Every ordinary force in the world will tug at his peace and conspire to flood his soul with distractions.

A man that cannot pause himself inside in the face of heightened stress is not worth a single penny. It is only this quality — this measure of inner strength to resist bestial compulsions — that lends a man some weight to be appreciated. It is to be a mere character in a book to just follow the momentum of events by responding with cliché reactions. Boiling blood and raging hormones have no place in someone who seeks to rest upon the lilies of an intelligent state. Whatever in him cares about one thing or another in such a way as to be aroused into temporary lunacy reflects an addiction to a fantasy that has been fed for a very long time. We think that we are always owed something, deserve something, and should be respected for the unique contributions we provide to the world simply by existing! Yet aside from simple considerations like basic safety, no man is owed anything. To starve oneself of these fantasies by disbelieving in the inner commotions they continually brew eventually dries up the falsities back into the gutter, to which they rightly belong. A man’s real life is far more simple than he realizes and the emotional experience of that simplicity is far more potent if he finds his way back to this essential state.