Pushing to the Front quotes

No man is born into this world whose work is not born with him.—LOWELL.

Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.

—GARFIELD.

"If we succeed, what will the world say?" asked Captain Berry in delight, when Nelson had explained his carefully formed plan before the battle of the Nile.

"There is no if in the case," replied Nelson. "That we shall succeed is certain. Who may live to tell the tale is a very different question."

Then, as his captains rose from the council to go to their respective ships, he added: "Before this time to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey."

True, there has been but one Napoleon; but, on the other hand, the Alps that oppose the progress of the average American youth are not as high or dangerous as the summits crossed by the great Corsican.

Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great.

On the morning of September 6, 1838, a young woman in the Longstone Lighthouse, between England and Scotland, was awakened by shrieks of agony rising above the roar of wind and wave.

Some may not have heard how the boy Antonio took advantage of this first great opportunity; but all know of Canova, one of the greatest sculptors of all time.

Weak men wait for opportunities, strong men make them.

"The best men," says E. H. Chapin, "are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor."

There may not be one chance in a million that you will ever receive unusual aid; but opportunities are often presented which you can improve to good advantage, if you will only act.

The lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind.

Opportunities! Every life is full of them. Every lesson in school or college is an opportunity. Every examination is a chance in life. Every patient is an opportunity. Every newspaper article is an opportunity. Every client is an opportunity. Every sermon is an opportunity.

Every business transaction is an opportunity,—an opportunity to be polite,—an opportunity to be manly,—an opportunity to be honest,—an opportunity to make friends. Every proof of confidence in you is a great opportunity. Every responsibility thrust upon your strength and your honor is priceless.

Existence is the privilege of effort, and when that privilege is met like a man, opportunities to succeed along the line of your aptitude will come faster than you can use them.

If a slave like Fred Douglass, who did not even own his body, can elevate himself into an orator, editor, statesman, what ought the poorest white boy to do, who is rich in opportunities compared with Douglass?

If a slave like Fred Douglass, who did not even own his body, can elevate himself into an orator, editor, statesman, what ought the poorest white boy to do, who is rich in opportunities compared with Douglass?

It is the idle man, not the great worker, who is always complaining that he has no time or opportunity.

Some young men will make more out of the odds and ends of opportunities which many carelessly throw away than other will get out of a whole life-time. Like bees, they extract honey from every flower.

Like bees, they extract honey from every flower. Every person they meet, every circumstance of the day, adds something to their store of useful knowledge or personal power.

"There is nobody whom Fortune does not visit once in his life," says a cardinal; "but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door and out at the window."

Cornelius Vanderbilt saw his opportunity in the steamboat, and determined to identify himself with steam navigation.

But fortunately there is a new generation of electricians, of engineers, of scholars, of artists, of authors, and of poets, who find opportunities, thick as thistles, for doing something nobler than merely amassing riches.

Wealth is not an end to strive for, but an opportunity; not the climax of a man's career, but an incident.

Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, a Quaker lady, saw her opportunity in the prisons of England. From three hundred to four hundred half-naked women, as late as 1813, would often be huddled in a single ward of Newgate, London, awaiting trial.

To this Hawthorne consented, and promised, moreover, not to treat the subject in prose till Longfellow had seen what he could do with it in verse. Longfellow seized his opportunity and gave to the world 'Evangeline, or the Exile of the Acadians.'"

Open eyes will discover opportunities everywhere; open ears will never fail to detect the cries of those who are perishing for assistance; open hearts will never want for worthy objects upon which to bestow their gifts; open hands will never lack for noble work to do.

Everybody had noticed the overflow when a solid is immersed in a vessel filled with water, although no one had made use of his knowledge that the body displaces its exact bulk of liquid;

"Opportunity," replied the sculptor. "Why is its face hidden?" "Because men seldom know him when he comes to them." "Why has he wings on his feet?" "Because he is soon gone, and once gone, cannot be overtaken."

"Opportunity has hair in front," says a Latin author; "behind she is bald; if you seize her by the forelock, you may hold her, but, if suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again."

But what is the best opportunity to him who cannot or will not use it?

