Thursday, April 9, 2009

People who succeed...

In a Rolling Stone article about Kris Kristofferson (written by Ethan Hawke) I found this quote attributed to Eugene O'Neil that I thought was worth passing on:

"The people who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers."

Looking it up on the Internet to verify it, I found this for context:

"I love life. But I don't love life because it is pretty. Prettiness is only clothes-deep. I am a truer lover than that. I love it naked. There is beauty to me even in its ugliness. In fact, I deny the ugliness entirely, for its vices are often nobler than its virtues, and nearly always closer to a revelation ....To me, the tragic alone has that significant beauty which is truth. It is the meaning of life -- and the hope. The noblest is eternally the most tragic. The people who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers. Their stopping at success is the proof of their compromising insignificance. How petty their dreams must have been!"-- Eugene O'Neill, from the biography by Barbara and Arthur Gelb 

I'm already hard at work on my next failures.

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