Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it.
Interpretation
Curiosity can be both a challenge and a virtue, and mastering it requires more than just suppressing it.
In this quote, Robert Louis Stevenson suggests that while it may be easy to suppress or ignore our natural curiosity, true mastery comes from embracing and conquering it. This implies that understanding and channeling one's curiosity can lead to personal growth and deeper insights, rather than merely stifling it for convenience or comfort.
In practice
During a graduation speech to inspire students to explore their interests.
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.
An open mind leaves a chance for someone to drop a worthwhile thought in it.
Ambition, if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others.
Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure.
Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.
Accountability is essential to personal growth, as well as team growth. How can you improve if you're never wrong? If you don't admit a mistake and take responsibility for it, you're bound to make the same one again.
Every man can see things far off but is blind to what is near.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.