spark

"Each individual misfortune, to be sure, seems an exceptional occurence; but misfortune in general is the rule." "...the negativity of well-being and happiness, in antithesis to the positivity of pain." "...the most necessary of all things: tolerance, patience, forbearance and charity, which each of us needs and which each of us therefore owes." "The scenes of our life resemble pictures in rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful." "We shall do best to think of life as a desengano, as a process of disillusionment: since this is, clearly enough, what everything that happens to us is calculated to produce." "People who pass their lives in reading and acquire their wisdom from books are like those who learn about a country from travel descriptions: they can impart information about a great number of things, but at bottom they possess no collected, ...