"Circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get."

"What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears."

"It is better to die of hunger, exempt from grief and fear, than to live in affluence with perturbation."

"It is not poverty that makes a man miserable, but covetousness."

"Think of yourself as a slave, and you will not be disturbed by anything that happens to you."