Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.
Interpretation
Morals should bring joy and fulfillment; if they don't, they might be misguided.
This quote emphasizes that true morals should not lead to feelings of gloom or unease. Instead, they should inspire positivity and a sense of rightness within us. If adhering to certain morals causes dreariness, it suggests those morals might not be aligned with our true values and understanding of life.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion about ethical dilemmas to emphasize the importance of joyful morals.
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.
The secret to freedom from enslaving patterns of sin is worship. You need worship. You need great worship. You need weeping worship. You need glorious worship. You need to sense Godβs greatness and to be moved it β moved to tears and moved to laughter β moved by who God is and what he has done for you.
My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly should be, an art in itself.
All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.
Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.
Data isn't information. ... Information, unlike data, is useful. While there's a gulf between data and information, there's a wide ocean between information and knowledge. What turns the gears in our brains isn't information, but ideas, inventions, and inspiration. Knowledge-not information-implies understanding. And beyond knowledge lies what we should be seeking: wisdom.
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