Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
Things looked at patiently from one side after another generally end by showing a side that is beautiful.
Interpretation
Patient observation reveals hidden beauty in situations.
This quote by Robert Louis Stevenson suggests that when we take the time to examine something from multiple perspectives, we often discover aspects that are beautiful or valuable. It encourages patience and openness, advocating for a deeper understanding of people and situations in life, implying that beauty often lies beneath the surface and is revealed through careful consideration.
In practice
In a workshop on creativity, one could use this quote to encourage participants to explore multiple viewpoints.
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.
Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.
Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid?
My diary seems to keep me whole.
Your ego may be just a soap bubble. Maybe for a few seconds it will remain, rising higher in the air. Perhaps for a few seconds it may have a rainbow, but it is only for a few seconds. In this infinite and eternal existence your egos go on bursting every moment. It is better not to have any attachment with soap bubbles.
White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress.
Wolf Hall attempts to duplicate not the historian's chronology but the way memory works: in leaps, loops, flashes.
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