Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.
Interpretation
Success is determined by how you handle challenges, not just by the opportunities you have.
This quote emphasizes the importance of oneβs attitude and approach to life's challenges. It suggests that even when faced with difficult situations or limited resources, it is a person's skill and determination in navigating those challenges that truly defines their success, rather than merely having advantageous circumstances.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience in difficult times.
Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.
That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.
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.
The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.
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.
When you're young, you don't really know quite what you're aiming at. You're very impulsive and acting on impulse, which is very important and valuable. But you're kind of swimming in a blind sea. When you get older, you have more of a sense of direction.
It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple
And...I think that's what life is all about, actually, about children and flowers.
You don't have to understand why anything that has happened nor do you even have to understand what it is that has happened. You have only to live with the remains.
When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity - but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.
My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses.
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