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.
What does this patch-sewing mean you ask? Eating and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body is always getting torn. You patch it with food and other ego-satisfactions.
Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.
For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.
As soon as you believe that a label you've put on yourself is true, you've limited something that is literally limitless, you've limited who you are into nothing but a thought.
David's Lord was made David's Son, and from the fruit of the promised branch sprang One without fault, the two-fold nature coming together in one Person, that by one and the same conception and birth might spring our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whom was present both true Godhead for the performance of mighty works and true Manhood for the endurance of sufferings.
We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?
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