Things you can't understand are always the hardest to bear. To know why is the first step to consolation.

There is a country proverb which says, 'If you don't trouble trouble - trouble won't trouble you.

The fact is, people who don't have any misfortunes are very irritating to their neighbours. No opportunities for popping in with condolences and new-laid eggs. No visits to the afflicted. No opportunities for the milk of human kindness to flow. Naturally it doesn't.

When there is too much to say it is easier to say nothing at all.

Most of the things one worries about never happen.

The fact is, for most of us, what happens to ourselves is so much more important than what happens to other people that the smallest mote in our own eye will prevent us from being unduly harrowed by someone else's beam.

Once a suggestion has entered the general atmosphere of human thought, it is very difficult to neutralise it.