"A Pleasant Thought for the Year's End"
To be honest, to be kind - to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the Whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation - above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself - here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is one element in human destiny that not even blindness can controvert; whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every Art and study; it is so above all in the continent Art of living well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of life: Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for the despairer.
From
(A Christmas Sermon, published
in Scribner's Magazine
for December, 1888,
by Robert Louis Stevenson)