the image of God (by God I simply mean the fundamental cause of everything. It brings us into existence and, within the limits of its might, supports us in our quest for fulfillment). It is a desire to nurture, not to capture.”
“Admittedly, humans are not merely a product of circumstances and cannot rightly use them as an excuse for their cowardly or wicked acts. They have the freedom to make an honorable choice no matter how unfavorable their circumstances are. Yet the difficulty of making this choice should not be overlooked. It is proportional to the unfavorableness of these circumstances.”
“Since effort and the risk of failure are essential for success, the avoidance of them precludes this success. Of course everyone knows this. The trouble is that many refuse largely to accept it. This is proof that knowledge is powerless in itself; it needs a strong will to be effective.”
“Life without courage is like a bird without wings; it cannot take off.”
“Why is it hard to want both the end and the means? Precisely because the means are hard, not to mention the fact that they are hazardous, you might answer. If you are right, then why do some actually thrive on this hardness and hazardousness? The key to this mystery is their attitude: They regard these opposing elements not only as obstacles but also as opportunities for merit and excitement.”
“There can be greatness in apparent smallness and smallness in apparent greatness; the truth resides in the great or small actualization of one’s potential, whatever it is.”
“Steer clear of frivolousness, laziness, and cowardliness…. They are strong temptations that can assume the form of a cunning philosophy that is unique to losers. Beware of this snare. Life is a demanding character test; come death, you will have ample time to rest!”
“There is nothing spontaneous about the intelligent conception and intelligible expression of one’s true self, which is everything but simple. It is a tissue of desires, feelings, ideas, and memories, caught in a whirl of interactions between the mind and the world. Either one goes to great lengths to elucidate and formulate the truth about oneself, and one hits the bull’s-eye, or one talks bullshit – please forgive my language.”
“Nothing great ever comes easily to anyone, including those who are the most gifted among us. Superior luck is not human greatness, only a steppingstone toward it. The stone is given; the stepping is done by the sweat of one’s brow and is made of a million steps, uphill. To work one’s way up to greatness is comparable to conquering Mount Everest, the highest peak of the Himalayas. It is an outstanding achievement with a sense of pride to match.”
“Holidays are holy days whose futilities wholesomely air the musty atmosphere of our necessities and duties. They degenerate into folly when someone elevates them to a lifestyle, in which case the rules of success are broken by an excessive break.”
“In contrast to my doubt about the future, I am certain that I am alive and free to invest my energy in something useful or pleasurable, worthy of doing. In short, whether I live tomorrow or not, I can enjoy this freedom today, or put it to good use. When I die, I want self-respect, not self-reproach.”
“I use the specter of death, which is looming over my life, as an incentive to make the most of my current situation. I am resolved to live fully, at once. There is no time for delay. Besides, if a resolution to live fully is not effective immediately, it cannot be taken seriously. It is a vague desire whose vagueness presages an indefinite postponement. I do not count on later to redeem a wasteful now. Later is now or never. I mean, the resolution to live fully is either effective immediately or likely to be postponed indefinitely; also, the present is our sole opportunity for dignity and contentment: The future – which may happen or not – can only exist as a present. Happiness is a matter of urgency. I am as keen as my life is chancy.”
“My motto is straightforward: I try my hardest to achieve my purpose, and come what may. In the event that I lose the means of trying, I will let go of this purpose. What I cannot achieve is none of my concern; I leave it in the care of others. This attitude follows the natural order of things. We humans carry the torch for life during the time that we are alive and capable; then a new generation takes over.”
“As a rule, the more successfully one has lived, the more peacefully one will die. Success is what crowns the effort to achieve one’s purpose. It is a measure of courage and efficiency, which combine the joy of succeeding with the dignity of trying. It is also a measure of luck. A great career or family is the sort of achievement that testifies to a successful life. Topped with great friendships and pleasures, it makes a sweet memory cake, frosting and cherry included, that can add a smile to a dying breath.”
“Great poets are talented, courageous, and knowledgeable servants of the poetic muse. Whereas their courage and their knowledge are acquired, their talent is innate. It gloriously complements these acquisitions, which otherwise would produce a labored compliance of the language with principles of truth, style, and grammar.”
“… love is a characteristic of people who appreciate living in society, thanks to a combination of positive attitude and relatively favorable social environment. To sum up, the more they love life, in company with others who take part in their life, the more they love others.”
“The mind is a double-edged thinking tool that can cut its way in and out of truth by means of veracious statements or specious arguments.”
“I hate to think the soul has such a capacity for beauty and yet can remain undeveloped, morally retarded, as ugly as a shriveled growth that an earnest gardener could have transformed into a heavenly rose.”
“Courage is the force that can raise life to joy and joy to love and love to dignity, insofar as the human nature aspires to these difficult heights, though it is always tempted to go for the easy and low option. This nature is indeed dual. People are forever torn between their lofty aspirations and their base temptations. Their choice to honor these aspirations or surrender to these temptations determines their moral status, admirable or pitiable.”
“… employers who care about their employees, while caring about their business, always offer them the best possible working conditions. These employees are joyful and grateful as a rule, which ensures a superior efficiency and loyalty on their part. Good spirit is good profit.”
