O suffering, sad humanity! O ye afflicted ones, who lie Steeped to the lips in misery, Longing, yet afraid to die, Patient, though sorely tried!
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowRead
However things may seem, no evil thing is success and no good thing is failure.
Interpretation
Success and failure are subjective and often misleading in their appearances.
This quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow suggests that the true nature of success and failure is not always apparent. It encourages us to look beyond the surface of our experiences, recognizing that what seems to be a failure may actually hold value and that what appears to be success may not be inherently good. Essentially, it challenges us to reconsider our judgments and values in the context of life's complexities.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience in the face of setbacks.
O suffering, sad humanity! O ye afflicted ones, who lie Steeped to the lips in misery, Longing, yet afraid to die, Patient, though sorely tried!
There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.
Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.
To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.
God is not dead; nor doth He sleep; ... _x000D_ The wrong shall fail,_x000D_ The right prevail,_x000D_ With peace on earth, good will to men.
In the long run men hit only what they aim at.
Perhaps, in retrospect, there would be little motivation even for malevolent extraterrestrials to attack the Earth; perhaps, after a preliminary survey, they might decide it is more expedient just to be patient for a little while and wait for us to self-destruct.
Permanent remorse about failing to do your human duty, in my opinion, can be worse than losing your life.
When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which bare apprehension of opposition from doing what they would with eagerness rush into if no such external impediments were to be feared.
To some extent, we've always had an admiration for extroversion in our culture. But the extrovert ideal really came to play at the turn of the 20th century when we had the rise of big business.
In mathematical quarters, the regular division of the plane has been considered theoretically. ... [Mathematicians] have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain, but they have not entered this domain themselves. By their very nature they are more interested in the way in which the gate is opened than in the garden lying behind it.
We can forgive [the Arabs] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us...
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