Capital Club

Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought.

Self-pity gets pretty close to paranoia…

Every time you find yourself drifting into self-pity, I don’t care what the cause, your child could be dying from cancer, self-pity is not going to improve the situation. It’s a ridiculous way to behave.

Life will have terrible blows, horrible blows, and unfair blows. It doesn’t matter. Some people recover and others don’t.

There, I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well. Every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something and that your duty was not to be immersed in self-pity but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion. That is a very good idea.