Such people are always a little too late or a little too early in everything they attempt.

"They have three hands apiece," said John B. Gough; "a right hand, a left hand, and a little behindhand."

As boys, they were late for school, and unpunctual in their home duties. That is the way the habit is acquired;

The trouble with us is that we are ever looking for a princely chance of acquiring riches, or fame, or worth. We are dazzled by what Emerson calls the "shallow Americanism" of the day.

We are expecting mastery without apprenticeship, knowledge without study, and riches by credit.

Young men and women, why stand ye here all the day idle? Was the land all occupied before you were born? Has the earth ceased to yield its increase? Are the seats all taken? the positions all filled? the chances all gone?

Make it, as Napoleon made his in a hundred "impossible" situations. Make it, as all leaders of men, in war and in peace, have made their chances of success.

Golden opportunities are nothing to laziness, but industry makes the commonest chances golden.

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures."

In the market place he once cried aloud, "Hear me, O men"; and, when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully: "I called for men, not pygmies."

Over the door of every profession, every occupation, every calling, the world has a standing advertisement: "Wanted—A Man."

Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No," though all the world say "Yes."

Over the door of every profession, every occupation, every calling, the world has a standing advertisement: "Wanted—A Man."

Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No," though all the world say "Yes."

Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will not permit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate his manhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stunt or paralyze his other faculties.

The audience could not hear and called "Louder." "Get up higher," some one said. "I can't," he replied. "To be a Baptist is as high as one can get."

But there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a man.

As Emerson says, Talleyrand's question is ever the main one; not, is he rich? is he committed? is he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty? is he of the movement? is he of the establishment? but is he anybody? does he stand for something?

When Garfield as a boy was asked what he meant to be he answered:

"First of all, I must make myself a man; if I do not succeed in that, I can succeed in nothing."

Montaigne says our work is not to train a soul by itself alone, nor a body by itself alone, but to train a man.

to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude;—this is to be a man.

Man is the only great thing in the universe.

All the ages have been trying to produce a perfect model. Only one complete man has yet evolved. The best of us are but prophesies of what is to come.

Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor—men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue And scorn his treacherous flatteries without winking; Tall men sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty, and in private thinking. ANON.

In the blackest soils grow the fairest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.

—J. G. HOLLAND.

In the blackest soils grow the fairest flowers, and the loftiest and strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.—J. G. HOLLAND.

Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul within us, but it is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.

—OUIDA.

Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul within us, but it is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.—OUIDA.

Poverty is the sixth sense.

—GERMAN PROVERB.

In Boston, with no money, friends, or influence, in a little upstairs room, Garrison started the "Liberator." Read the declaration of this poor young man with "no chance," in the very first issue: "

I will be as harsh as truth, as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.

" What audacity for a young man, with the world against him!

But he used every spare moment to study without a teacher, and in after years he was a king among self-made men.

The boy who had learned to speak in a barn, with only a cow and a horse for an audience, became one of the greatest of American orators and statesmen.

See Kepler struggling with poverty and hardship, his books burned in public by order of the state, his library locked up by the Jesuits, and himself exiled by public clamor.

This boy with no chance became one of the world's greatest astronomers.

"When I found that I was black," said Alexandre Dumas, "I resolved to live as if I were white, and so force men to look below my skin."

How slender seemed the chance of James Sharples, the celebrated blacksmith artist of England! He was very poor, but he often rose at three o'clock to copy books he could not buy.

While the other hands were playing games or loafing in liquor shops during the holidays, George was taking his machine to pieces, cleaning it, studying it, and making experiments in engines.

When he had become famous as a great inventor of improvements in engines, those who had loafed and played called him lucky.

Without a charm of face or figure, Charlotte Cushman resolved to place herself in the front rank as an actress, even in such characters as Rosalind and Queen Katherine. The star actress was unable to perform, and Miss Cushman, her understudy, took her place.

Prejudice against her race and sex did not deter the colored girl, Edmonia Lewis, from struggling upward to honor and fame as a sculptor.

