Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.
Interpretation
Success can undermine ambition, but true nobility lies in the struggle against inevitable fate.
This quote reflects the idea that while ambition may thrive in situations of success and ease, the most profound and moving experiences come from witnessing the struggles and defeats of those who fight valiantly against fate. Such battles against insurmountable odds reveal the depth of human spirit and vulnerability, often serving as powerful narratives that resonate through literature and real life alike.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming obstacles, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of resilience.
All my life I have been passionately interested in monomaniacs of any kind, people carried away by a single idea. The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world.
When they are preparing for war, those who rule by force speak most copiously about peace until they have completed the mobilization process.
Now I am discovering the world once more. England has widened my horizon.
In history, the moments during which reason and reconciliation prevail are short and fleeting.
Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.
Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.
A thousand deaths would still be less than he deserves.
The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human.
What was happening was only the working-out of a process that had started years ago. The first step had been a secret, involuntary thought, the second had been the opening of the diary. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. The last step was something that would happen in the Ministry of Love. He had accepted it. The end was contained in the beginning.
Many introverts feel there's something wrong with them, and try to pass as extroverts. But whenever you try to pass as something you're not, you lose a part of yourself along the way. You especially lose a sense of how to spend your time.
People who are lying are, understandably, more worried about being believed, so they work harder - too hard, as it were - at being believable.
Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.
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