This was some advice Fr. Elchaninov gave to a young person who wrote him a letter. I don’t know what the letter-writer said exactly, but I thought the advice was applicable to all of us:

You complain that your life is ‘rough and rugged’. But whatever we do is always like that. Where there are men, there are passions, narrowmindedness, selfishness, conceit. Thus it is all the more necessary for us to maintain ourselves at a certain depth, to keep in mind the all-embracing, final goal before us, to destroy in ourselves all that is petty and trivial: then we shall find it easier to suffer all these faults in others. O God, send us patience, generosity, meekness. We are all working, not for ourselves, but for God: and therefore all conflicts will be settled, not through our own great efforts, but through God’s wisdom.

– Fr. Alexander Elchaninov “The Diary of a Russian Priest”