Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time.The history of persecution is a history of endeavours to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob.The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored.Hours of sanity and consideration are always arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and the martyrs are justified.But the doctrine of compensation is not the doctrine of indifferency.There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own nature.The soul is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson