Life is thickly sown with thorns. I know no other remedy than to pass rapidly over them. The longer we dwell o... — Voltaire

Life is thickly sown with thorns. I know no other remedy than to pass rapidly over them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us.

Author: Voltaire

Insight: We all have a natural instinct to understand pain—to examine it, turn it over, figure out why it happened. But Voltaire is pointing at something we learn the hard way: dwelling on misfortune doesn't fix it. It just gives it more real estate in your head. The longer you replay the argument with your friend, or analyze why the job interview went badly, or inventory all the ways things went wrong, the more weight those moments gain. They start feeling bigger than they actually are. The practical wisdom here is that speed matters. Not denial or pretending bad things didn't happen, but moving through difficulty rather than camping out in it. Think of it like touching a hot stove—you don't stand there contemplating the heat. You move. The people who seem most resilient aren't necessarily those who never struggle; they're the ones who feel the difficulty and keep walking. They acknowledge the thorn exists, they don't pretend it doesn't, but they don't let it become their entire landscape. This is harder now than in Voltaire's time, ironically. We have devices that let us dwell endlessly—rewinding moments, comparing our situation to others', analyzing every detail. The remedy hasn't changed, though. It's still about forward momentum, about choosing not to become intimate friends with your own misfortune.

Source: Letter to Madame du Deffand, 1769