Fred Douglass started in life with less than nothing, for he did not own his own body, and he was pledged before his birth to pay his master's debts.

To reach the starting-point of the poorest white boy, he had to climb as far as the distance which the latter must ascend if he would become President of the United States.

He edited a paper in Rochester, N. Y., and afterwards conducted the "New Era" in Washington. For several years he was Marshal of the District of Columbia.

Henry E. Dixey, the well-known actor, began his career upon the stage in the humble part of the hind legs of a cow.

P. T. Barnum rode a horse for ten cents a day.

Henry E. Dixey, the well-known actor, began his career upon the stage in the humble part of the hind legs of a cow.

P. T. Barnum rode a horse for ten cents a day.

It was a boy born in a log-cabin, without schooling, or books, or teacher, or ordinary opportunities, who won the admiration of mankind by his homely practical wisdom while President during our Civil War, and who emancipated four million slaves.

In his eagerness to know the contents of Blackstone's Commentaries, he walked forty-four miles to procure the precious volumes, and read one hundred pages while returning.

Abraham Lincoln inherited no opportunities, and acquired nothing by luck. His good fortune consisted simply of untiring perseverance and a right heart.

In another log-cabin, in the backwoods of Ohio, a poor widow is holding a boy eighteen months old, and wondering if she will be able to keep the wolf from her little ones.

that the size of all fruits and vegetables and flowers is just a matter of sufficient understanding, and that Nature will give us almost anything when we know enough to treat her intelligently, wisely and sympathetically.

The history of most great men shows that there is a disadvantage in having too many advantages.

Who can tell what the consequences would have been had Lincoln been born in New York and educated at Harvard?

She cut up an old, worn-out, ragged cloak to make a hood, when lo! in the lining of the cloak she discovered the diamond bracelet. During all her poverty she was worth $3500, but did not know it.

Many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities, if we could only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more than diamond bracelets.

In our large Eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand, and in meeting common every-day wants.

But to succeed you must be prepared to seize and improve the opportunity when it comes.

Remember that four things come not back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

It is one of the paradoxes of civilization that the more opportunities are utilized, the more new ones are thereby created. New openings are as easy to find as ever to those who do their best;

But to succeed you must be prepared to seize and improve the opportunity when it comes. Remember that four things come not back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

It is one of the paradoxes of civilization that the more opportunities are utilized, the more new ones are thereby created.

New openings are as easy to find as ever to those who do their best; although it is not so easy as formerly to obtain great distinction in the old lines, because the standard has advanced so much, and competition has so greatly increased.

New openings are as easy to find as ever to those who do their best; although it is not so easy as formerly to obtain great distinction in the old lines, because the standard has advanced so much, and competition has so greatly increased.

"The world is no longer clay," said Emerson, "but rather iron in the hands of its workers, and men have got to hammer out a place for themselves by steady and rugged blows."

Thousands of men have made fortunes out of trifles which others pass by.

Thousands of men have made fortunes out of trifles which others pass by.

As the bee gets honey from the same flower from which the spider gets poison, so some men will get a fortune out of the commonest and meanest things, as scraps of leather, cotton waste, slag, iron filings, from which others get only poverty and failure.

There is scarcely a thing which contributes to the welfare and comfort of humanity, scarcely an article of household furniture, a kitchen utensil, an article of clothing or of food, that is not capable of an improvement in which there may be a fortune.

There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.

First find out what the world needs and then supply the want.

An invention to make smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity.

No doubt many artists had noticed the fine quality of the marble, and regretted that it should have been spoiled.

But Michael Angelo still saw an angel in the ruin, and with his chisel and mallet he called out from it one of the finest pieces of statuary in Italy, the young David.

Patrick Henry was called a lazy boy, a good-for-nothing farmer, and he failed as a merchant. He was always dreaming of some far-off greatness, and never thought he could be a hero among the corn and tobacco and saddlebags of Virginia.

He obeyed, and produced a masterpiece from a log of common firewood.

Many of us lose great opportunities in life by waiting to find sandalwood for our carvings, when they really lie hidden in the common logs that we burn.

