All the miseries, vexations, and complaints

(William Law, "A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life") Pride and envy; and desire for rank, fame, and power; are contrary to Christianity. These passions are the causes of all the distresses and vexations of human life. They are the maladies and fevers of our minds, vexing them with false appetites, and restless cravings after such things as we do not need; and spoiling our taste for those things which are our proper good. Let but any complaining, disturbed man, tell you the ground of his uneasiness, and you will plainly see that he is the author of his own torment; that he is vexing himself at some imaginary evil, which will cease to torment him as soon as he is content to be that which God requires him to be. All the miseries, vexations, and complaints, that are in the world are entirely of our own making. They are directly caused by those absurd passions which Christianity teaches us to deny. For all the things which disturb human life, which make us uneasy to ourselves, quarrelsome with others, and unthankful to God; which weary us in vain labors and foolish anxieties; which carry us from project to project, from place to place, in a futile pursuit of we know not what, are the things are solely infused into us by pride, envy, ambition, and covetousness.