Here are some quotations I collected when I was in my early twenties and going through a dark period of existential angst.The wisdom of these words helped me through and gave me encouragement..
Zengetsu
Virtues are the fruit of self discipline and do not drop from heaven
of themselves as does rain or snow.
To a sincere student, every day is a fortunate day.Time passes but
he never lags behind.Neither glory nor shame can move him.
Live with cause and leave results to the great law of the universe.
Goethe
"We bid you, have hope."
And till you have stood this test:
"Die and come to birth"
You remain a sorry guest
On this gloomy earth.
A good husbandman is recognised chiefly by his ability to turn even
the untoward to his advantage.
There is nothing insignificant in the world.It all depends on how one
looks at it.
What we nourish within ourselves grows--such is the everlasting law of nature.
Forsake your worries all-
You have come through many a scrape-
And should the heavens fall,
One lark is sure to escape.
This I believe with passionate obsession
And call it wisdom's ultimate advice:
None keeps of life and liberty possession
But daily pays in sweat and toil their price.
Charles Reade
Not a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great
deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows.
Robert Louis Stevenson
To know what you prefer, instead of saying Amen to what the world tells
you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
Karl Marx
Follow your own course, no matter what the people say.
Marcus Aurelius
Your manners will depend very much upon the quality of what you frequently
think upon; for the soul is as it were, tinged with the colour and complexion
of thought.
Lord Northbourne
It has been said that man is a spiritual being.He may not always be
so, but at least his existence is valuable only in proportion to his spirituality.He
can achieve spirituality only if earthly things are not his masters.
Henry David Thoreau
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability
of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavour.
In the long run men only hit what they aim at.
You conquer fate by thought.
Fear creates danger, and courage dispels.
Men die of fright and live of confidence.
What a different aspect will courage put upon the face of things.
The monster is never just where we think he is.What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.
How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what other people think.It's the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.
Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet.Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in a world that exists for him.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction
that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself
for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is
full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through
his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.The
power that resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what
that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried....Trust thyself:
every heart vibrates to that iron string.