Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain common work as it comes certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things of life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Appreciate the simple, everyday joys in life instead of yearning for unattainable dreams.
This quote by Robert Louis Stevenson emphasizes the importance of recognizing and valuing the small, everyday moments that contribute to our happiness. Rather than longing for distant aspirations or grand ideals, we should focus on the immediate beauty and responsibilities that life offers us, suggesting that fulfillment comes from attending to the simplicity of our daily lives rather than chasing after lofty ambitions.
Themes
AppreciationSimplicityLifeHappinessDaily Duties
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote during a motivational speech about mindfulness and living in the moment.
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
Similar quotes
I always write the end of everything first. I always write the last chapters of my books before I write the beginning....Then I go back to the beginning. I mean, it's always nice to know where you're going is my theory.
Truman CapoteRead
It's only those exceptional and rare individuals who have brilliant ideas delivered to them by the muse, complete and gift wrapped. The rest of us have to work at it.
Alan MooreRead
Confidence and hope do more good than physic.
GalenRead
I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I resolved then that I would permit no man, no matter what his color, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
Booker T. WashingtonRead
The constancy of sages is nothing but the art of locking up their agitation in their hearts.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
If we did not have a sense of who we were, how we got here, why we want to achieve something - which, on the face of it, on the logic of it, is probably not worth trying - and prove that logic wrong, then you wouldn't succeed; then you would just evaporate.
Lee Hsien LoongRead