e stranger, and in happy confidence open their hearts to him.
Thus it is that monks and the like, who have given up the world and
are strangers to it, are such good people to turn to for advice.

* * * * *

It is only by practising mutual restraint and self-denial that we can
act and talk with other people; and, therefore, if we have to converse
at all, it can only be with a feeling of resignation. For if we seek
society, it is because we want fresh impressions: these come from
without, and are therefore foreign to ourselves. If a man fails to
perceive this, and, when he seeks the society of others, is unwilling
to practise resignation, and absolutely refuses to deny himself, nay,
demands that others, who are altogether different from himself,
shall nevertheless be just what he wants them to be for the moment,
according to the degree of education which he has reached, or
according to his intellectual powers or his mood--the man, I say, who
does this, is in contradiction with himself. For while he wants some
one who shall be different from himself, and wants him just because
he is different, for the sake of society and fresh influence, he
nevertheless demands that this other individual shall precisely
resemble the imaginary creature who accords with his mood, and have no
thoughts but those which he has himself.

Women are very liable to subjectivity of this kind; but men are not
free from it either.

I observed once to Goethe, in complaining of the illusion and vanity
of life, that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him
as when he is away. He replied: "Yes! because the absent friend is
yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is
present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws
of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you
form for yourself."

* * * * *

A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing
for the journey of life. It is a supply which we shall have to extract
from disappointed hopes; and the sooner we do it, the better for the
rest of the journey.

* * * * *

How should a man be content so long as he fails to obtain complete
unity in his inmost being? For as long as two voices alternately speak
in him, what is right for one must be wrong for the other. Thus he is
always complaining. But has any man ever