querencia, a human strategy, aphorism 476

476 

One can strive for greatness and fail ... and fail with probability. One can strive for a genuine dignity and succeed ... with certainty. And if we wed the two, what child is born? For his dignity forbids that he give up his highest ambition, and this ambition requires the dignified acceptance of his probable failure. So, how does the child of this union, this genuine failure, conduct himself? He is pricked with the failure of his ambition but makes his querencia on precisely this plot of ground. He refuses any justification other than that he is here ... that the earth under his feet is his to the end ... on the confidence that for as long as he holds onto dignity, the value, even of failure, increases.

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