For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.
If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death.
There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.
Rainer Maria Rilke·1903If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
William Shakespeare·1599Men at some time are masters of their fates:The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Ralph Waldo Emerson·1870A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is made a law unto himself. All real good or evil that can befal [sic] him must be from himself. He only can do himself any good or any harm. Nothing can be given to him or can taken from him but always there is a compensation.. There is a correspondence between the human soul and everything that exists in the world; more properly, everything that is known to man. Instead of studying things without the principles of them, all may be penetrated unto with him. Every act puts the agent in a new position. The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself. He is not to live the future as described to him but to live the real future to the real present. The highest revelation is that God is in every man.
