The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

those minor troubles which make up, if we permit
them to do so, a very large part of life. They are
furious when they miss a train, transported with
rage if their dinner is badly cooked, sunk in
despair if the chimney smokes, and vowing
vengeance against the whole industrial order when
their clothes fail to return from the sanitary steam
laundry. The energy that such people waste on
trivial troubles would be sufficient, if more wisely
directed, to make and unmake empires. The wise
man fails to observe the dust that the housemaid
has not dusted, the potato that the cook has not
cooked, and the soot that the sweep has not swept.
I do not mean that he takes no steps to remedy these
matters, provided he has time to do so; I mean only
that he deals with them without emotion . Worry
and fret and irritation are emotions which serve no
purpose. Those who feel them strongly may say
that they are incapable of overcoming them, and I
am not sure that they can be overcome by anything
short of that fundamental resignation of which we
spoke earlier. The same kind of concentration upon
large impersonal hopes which enables a man to