More people I have known have suffered because they did not know how
to adjust themselves than for any other reason. And the
happiest-hearted people I have met have been those that have the
knack of adapting themselves to whatever happens.
I would begin with my relatives. While I might easily conceive a
better set of uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, and so on, yet
Destiny gave me precisely the relatives I need. I may not want them,
but I need them. So of my friends and acquaintances and fellow
workmen. Every man's life is a plan of God. Fate brings to me the
very souls out of the unknown that I ought to know. If I cannot get
along with them, be happy and appreciated, I could not get along
with another set of my own picking. A man who is looking for ideal
human beings to make up his circle of acquaintances would as well go
at once and jump into the river.
The God of Things as They Ought to Be is a humbug. There is but one
God, and He is the God of Things as They Are.
Half of my problem is Me; the other half is Circumstances. My task
is to bring results out of the combination of the two.
Life is not a science, to be learned; it is an art, to be practised.
Ability comes by doing. Wisdom comes not from others; it is a
secretion of experience.
Life is not like a problem in arithmetic, to be solved by learning
the rule; it is more like a puzzle of blocks, or wire rings--you
just keep trying one way after another, until finally you succeed,
maybe.
I think it was Josh Billings who said that in the Game of Life, as
in a game of cards, we have to play the cards dealt to us; and the
good player is not the one who always wins, but the one who plays a
poor hand well.