There is nothing in
the world which so differentiates men and women as the tendency to
suspect and perceive affronts, and to nurture grievances. It is so
fatally easy to think that one has been inconsiderately treated,
and to mistake susceptibility for courage. Let us boldly face the
fact that we get in this world very much what we earn and deserve,
and there is no surer way of being excluded and left out from
whatever is going forward than a habit of claiming more respect and
deference than is due to one. If we are snubbed and humiliated, it
is generally because we have put ourselves forward and taken more
than our share. Whereas if we have been content to bear a hand, to
take trouble, and to desire useful work rather than credit, our
influence grows silently and we become indispensable. A man who
does not notice petty grumbling, who laughs away sharp comments,
who does not brood over imagined insults, who forgets irritable
passages, who makes allowance for impatience and fatigue, is
singularly invulnerable. The power of forgetting is infinitely more
valuable than the power of forgiving, in many conjunctions of life.
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