Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming. Literally no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it's good fun.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the balance between living life actively and waiting passively for opportunities.
Robert Louis Stevenson expresses a contemplative acknowledgment of time spent in a state of inactivity, likening it to waiting under the looming presence of a volcano. While he feels he has almost forgotten the enjoyment of 'playing' or fully engaging in life, he appreciates the fun that still exists in his reflections on life, even in a seemingly dormant state.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about seizing the day and making the most of one’s time.
Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.
That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.
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.
The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.
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.
It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding; and to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving.
It is an obvious fact that when an age is torn loose from its moorings and everyone is to some degree thrown on his own, most people can take steps to find and realize themselves.
I'm almost like three people. There's me the, Dolly, the person. There's me, the star. And then there's me, the manager.
How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.
Ah! never shall the land forget.
He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.
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