One man goes through life without seeing chances for doing anything great, while another close beside him snatches from the same circumstances and privileges opportunities for achieving grand results.

Why thus longing, thus forever sighing, For the far-off, unattained and dim, While the beautiful, all around thee lying Offers up its low, perpetual hymn? HARRIET WINSLOW.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

—FRANKLIN.

Periunt et imputantur,—the hours perish and are laid to our charge.—INSCRIPTION ON A DIAL AT OXFORD.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

—SHAKESPEARE.

Believe me when I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning.—GLADSTONE.

Lost! Somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

—HORACE MANN.

The proprietor was called, and the stranger asked: "What is the lowest, Mr. Franklin, that you can take for that book?" "One dollar and a quarter," was the prompt rejoinder. "One dollar and a quarter! Why, your clerk asked me only a dollar just now."

"True," said Franklin, "and I could have better afforded to take a dollar than to leave my work."

The man seemed surprised; but, wishing to end a parley of his own seeking, he demanded: "Well, come now, tell me your lowest price for this book." "One dollar and a half," replied Franklin. "A dollar and a half!

"but then I remember; when we were at play, he was always at work."

The days come to us like friends in disguise, bringing priceless gifts from an unseen hand; but, if we do not use them, they are borne silently away, never to return.

Each successive morning new gifts are brought, but if we failed to accept those that were brought yesterday and the day before, we become less and less able to turn them to account, until the ability to appreciate and utilize them is exhausted.

While Michael Faraday was employed binding books, he devoted all his leisure to experiments. At one time he wrote to a friend, "Time is all I require. Oh, that I could purchase at a cheap rate some of our modern gentlemen's spare hours—nay, days."

Oh, the power of ceaseless industry to perform miracles!

Alexander von Humboldt's days were so occupied with his business that he had to pursue his scientific labors in the night or early morning, while others were asleep.

Lincoln studied law during his spare hours while surveying, and learned the common branches unaided while tending store. Mrs. Somerville learned botany and astronomy and wrote books while her neighbors were gossiping and idling. At eighty she published "Molecular and Microscopical Science."

The worst of a lost hour is not so much in the wasted time as in the wasted power. Idleness rusts the nerves and makes the muscles creak.

Work has system, laziness has none.

But where does he eat his lunch at noon? Where does he go when he leaves his boarding-house at night? What does he do after supper? Where does he spend his Sundays and holidays?

The way he uses his spare moments reveals his character.

The great majority of youths who go to the bad are ruined after supper. Most of those who climb upward to honor and fame devote their evenings to study or work or the society of those who can help and improve them.

The great majority of youths who go to the bad are ruined after supper. Most of those who climb upward to honor and fame devote their evenings to study or work or the society of those who can help and improve them.

Each evening is a crisis in the career of a young man.

There is a deep significance in the lines of Whittier:—

Waste of time means waste of energy, waste of vitality, waste of character in dissipation. It means the waste of opportunities which will never come back.

Beware how you kill time, for all your future lives in it.

"And it is left for each," says Edward Everett, "by the cultivation of every talent, by watching with an eagle's eye for every chance of improvement, by redeeming time, defying temptation, and scorning sensual pleasure, to make himself useful, honored, and happy."

if the poor deaf boy Kitto, who made shoes in an alms-house, could become the greatest Biblical scholar of his age, where is the boy or girl to-day, under the American flag, who cannot get a fair education and escape the many disadvantages of ignorance?

"If a man empties his purse into his head," says Franklin, "no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."

Never before was the opportunity of the educated man so great as to-day. Never before was there such a demand for the trained man, the man who can do a thing superbly well. At the door of every vocation is a sign out, "Wanted—a man."

All education which does not elevate, refine, and ennoble its recipient is a curse instead of a blessing. A liberal education only renders a rascal more dishonest, more dangerous.

Educated rascality is infinitely more of a menace to society than ignorant rascality.

Every year, thousands of young men and young women graduate full of ambition and hope, full of expectancy, go out from the schools, the colleges, and the universities, with their diplomas, to face for the first time the practical world.

The educated man ought to be able to do something better, something higher than merely to put money in his purse.

