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.
The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.
To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.
What you yourself hate, don't do to your neighbor. This is the whole law; the rest is commentary. Go and study.
First, we must do our own personal work, then we tend the necessary work of our family, then our community, then the world.
All great and precious things are lonely.
The ocean of Spirit has become the little bubble of my soul. Whether floating in birth, or disappearing in death, in the ocean of cosmic awareness the bubble of my life cannot die. I am indestructible consciousness, protected in the bosom of Spirit’s immortality.
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