Michael said

It's not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous, but rather the studious way we try to hide them, and our desire to act as if they did not exist. - Giacomo Leopardi   

So shine forth in all your glorious folly! Someone is going to love you anyway - so you might as well like yourself!   

The most absurd and reckless aspirations have sometimes led to extraordinary success. - Vauvenargues    

So dream on. It may prove folly, so, if you fail, fail magnificantly.  

 If there be any truer measure of a man than what he does, it must be what he gives. - Robert South  

So give generously and open heartedly because, well, because generosity of spirit oils the wheels.   

A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature. - Seneca (4 BC-65 AD)   

So how come I put this quote in? Well, despite thinking that happiness is a trivial pursuit, it is such a lovely state to be in, we should savour every sweet moment, tune into the each harmonious second, stop at the gentle fragrance of it.  Equally, to break away from the trivial, we need to engage with and wallow in the authenticity of feeling and expressing all the emotions: sad, angry, scared as well as happy.    

True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and choice. - Ben Jonson   

So choose well and see your own worth reflected in the love, eyes and hearts of the people who are proud to call you friend.  Choose well and go well   

Michael

A great poem by John Clare

I am: 

yet what I am none cares or knows,

My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

I am the self-consumer of my woes,

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;

And yet I am! and live with shadows tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;

And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--

Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

 I long for scenes where man has never trod;

A place where woman never smil'd or wept;

 

There to abide with my creator, God,

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;

The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

John Clare