If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. Book VII

I often ardently perceived a longing for relief, the desire for a proper confession, but I also felt in advance that I would be unable to tell and explain things correctly to either my father or mother. I knew that they would receive my words amicably, they would carefully spare my feelings, in fact, pity me, but they wouldn’t fully understand me, and the whole thing would be looked on as a sort of minor infraction, whereas it was actually my fate. Demian

When I am abroad I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the Government of my country. I make up for lost time when I am at home. Never Give In!

In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. Moby Dick