hum

If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles, one would hardly see anybody.

Agatha Christie

Then he rummaged among his papers until he found a clean sheet, took his pen and wrote in his small, neat hand, right in the middle of the sheet:

DEAR DORING, - With reference to your letter: Go and — yourself.

Yours truly

Don’t waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

I am not easily frigthened. Not because I am brave but because I know that I am dealing with human beings, and that I must try as hard as I can to understand everything that anyone ever does. And that was the real import of this morning: not that a disgruntled young Gestapo officer yelled at me, but that I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion, and would have liked to ask, ‘Did you have a very unhappy childhood, has your girlfriend let you down?’ Yes, he looked harassed and driven, sullen and weak. I should have liked to start treating him there and then, for I know that pitiful young men like that are dangerous as soon as they are let loose on mankind.

Etty Hillesum

What would you do if you had ten minutes left to live?

When you meet a virtuous man,
try to equal him.

When you meet a man without virtue,
examine your own shortcomings.

Confucius