Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Know that some people will do everything they can to game the system, finding ways to win that you never could have imagined. If only to keep yourself sane, try to applaud their ingenuity rather than curse their greed.
For all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan.
"It's not here. Don't worry yourself. I know where it is--here," said Alyosha, finding a clean towel, folded up and unused, by Ivan's dressing- table in the other corner of the room. Ivan looked strangely at the towel: recollection seemed to come back to him for an instant.
"Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg--that's who ye are speaking to, young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We are part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest to know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one leg."
The teacher, now 35 years of age, intended to proclaim his new gospel first to his old teachers [=A]l[=a]ra and Udraka, but finding that they were dead, he determined to address himself to his former five disciples, and accordingly went to the Deer-forest near Benares where they were then living. An old _g[=a]thh[=a]_, or hymn (translated in _Vinaya Texts_, i. 90) tells us how the Buddha, rapt with the idea of his great mission, meets an acquaintance, one Upaka, a wandering sophist, on the way. The latter, struck with his expression, asks him whose religion it is that makes him so glad, and yet so calm. The reply is striking. "I am now on my way," says the Buddha, "to the city of Benares, to beat the drum of the Ambrosia (to set up the light of the doctrine of Nirvana) in the darkness of the world!" and he proclaims himself the Buddha who alone knows, and knows no teacher. Upaka says: "You profess yourself, then, friend, to be an Arahat and a conqueror?" The Buddha says: "Those indeed are conquerors who, as I have now, have conquered the intoxications (the mental intoxication arising from ignorance, sensuality or craving after future life). Evil dispositions have ceased in me; therefore is it that I am conqueror!" His acquaintance rejoins: "In that case, venerable Gotama, your way lies yonder!" and he himself, shaking his head, turns in the opposite direction. Entry: BUDDHA
LAPLACE, PIERRE SIMON, MARQUIS DE (1749-1827), French mathematician and astronomer, was born at Beaumont-en-Auge in Normandy, on the 28th of March 1749. His father was a small farmer, and he owed his education to the interest excited by his lively parts in some persons of position. His first distinctions are said to have been gained in theological controversy, but at an early age he became mathematical teacher in the military school of Beaumont, the classes of which he had attended as an extern. He was not more than eighteen when, armed with letters of recommendation, he approached J. B. d'Alembert, then at the height of his fame, in the hope of finding a career in Paris. The letters remained unnoticed, but Laplace was not crushed by the rebuff. He wrote to the great geometer a letter on the principles of mechanics, which evoked an immediate and enthusiastic response. "You," said d'Alembert to him, "needed no introduction; you have recommended yourself; my support is your due." He accordingly obtained for him an appointment as professor of mathematics in the École Militaire of Paris, and continued zealously to forward his interests. Entry: LAPLACE