As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.
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.
The House
...She lays her beams in music,
In music everyone,
To the cadence of the whirling world
Which dances around the sun-
That so they shall not be displaced
By lapses or by wars,
But for the love of happy souls
Outlive the newest stars.
Think'st thou I'd make a life of jealousy, To follow still the changes of the moon With fresh suspicions? No; to be once in doubt Is once to be resolved.
Yet what each one does is by no means of little moment. The grass has to put forth all its energy to draw sustenance from the uttermost tips of its rootlets simply to grow where it is as grass; it does not vainly strive to become a banyan tree; and so the earth gains a lovely carpet of green.
The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who are unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived.