The human body has a surprising ability to adapt its functions to the presence of permanent injuries and chronic maladies. Physicians call this the “tolerance of disease.” The healthy mind has a similar power to recover its cheerfulness in the presence of an abiding grief or after an irreparable loss.
Indolence and Timidity are the jailers who rivet the fetters of Despondency. Courage and Activity will deliver us if we choose to summon them.
As the scars of battle are, in the opinion of the pious, proofs of the protection of Heaven, so a keen sense of past calamities testifies to a capacity for future enjoyment.
Between the leaves of the Book of Life why not press the violets, the lilies, and the roses which we find on our path, rather than the nettles and bitter weeds? We could
then turn back its pages with satisfaction, and live again long-since-vanished joys.
There are few more accurate standards of a man’s education, in the widest sense of the term, than the quality of the consolation he offers.