A tree's shade is worth more than the knowledge of truth, my sons, for a tree's shade is true while it lasts, and the knowledge of truth is false in its very truth. The leaves' greenness is worth more, for a right understanding, than a great thought, for the leaves, greenness is something you can show others, but you can never show them a great thought. We are born without knowing how to talk and we die without having known how to express ourselves. Our life runs its course between the silence of one who cannot speak and the silence of one who wasn't understood, and around it hovers – like a bee where there are no flowers – a useless, inscrutable destiny. .Fernando Pessoa
About This Quote
"A tree's shade is worth more than the knowledge of truth, my sons" is an ancient reference to a conversation between Solomon and his sons. Solomon was a wise old man, and his wisdom was passed down from father to son. But his sons were not willing to listen to him. Instead, they preferred to gossip and pass along rumors instead of learning from their father's wisdom.
Source: The Education Of The Stoic
Some Similar Quotes
- It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
- Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can.
- The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.
- Where there is love there is life.
- It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted....
More Quotes By Fernando Pessoa
- There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.
- I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful – only then do...
- If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.
- Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely,...
- Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. Sit still with me...