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About this quote

What does it mean?
Life is lived concretely rather than abstractly, and its meaning is subjective.
In plain terms
Life happens in reality, not ideas, and its meaning varies.
What can you take from it?
Experience matters more than abstract ideas about life.

Where it applies

  • philosophical reflection
  • personal crises
  • existential questions

Putting it to work

  • focus on experience
  • question abstract theories

Questions to consider

  • Is life absurd or meaningful?
  • How do you live?

Another view

It dismisses the role of ideas in shaping how we live.

More from Archibald MacLeish

  1. What is more important in a library than anything else - is the fact that it exists.

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  2. We are as great as our belief in human liberty - no greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves.

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  3. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, there is no reason either in football or in poetry why the two should not meet in a man's life if he has the weight and ca…

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