Money-making can not compare with man-making. There is something infinitely better than to be a millionaire of money, and that is to be a millionaire of brains, of culture, of helpfulness to one's fellows, a millionaire of character—a gentleman.

Whatever degrees you carry from school or college, whatever distinction you may acquire in your career, no title will ever mean quite so much, will ever be quite so noble, as that of gentleman.

If you have the ability and have been given superior opportunities, it simply means that you have a great commission to do something out of the ordinary for your fellows; a special message for humanity.

If the torch of learning has been put in your hand, its significance is that you should light up the way for the less fortunate.

If you have received a message which carries freedom for people enslaved by ignorance and bigotry, you have no right to suppress it. Your education means an increased obligation to live your life up to the level of your gift, your superior opportunity.

Regard the very suggestion that you shall coin your education, your high ideals into dollars; that you lower your standards, prostitute your education by the practise of low-down, sordid methods, as an insult.

Say to yourself, "If the highest thing in me will not bring success, surely the lowest, the worst, cannot."

The mission of the trained man is to show the world a higher, finer type of manhood.

While an education should develop all that is highest and best in a man, it should also make him a practical man, not a financial failure.

Be sure that you possess your knowledge, that your knowledge does not possess you.

The mere possession of a diploma will only hold you up to ridicule, will only make you more conspicuous as a failure, if you cannot bring your education to a focus and utilize it in a practical way.

The mere possession of a diploma will only hold you up to ridicule, will only make you more conspicuous as a failure, if you cannot bring your education to a focus and utilize it in a practical way.

Knowledge is power only when it can be made available, practical.

Only what you can use of your education will benefit you or the world.

There is a great difference between absorbing knowledge, making a sponge of one's brain, and transmuting every bit of knowledge into power, into working capital.

As the silkworm transmutes the mulberry leaf into satin, so you should transmute your knowledge into practical wisdom.

There is no situation in life in which the beneficent influence of a well-assimilated education will not make itself felt.

Whether you make money or lose it, never sell your divine heritage, your good name, for a mess of pottage.

Whatever you do, be larger than your vocation; never let it be said of you that you succeeded in your vocation, but failed as a man.

When William Story, the sculptor, was asked to make a speech at the unveiling of his great statue of George Peabody, in London, he simply pointed to the statue and said, "That is my speech."

When William Story, the sculptor, was asked to make a speech at the unveiling of his great statue of George Peabody, in London, he simply pointed to the statue and said, "That is my speech."

So conduct yourself that your life shall need no eulogy in words. Let it be its own eulogy, let your success tell to the world the story of a noble career.

However much money you may accumulate, carry your greatest wealth with you, in a clean record, an unsullied reputation. Then you will not need houses or lands or stocks or bonds to testify to a rich life.

Now, are you not ashamed to waste your time in this disgraceful manner?"

The world has certainly gained much through the old lady's failure to tell James how he could employ his time to better advantage!

"But I'm good for something," pleaded a young man whom a merchant was about to discharge for his bluntness. "You are good for nothing as a salesman," said his employer. "I am sure I can be useful," said the youth. "How? Tell me how."

It is often a narrow selfishness in a father which leads him to wish his son a reproduction of himself.

"You are trying to make that boy another you. One is enough," said Emerson.

John Jacob Astor's father wished his son to be his successor as a butcher, but the instinct of commercial enterprise was too strong in the future merchant.

"You are trying to make that boy another you. One is enough," said Emerson. John Jacob Astor's father wished his son to be his successor as a butcher, but the instinct of commercial enterprise was too strong in the future merchant.

Nature never duplicates men. She breaks the pattern at every birth.

The magic combination is never used but once. Frederick the Great was terribly abused because he had a passion for art and music and did not care for military drill. His father hated the fine arts and imprisoned him.

He even contemplated killing his son, but his own death placed Frederick on the throne at the age of twenty-eight. This boy, who, because he loved art and music, was thought good for nothing, made Prussia one of the greatest nations of Europe.

How stupid and clumsy is the blinking eagle at perch, but how keen his glance, how steady and true his curves, when turning his powerful wing against the clear blue sky!

