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Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world? if the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue out future lives will be less afflicted.
-W. Somerset Maugham
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Has It Occurred To You That Transmigration

W. Somerset Maugham
Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world? if the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue out future lives will be less afflicted.
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Past Evil Suffering

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When one has once accepted and absorbed evil, it no longer demands the unfitness of the means. the ulterior motives with which youabsorb and assimilate evil are not your own but those of evil.... evil is whatever distracts. evil knows of the good, but good does not know of evil. knowledge of oneself is something only evil has. one means that evil has is the dialogue.... one cannot pay evil in installments--and one always keeps on trying to.
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The past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. the past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the future is, in all things, our friend. in the past is no hope; the future is both hope and fruition. the past is the text-book of tyrants; the future is the bible of the free. those who are solely governed by the past stand like lot's wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.
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