Small clouds..................................

"It may be commonplace to say that power and money don't bring happiness, that jealousy and pride destroy all the joy in life, and so on.  But the fact that it's commonplace absolutely doesn't stop us falling all the time into the trap of our usual preoccupations -- gain and loss, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, fame and obscurity -- and feeling totally vulnerable to them.  It's not every day that someone tries to stab us in the back, but it's in every moment that we're the prey of our negative emotions ... Small clouds, as they say, don't bring rain.  It's when a thought first arises that you have to do something about it, not when the emotions it engenders get completely out of control.  If you don't deal with the spark, what hope do you have of doing something when the whole forest is on fire?"
-Matthieu Ricard, as excerpted from here