Setbacks and failures

Everyone in the world is set back or defeated in one area of life or another.

Some fall away from their high ideals; others bemoan their failure to marry or having married, lament because the state failed to realize all its hopes and promises; others experience a decline of virtue, a gradual slipping away into mediocrity, or a slavery to bad habits.

Others are subjected to weariness, a failure of health or economic ruin.

All these disappointments are voiced in the mournful regret: "If I only had my life to live over again!"

But it is of the utmost importance that, in facing our defeats and failures, we shall never yield to discouragement; for discouragement, from an introspective point of view, is the result of wounded self-love and is therefore a form of pride.

- Floyd Maxwell