If you think only of yourself, if you forget the rights and well-being of others, or, worse still, if you exploit others, ultimately you will lose. You will have no friends who will show concern for your well-being. Moreover, if a tragedy befalls you, instead of feeling concerned, others might even secretly rejoice. By contrast, if an individual is compassionate and altruistic, and has the interests of others in mind, then irrespective of whether that person knows a lot of people, wherever that person moves, he or she will immediately make friends. And when that person faces a tragedy, there will be plenty of people who will come to help.
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Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.
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Surely man is created of a hasty temperament / Being greatly grieved when evil afflicts him / And niggardly when good befalls him / Except those who pray, / Those who are constant at their prayer / And those in whose wealth there is a fixed portion.
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Whatever befalls the earth befalls the son of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
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Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. We did not weave the web of life We are merely a strand in it. What we do with the web, we do to ourselves...
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Humore is an affirmation of man's dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.
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Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.
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Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befalls you.
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The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.
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