Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They repeat, they re-arrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, but with a singular change-that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, nonce, struck out.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fictional works profoundly influence our understanding of life by connecting us to others and providing insights beyond ourselves.
Robert Louis Stevenson emphasizes the transformative power of fiction, suggesting that the most impactful books are those that allow readers to gain insight into life and human experiences. Through engaging narratives, fiction helps us step outside our own egos, fosters empathy, and deepens our understanding of the world and those around us, providing clarity on life's complexities and our interconnectedness.
Themes
FictionInfluenceEmpathyLife LessonsSelf-DiscoveryEgo
In practice
Example use cases
A book club discussion on how fiction shapes our understanding of human relationships.
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
Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.
Barbara KingsolverRead
The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.
George OrwellRead
The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James won, and it split literature into two streams. But it's a totally false dichotomy.
George R. R. MartinRead
Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
Helen KellerRead
Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.
Paul De ManRead
How is it that, a full two centuries after Jane Austen finished her manuscript, we come to the world of Pride and Prejudice and find ourselves transcending customs, strictures, time, mores, to arrive at a place that educates, amuses, and enthralls us? It is a miracle. We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.
Anna QuindlenRead