“Democratic societies… leave much to be desired, but are certainly the most satisfactory to date. They are based on freedom, talent, chance, and merit, while including a safety net for those who have fallen off the high wire of health and success. Things merely have to improve. The status quo is a steppingstone to brighter days.
“The less luck people have at the start, the more merit they have in the end if they make a success of their life…. May the objects of our compassion fill us with admiration as they rise from their woes to become our heroes!”
“Contrary to expectations, some people born of goodhearted and well-to-do parents are miserable individuals. They are insatiably selfish and shockingly ungrateful, so infantile and spineless that play and rest are their sole ambitions. Did they have a weak character to start with? Did their parents kill them with kindness and spoil them rotten? Is that why they have no soul?”
“Here God is regarded as the universal principle, and particularly as the principle of life. Its essence can be described as love for the good reason that it gives every life form – including the human species – the opportunity to live and the capacity to develop and flourish. This gift is assuredly a sublime proof of love.”
“Anything can be a means of avoiding problems. The means is variable; the end is immutable. Escapism is what it is whichever form it assumes and all manner of distractions – including serious occupations that act as diversions – can serve its purpose. Physically, these distractions may be healthier than drugs and alcohol; mentally, however, they are equally unhealthy if abused – that is, used to the point of leaving the problems indefinitely unsolved.”
“… an occasional break from work is a sensible interlude of relaxation where one recharges one’s batteries in preparation for another period of exertion. This good practice turns bad when it oversteps the mark and falls into the trap of escapism. Happiness is then nothing but a bitter dream, whose bitterness is diluted with various evasions. Dignity and joy are desired, not felt; their absence is a crying shame.”
“Part of the distress generated by pain consists of anxiety, which relates to the function of pain as a warning sign. The more this function is impaired and this sign discredited, the more pain loses its relation to danger and can be ignored, while it remains painful.”
“Every art form is precisely that: a form into which any content may be artistically displayed. It is a beautiful receptacle for all manner of feelings and thoughts, just as a colorful and graceful pitcher adds beauty to whatever liquid it contains.”
“Had our ancestors collectively preferred to renounce worldly happiness rather than to pursue it, because this pursuit is inseparable from suffering, humanity would be ancient history preserved in dirt. It would be a fossil for no one to see – no one except various critters that, unlike humans, would not have lost their will to live for good or ill and could be dubbed, for that reason, superior animals.”
“readers… no less than writers [are] the gatekeepers of truth.”
“…humility amounts to imbecility when it leads to thoughtlessness and credulousness.”
“One day, during a discussion about the human nature, a bookish individual asked me where I had read what I said. I ad-libbed an answer that became my catch phrase in similar circumstances: ‘Life is in life before being in books!’”
“There is no greater loss than that of dignity, save the loss of life itself.”
“… the attainment of infinite health, strength, pleasure, wisdom, glory, wealth, and every other object of one’s desires would amount to an infinite satisfaction that would kill these desires. This attainment is impossible because it is incompatible with life. Perfection and death go together like two inseparable lovers in a single tomb.”
“Perfection is fit for a stone. It may appeal to a wretchedly tired soul in dire need of a rest. Dead, however, would this soul not adopt the opposite stance after a lengthy bout of mineral tranquility? Would it not dream of having a second chance to live and love life?”
“I had failed to realize that the extreme difficulties I was faced with were exceptional opportunities for spiritual development and enlightenment, just as an obstacle can keep ivy in the dark and become the instrument of its ascension to a superior place in the sun.”
“Whatever the perspective, the nature of things remains unchanged. There are rules, necessities and duties, and limits, possibilities and impossibilities. Until doom, one can accept them and make the best of them, much to one’s pleasure and honor, or one can do the opposite and suffer the consequences. The choice between these two options is the very essence of freedom.”
“Ills are a test of will, an opportunity to show dignity.”
“Over the years, I have improved my situation and especially my attitude, whose negativity was the most unfavorable and improvable aspect of my life. In so doing, I have discovered my true richness. Nature has endowed me with an adaptable capacity for happiness within the limits of my changeable reality.”
“Health is the basis for every human achievement, even when it is poor, in which case it provides a lot less vitality and longevity than when it is good.”
“… health is not just a matter of vitality and longevity; it is also a matter of sanity. A sound mind is a complement to a sound body. Furthermore, the one is dependent on the other.”
“I was less a victim of circumstances than a fool who brought about his own misery, on account of his negative attitude and self-destructive behavior.”
“Perhaps the worst hunger pangs are those one suffers when one has failed to satisfy one’s conscience, which requires that one do one’s best to achieve what one sees as right. Perhaps also the greatest satisfaction is the one derived from meeting this requirement. One then succeeds on a moral level, though possibly to no practical avail.”
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* Laurent Grenier’s career as a full-time writer and thinker spans over twenty years. He has released various articles in art and philosophical magazines. He has also written some philosophical essays, a collection of memories and thoughts, and a compendium of physiology and nutrition, still unpublished. “A Reason for Living” constitutes his best work to date. Official website: http://laurentgrenier.com/ARFL.html
You can contact him at laurentgrenier@rogers.com
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