Ignorant parents compelled the boy Arkwright to become a barber's apprentice, but Nature had locked up in his brain a cunning device destined to bless humanity and to do the drudgery of millions of England's poor;

The father of Joshua Reynolds rebuked his son for drawing pictures, and wrote on one: "Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." Yet this "idle boy" became one of the founders of the Royal Academy.

Turner was intended for a barber in Maiden Lane, but became the greatest landscape-painter of modern times.

Claude Lorraine, the painter, was apprenticed to a pastry-cook; Molière, the author, to an upholsterer; and Guido, the famous painter of Aurora, was sent to a music school.

Not less true is it that he who feels that God has given him a particular work to do can be happy only when earnestly engaged in its performance.

Happy the youth who finds the place which his dreams have pictured!

If he does not fill that place, he will not fill any to the satisfaction of himself or others. Nature never lets a man rest until he has found his place.

No one need doubt that the world has use for him. True success lies in acting well your part, and this every one can do.

Better be a first-rate hod-carrier than a second-rate anything.

The world has been very kind to many who were once known as dunces or blockheads, after they have become very successful; but it was very cross to them while they were struggling through discouragement and misinterpretation.

He read at every meal, using all the time he could get for self-improvement. He said that Paine's "Age of Reason" made him an author, for it was by his attempt to refute its arguments that he was first known as a strong, vigorous writer.

It has been well said that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.

Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five-barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide.

Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent.

Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.

—SYDNEY SMITH.

I was rescood, and as I was bein carried to the tavern on a hemlock bored I sed in a feeble voice, 'Boys, playin' hoss isn't my Fort.'

"Moral: Never don't do nothin' which isn't your Fort, for ef you do you'll find yourself splashin' round in the kanawl, figuratively speakin."

The following advertisement, which appeared day after day in a Western paper, did not bring a single reply:—

At length there appeared this addition to the notice:—

"P. S. Will accept an offer to saw and split wood at less than the usual rates."

This secured a situation at once, and the advertisement was seen no more.

but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confine it and will pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, or in some favorite industry. Beware of "a talent which you cannot hope to practice in perfection."

Nature hates all botched and half-finished work, and will pronounce her curse upon it.

Better be the Napoleon of bootblacks, or the Alexander of chimney-sweeps, let us say with Matthew Arnold, than a shallow-brained attorney who, like necessity, knows no law.

Beware of "a talent which you cannot hope to practice in perfection." Nature hates all botched and half-finished work, and will pronounce her curse upon it.

Better be the Napoleon of bootblacks, or the Alexander of chimney-sweeps, let us say with Matthew Arnold, than a shallow-brained attorney who, like necessity, knows no law.

Half the world seems to have found uncongenial occupation, as though the human race had been shaken up together and exchanged places in the operation. A servant girl is trying to teach, and a natural teacher is tending store.

Better be the Napoleon of bootblacks, or the Alexander of chimney-sweeps, let us say with Matthew Arnold, than a shallow-brained attorney who, like necessity, knows no law.

Half the world seems to have found uncongenial occupation, as though the human race had been shaken up together and exchanged places in the operation.

A servant girl is trying to teach, and a natural teacher is tending store. Good farmers are murdering the law, while Choates and Websters are running down farms, each tortured by the consciousness of unfulfilled destiny.

A boy who is always making something with tools is railroaded through the university and started on the road to inferiority in one of the "three honorable professions."

Real surgeons are handling the meat-saw and cleaver, while butchers are amputating human limbs.

How fortunate that—

Boys are pining in factories who should be wrestling with Greek and Latin, and hundreds are chafing beneath unnatural loads in college who should be on the farm or before the mast.

Artists are spreading "daubs" on canvas who should be whitewashing board fences.

Behind counters stand clerks who hate the yard-stick and neglect their work to dream of other occupations.

"He that hath a trade," says Franklin, "hath an estate; and he that hath a calling hath a place of profit and honor.

A plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.

"

… wits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition, makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man's shoes, do a man's work, bear a man's part in life, and show himself a man in that part.

