I think that's a rather sad and repressed way to live... remember that bad things do happen, and their impact on us should be acknowledged rather than ignored.  Crying isn't inherently bad, just a normal expression of some strong feeling.  It's healthier to step back and examine what saddens you realistically - and to respect your own response to it - than to bury it all.

(Side note: I believed in those rules, too, for a while, and am still learning otherwise.)

Like hating immigrants for "stealing" your jobs. . . ? 

I love that quote. :D (It's pretty old - you can look it up on Quote Investigator.)

Dunno about "greedy", though... I understood it as more like 'don't be gullible,' ie 'don't be so eager to accept new ideas that you don't examine them for their worth.'  But maybe it was a caution against self-effacement, too...?

If the former interpretation, it goes with this one from Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated man to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." :)

I like your motto, Novelist. I agree that there's a line between being open-minded and not having your own opinion. To me, openmindedness works like this: you listen and take into account other ideas to determine if you will develop or change your opinion. Not sticking to what you've believed from the start and refusing to even listen to anything else. And not letting other people tell you what to think either. 

A motto that someone in my sixth grade cass two years ago made up, or at least said they made up is "Chase your dreams, until you catch one. Then, you take that dream and put your heart into it."

Also, I  don't remember who sad this, but "Nothing that is truly worth having is something that you can attain easily."

I live by those two mottos, especially the second one. Whenever I feel like giving up at anything, I say to myself, "Hurt now = achieve later." I'll repeat that to myself until I no longer want to give up.