The basic quality that any great story must have is a story that illustrates the human condition.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

A short story is a shard, a sliver, a vignette. It's a biopsy on the human condition but it doesn't have this capacity to think autonomously for itself.

Mortality defines the human condition.

It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as naturally to a man as to a child.

What you think of others is what you know about yourself