“There is a certain darkness into which the soul of the young man sometimes descends - a horror of desolation, abandonment, and realised worthlessness, which is one of the most real hells in which we are compelled to walk. I know of what I speak. This is due to a variety of causes, the chief of which is the egotism of the human animal itself. But I can tell you for your comfort that the best cure for it is to interest yourself, to lose yourself, in some issue not personal to yourself - in another man’s trouble, or, preferably, another man’s joy.
But if the dark hour does not vanish, as sometimes it doesn’t; if the black cloud will not lift, as sometimes it will not - let me tell you again for your comfort that there are many liars in the world, but there are no liars like our own sensations. The despair and horror mean nothing, because there is nothing irremediable, nothing ineffaceable, nothing irrevocable in anything you may have said or done. If, for any reason, you cannot believe or have not been taught to believe in the infinite mercy of Heaven which has made us all, and will take care we do not go far astray, at least believe that you are not yet sufficiently important to be taken too seriously by the Powers above us or beneath us. In other words, take anything and everything seriously except yourselves.”
Advice to the students of McGill University, Montreal, in 1907
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