"Seek not to have things happen as you wish, but wish things to happen as they do, and you will have peace."

"Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths."

"To a reasonable creature, that alone is insupportable which is unreasonable; but everything reasonable may be supported."

"It is a universal law — have no illusion — that every creature alive is attached to nothing so much as to its own self-interest."

"If you want to be a man, or a woman, and do what is proper to a human being, do not go to others and ask, 'Am I a human being?'"