Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
Interpretation
Life's journey is challenging, and true friendship is one of the greatest treasures we can find.
In this quote, Robert Louis Stevenson uses the metaphor of traveling through a wilderness to describe life's journey. He emphasizes that as we navigate the complexities and challenges of the world, finding an honest and true friend is one of the most valuable rewards, highlighting the importance of genuine relationships in our lives.
In practice
During a wedding toast to honor the couple's lifelong friendship.
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.
Friendship, "the wine of life," should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed.
If you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog.
Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy" to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.
Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.
Like a surgeon, friends cut you in order to heal you.
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