Karma Yoga

Author(s): Swami Vivekanand
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta

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that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal thing to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns to know the truth as well from good as from evil. As pleasure and pain pass before his soul they leave upon it different pictures, and the result of these combined impressions is what is called man's "character." If you take the character of any man it really is but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum total of the bent of his mind; you will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation of that character; good and evil have an equal share in moulding character, and in some instances misery is a greater teacher than happiness. In studying the great characters that the world has produced it may be seen that, in the vast majority of cases, it was misery that taught them more than happiness; it was poverty that taught them more than wealth; blows brought out their inner fire, more than praise.
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