Desmoline Awa

“Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. “To the persevering mortal,” said Zoroaster, “the blessed Immortals are swift.” As”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

“No man is at the mercy of affairs. He gets entangled in them of his own accord, and then flatters himself that being busy is a proof of happiness.”
― Seneca, Letters From A Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium (Illustrated. Newly revised text. Includes Image Gallery + Audio): All Three Volumes

“One’s own free, untrammeled desires, one’s own whim… All of this is precisely that which fits no classification, and which is constantly knocking all systems and theories to hell. And where did our sages get the idea that a man must have normal, virtuous desires? What man needs is only his own independent wishing, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I would rather have it said, 'He lived usefully,' than, 'He died rich.”
― Benjamin Franklin