Don't be concerned with other people's impressions of you. They are dazzled and deluded by appearances. Stick with your purpose. This alone will strengthen your will and give your life coherence.

What else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? If I were a nightingale, I would do the nightingale's part; if I were a swan, I would do as a swan. But now I am a rational creature, and I ought to praise God. This is my work. I do it, nor will I desert my post, so long as I am allowed to keep it. And I ask you to join me in this same song.

From now on practice saying to everything that appears unpleasant: You are merely an appearance and NOT what you appear to be.

To be getting an education means this: to be learning what is your own, and what is not your own.

Don't be prideful with any excellence that is not your own

Fight against yourself, recover yourself to decency, to modesty, to freedom. And, in the first place, condemn your actions; but when you have condemned them, do not despair of yourself. For both ruin and recovery are from within.

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.