No man feels himself a man who is not doing a man's business.

A man without employment is not a man. He does not prove by his works that he is a man. A hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle do not make a man. A good cranium full of brains is not a man.

The bone and muscle and brain must know how to do a man's work, think a man's thoughts, mark out a man's path, and bear a man's weight of character and duty before they constitute a man.

Go-at-it-iveness is the first requisite for success. Stick-to-it-iveness is the second.

Under ordinary circumstances, and with practical common sense to guide him, one who has these requisites will not fail.

Go-at-it-iveness is the first requisite for success. Stick-to-it-iveness is the second. Under ordinary circumstances, and with practical common sense to guide him, one who has these requisites will not fail.

Don't wait for a higher position or a larger salary. Enlarge the position you already occupy; put originality of method into it.

Fill it as it never was filled before. Be more prompt, more energetic, more thorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow workmen. Study your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your employer points.

put originality of method into it. Fill it as it never was filled before. Be more prompt, more energetic, more thorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow workmen. Study your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your employer points.

The art lies not in giving satisfaction merely, not in simply filling your place, but in doing better than was expected, in surprising your employer; and the reward will be a better place and a larger salary.

When out of work, take the first respectable job that offers, heeding not the disproportion between your faculties and your task. If you put your manhood into your labor, you will soon be given something better to do.

Gladstone says there is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body, or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted.

"Blessed is he who has found his work," says Carlyle. "Let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work—a life purpose; he has found it, and will follow it."

In choosing an occupation, do not ask yourself how you can make the most money or gain the most notoriety, but choose that work which will call out all your powers and develop your manhood into the greatest strength and symmetry.

Not money, not notoriety, not fame even, but power is what you want.

Manhood is greater than wealth, grander than fame.

Character is greater than any career. Each faculty must be educated, and any deficiency in its training will appear in whatever you do. The hand must be educated to be graceful, steady, and strong. The eye must be educated to be alert, discriminating, and microscopic.

Not money, not notoriety, not fame even, but power is what you want. Manhood is greater than wealth, grander than fame.

Character is greater than any career.

Each faculty must be educated, and any deficiency in its training will appear in whatever you do. The hand must be educated to be graceful, steady, and strong. The eye must be educated to be alert, discriminating, and microscopic.

But precocity is not common, and, except in rare cases, we must discover the bias in our natures, and not wait for the proclivity to make itself manifest. When found, it is worth more to us than a vein of gold.

"I do not forbid you to preach," said a Bishop to a young clergyman, "but nature does."

Lowell said: "It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes, and lives left in the rough."

Learn everything that is to be known about it. Concentrate your faculties upon it, for the greatest achievements are reserved for the man of single aim, in whom no rival powers divide the empire of the soul. Better adorn your own than seek another's place.

Go to the bottom of your business if you would climb to the top.

Nothing is small which concerns your business. Master every detail. This was the secret of A. T. Stewart's and of John Jacob Astor's great success. They knew everything about their business.

"

Many a man pays for his success with a slice of his constitution.

"

Aside from the right and wrong of the thing, it is injurious to the health to work seven days in the week, to work at night when Nature intended you to sleep, or to sleep in the daytime when she intended you to work.

Many a man has dwarfed his manhood, cramped his intellect, crushed his aspiration, blunted his finer sensibilities, in some mean, narrow occupation just because there was money in it.

"Study yourself," says Longfellow, "and most of all, note well wherein kind nature meant you to excel."

Unsuccessful students with a smattering of everything are raised as much above their original condition as if they were successful.

A large portion of Paris cabmen are unsuccessful students in theology and other professions and also unfrocked priests. They are very bad cabmen.

"Tompkins forsakes his last and awl For literary squabbles; Styles himself poet; but his trade Remains the same,—he cobbles."

Those who fail are, as a rule, those who are out of their places.

A man out of his place is but half a man; his very nature is perverted.

He is working against his nature, rowing against the current. When his strength is exhausted he will float down the stream. A man can not succeed when his whole nature is entering its perpetual protest against his occupation.

