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From English Writer, Sydney Smith, to a friend who was having a rough time.: 

•  1st. Live as well as you dare.
•  2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75 or 80 degrees.
•  3rd. Amusing books.
•  4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.
•  5th. Be as busy as you can.
•  6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.
•  7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.
•  8th. Make no secret of low spirits to you friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment.
•  9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.
•  10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.
•  11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.
•  12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence.
•  13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.
•  14th Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
•  15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant.
•  16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.
•  17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.
•  18th. Keep good blazing fires.
•  19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.
•  20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana.