Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.
Interpretation
This quote signifies the conclusion of a troubled existence and the acceptance of one's true nature.
In this quote, the character Henry Jekyll comes to terms with the consequences of his actions and the duality of his identity. By laying down the pen, he metaphorically accepts the end of his struggle between his respectable persona and his darker side, emphasizing the theme of conflict within the human soul and the inevitable confrontation with one's own demons.
In practice
In a discussion about the complexities of human nature during a philosophy class.
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.
It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they always purr: "If they would only purr for 'yes,' and mew for 'no,; or any rule of that sort," she had said, "so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?
One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.
Peter Keating: "Do you always have to have a purpose? Do you always have to be so damn serious? Can't you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else? You're so serious, so old. Everything's important with you. Everything's great, significant in some way, every minute, even when you keep still. Can't you ever be comfortable-and unimportant?" | Howard Roark: "No."
I saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yesterday and today and forever.
We are in front of a global scandal of around one billion - one billion people who still suffer from hunger today. We cannot look the other way and pretend this does not exist. The food available in the world is enough to feed everyone.
In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.
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