Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom
Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.
It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
On a cold winters day, a group of porcupines huddled together to stay warm and keep from freezing. But soon they felt one anothers quills and moved apart. When the need for warmth brought them closer together again, their quills again forced them apart. They were driven back and forth at the mercy of their discomforts until they found the distance from one another that provided both a maximum of warmth and a minimum of pain. In human beings, the emptiness and monotony of the isolated self produces a need for society. This brings people together, but their many offensive qualities and intolerable faults drive them apart again. The optimum distance that they finally find that permits them to coexist is embodied in politeness and good manners. Because of this distance between us, we can only partially satisfy our need for warmth, but at the same time, we are spared the stab of one anothers quills.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories