Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fiction serves as an escape and transformation for adults, much like play does for children.
In this quote, Robert Louis Stevenson compares the role of fiction in the lives of adults to that of play in the lives of children. Just as children engage in play to explore, learn, and transform their reality, adults turn to fiction to escape, reflect, and rejuvenate their lives, altering their perspectives and emotional states through the stories they immerse themselves in.
Themes
FictionPlayAdultsImaginationTransformation
In practice
Example use cases
A teacher might use this quote to encourage students to appreciate the power of storytelling in their lives.
More from Robert Louis Stevenson
All quotes →Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come so near to doing, yet avoided.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
It is the history of our kindnesses that alone make this world tolerable. If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters . . . I should be inclined to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
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