Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Finding happiness often involves letting go of one's ego and self-centeredness.
Robert Louis Stevenson emphasizes that true happiness comes from selflessness and forgetting one's own troubles or desires. By losing oneself in service to others or in the joy of life, one gains a deeper sense of fulfillment and contentment.
Themes
HappinessSelflessnessFulfillmentContentmentJoy
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech on the importance of altruism and community service.
More from Robert Louis Stevenson
All quotes βLike 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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Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.
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I'm from New Orleans, which is all about direct engagement out in the street with all the parades and Mardi Gras Indians and jazz funerals. I'm trying to take that and put it into my generation, a group that doesn't have enough joy and celebration in their lives.
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I'm not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I'm thrilled to death with life.
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Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one's self to do without it.
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