Having problems doesn't make you noble or virtuous, it makes you human. Nobility and virtue comes from the way that you handle your problems and either learn to move past them or live with them if out of your control.

The first step to empathy and compassion is realising the similarities between yourself and those that are suffering; the first step to forgiveness is realising that we're all human and we all share the same capacity for fallibility and foible; the first step to growth is to recognise the value of things that are outside your current mental frameworks so that you can grow into them.

Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them.

Man is a logical machine run by the scoundrels of emotions.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

When it comes to suffering, appearance is everything.