Choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed and you haven't been.

Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, "Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?" neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . .

Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.

Put it out of the power of truth to give you an ill character. If anybody reports you not to be an honest man let your practice give him the lie.

If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance.

Be cheerful, also, and seek not external help, nor the peace which others give. A man must stand straight, and not be kept straight by others.

In reading and writing, you cannot lay down rules until you have learnt to obey them. Much more so in life.