Outward things.................................

17.  To pursue the unattainable is insanity, yet the thoughtless can never refrain from doing so.

18.  Nothing can happen to any man that nature has not fitted him to endure.  Your neighbour's experiences are no different from your own;  yet he, being either less aware of what has happened or more eager to show his mettle, stands steady and undaunted.  For shame, that ignorance and vanity should prove stronger wisdom!

19.  Outward things can touch the soul not a whit;  they know no way into it, they have no power to sway or move it.  By itself if sways and moves itself; it has its own self-appointed standards of judgment, and to them it refers every experience.


-Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations, Book V