Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
This profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock is not a drop scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of reality.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the unique and imaginative aspects of a city are real and not simply theatrical illusions.
In this quote, Robert Louis Stevenson highlights the distinctive and vivid characteristics of a city, suggesting that its creativity and eccentricities are a genuine part of the real world rather than mere pretensions or false representations. He encourages us to appreciate the authenticity and richness of urban life, recognizing it as a true manifestation of human artistry and expression.
In practice
In a speech about urban development, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of creativity in city planning.
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.
Can a film really change anything? I mean, what was the last time? Maybe the Italian neo-realists, where they became the voice and the heart and the soul of Italy, a nation that had been destroyed. I don't know.
One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what's really happening to me, even if it's a tough pill to swallow for people around me... I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.
To a poet, it's quite ruinous to have a poem distorted, out of shape, or squeezed, shall we say, into this tiny screen. But I'm not sure big digital companies are sensitive to the needs of poets.
I've never put out a song that I wasn't completely proud of and that I didn't love. In that sense, I've never felt like I sold out in any way.
Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.
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