realistic

If you aspire to the highest place it is no disgrace to stop at the second or even the third place.

The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.

He who cannot do what he wants must make do with what he can.

We must like what we have when we don't have what we like.

What has always made a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven.

The chief pang of most trials is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to it.

Genius does what it must talent does what it can.

A body shouldn't heed what might be. He's got to do with what is.

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.

People are lucky and unlucky ... according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

The greatest and most important problems in life are all in a certain sense insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

A hero is a man who does what he can.

Better is the enemy of the good.

Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down.

To expect life to be tailored to our specifications is to invite frustration.

Being unready and ill-equipped is what you have to expect in life. It is the universal predicament. It is your lot as a human being to lack what it takes. Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities the strength the wisdom the virtue you ought to have. You must always do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen as appropriate for your special endowments.

Vex not thy spirit at the course of things they heed not thy vexation. How ludicrous and outlandish is astonishment at anything that may happen in life.

Nature is what you may do. There is much you may not do.