Unless a person decides that `Whatever the cost, I want just to be myself. Condemned, unaccepted, losing respectability - everything is okay but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else`... This decision and this declaration - this declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd - gives birth to your natural being, to your individuality. Then you don`t need any mask. Then you can be simply yourself, just as you are. And the moment you can be just as you are, there is tremendous peace that passeth understanding.
May the pain you have known and the conflict you have experienced give you the strength to walk through life facing each new situation with courage and optimism.
The virtues [moral excellence] therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature; nature gives us the capacity to receive them, and this capacity is brought to maturity by habit.
He who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done, and fears not to declares as freely what might be done better, gives ye the best covenant of his fidelity.