Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse. Life is shocking, but you must never appear to be shocked. For no matter how bad it is it could be worse and no matter how good it is it could be better.
Can we only love
Something created in our own imaginations?
Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable?
Then one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.
The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else. was to be indifferent to that difference.
Men of sense esteem wealth to be the assimilation of nature to themselves, the converting of the sap and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As mans ingratitude Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh-ho sing, heigh-ho unto the green holly Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. Then heigh-ho the holly This life is most jolly. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, That dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend rememberd not.
(The Tao) is always present and always available. . . . If you are willing to be lived by it, you will see it everywhere, even in the most ordinary things.
Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.