Though I have been busy, perhaps overbusy, all my life, it seems to me now that I have accomplished little that matters, that the books have never come up to what was in my head, and that the rewards-the comfortable income, the public notice, the literary prizes, and the honorary degrees-have been tinsel, not what a grown man should be content with.
(0
Reviews)
The author, Wallace Stegner, reflects on his life and accomplishments with a sense of dissatisfaction. Despite being busy throughout his career, he feels that he has not achieved anything of significant value. The works he has produced do not live up to his original vision, leading him to question the impact of his writing.
Stegner expresses that the accolades he has received, such as income, recognition, and awards, feel superficial and inadequate. He suggests that true fulfillment should go beyond these external rewards, indicating a deeper desire for meaningful contributions to literature and a legacy that resonates more profoundly than accolades.
Rate the Quote
Add Comment & Review
User Reviews
Based on 0 reviews
No reviews added yet.
Comments will not be approved to be posted if they are SPAM, abusive, off-topic, use profanity, contain a personal attack, or promote hate of any kind.
More »
Other quotes in Crossing to Safety
More »
Other quotes in adulthood
More »
Popular quotes
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they might be related to one another in ways frowned on by the Old Testament.
Sebastian Faulks
Taffy. He thinks about taffy. He thinks it would take his teeth out now, but he would eat it anyhow, if it meant eating it with her.
Mitch Albom
All our human endeavours are like that, she reflected, and it is only because we are too ignorant to realize it, or are too forgetful to remember it, that we have the confidence to build something that is meant to last.
Alexander McCall Smith
The value of money is subjective, depending on age. At the age of one, one multiplies the actual sum by 145,000, making one pound seem like 145,000 pounds to a one-year-old. At seven – Bertie's age – the multiplier is 24, so that five pounds seems like 120 pounds. At the age of twenty four, five pounds is five pounds; at forty five it is divided by 5, so that it seems like one pound and one pound seems like twenty pence. {All figures courtesy of Scottish Government Advice Leaflet: Handling your Money.}
Alexander McCall Smith
In fact, none of us knows how he ever managed to get his LLB in the first place. Maybe they're putting law degrees in cornflakes boxes these days.
Alexander McCall Smith
Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can't explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.
And no matter how far they try to go the other way – to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty – at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When the life comes to an end?
I shrugged.
You see?
He leaned back. He smiled.
When you come to the end, that's where God begins.
Mitch Albom
Small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes.
Mitch Albom
You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
Mitch Albom
we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality-and, in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.
Mitch Albom
But an ink brush, she thinks, is a skeleton key for a prisoner's mind.
David Mitchell