Everybody knows that determined men are not likely to fail. They carry in their very pluck, grit, and determination the conviction and assurance of success.

The world does not dictate what you shall do, but it does demand that you do something, and that you shall be a king in your line.

There is no grander sight than that of a young man or woman in the right place struggling with might and main to make the most of the stuff at command, determined that not a faculty or power shall run to waste.

… mechanic is a failure who starts out to build an engine, but does not quite accomplish it, and shifts into some other occupation where perhaps he will almost succeed, but stops just short of the point of proficiency in his acquisition and so fails again.

The world is full of people who are "almost a success." They stop just this side of success.

Their courage oozes out just before they become expert. How many of us have acquisitions which remain permanently unavailable because not carried quite to the point of skill? How many people "almost know a language or two," which they can neither write nor speak;

The habit of desultoriness, which has been acquired by allowing yourself to abandon a half-finished work, more than balances any little skill gained in one vocation which might possibly be of use later.

Beware of that frequently fatal gift, versatility. Many a person misses being a great man by splitting into two middling ones.

Universality is the ignis fatuus which has deluded to ruin many a promising mind. In attempting to gain a knowledge of half a hundred subjects it has mastered none.

This one thing I do.—ST. PAUL.

The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine.

… Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and sends us home to add one stroke of faithful work.—EMERSON.

"stick to your brewery, and you may be the great brewer of London. But be a brewer, and a banker, and a merchant, and a manufacturer, and you will soon be in the Gazette."

Not many things indifferently, but one thing supremely, is the demand of the hour.

He who scatters his efforts in this intense, concentrated age, cannot hope to succeed.

I say most emphatically, no. Would an intelligent man dig up a whole continent to find its veins of silver and gold?

The man who is forever looking about to see what he can find never finds anything.

If we look for nothing in particular, we find just that and no more. We find what we seek with all our heart. The bee is not the only insect that visits the flower, but it is the only one that carries honey away.

The man who is forever looking about to see what he can find never finds anything. If we look for nothing in particular, we find just that and no more. We find what we seek with all our heart.

The bee is not the only insect that visits the flower, but it is the only one that carries honey away.

It matters not how rich the materials we have gleaned from the years of our study and toil in youth, if we go out into life with no well-defined idea of our future work, there is no happy conjunction of circumstances that will arrange them …

They carry themselves with an air of conscious self-respect and self-content, which a shabby alpaca cannot hide, nor a bonnet of silk enhance, nor even sickness nor exhaustion quite drag out."

It is said that the wind never blows fair for that sailor who knows not to what port he is bound.

"The weakest living creature," says Carlyle, "by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something; whereas the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock.

"The weakest living creature," says Carlyle, "by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something; whereas the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything.

The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind.

"

whereas the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar and leaves no trace behind."

"When I was young I used to think it was thunder that killed men," said a shrewd preacher; "but as I grew older, I found it was lightning. So I resolved to thunder less, and lighten more."

The man who knows one thing, and can do it better than anybody else, even if it only be the art of raising turnips, receives the crown he merits.

If he raises the best turnips by reason of concentrating all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor to the race, and is recognized as such.

If a salamander be cut in two, the front part will run forward and the other backward. Such is the progress of him who divides his purpose.

Success is jealous of scattered energies.

If a salamander be cut in two, the front part will run forward and the other backward. Such is the progress of him who divides his purpose.

Success is jealous of scattered energies.

No one can pursue a worthy object steadily and persistently with all the powers of his mind, and yet make his life a failure. You can't throw a tallow candle through the side of a tent, but you can shoot it through an oak board.

No one can pursue a worthy object steadily and persistently with all the powers of his mind, and yet make his life a failure.

You can't throw a tallow candle through the side of a tent, but you can shoot it through an oak board.

Melt a charge of shot into a bullet, and it can be fired through the bodies of four men. Focus the rays of the sun in winter, and you can kindle a fire with ease.

The successful men of to-day are men of one overmastering idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose. "Scatteration" is the curse of American business life.

Too many are like Douglas Jerrold's friend, who could converse in twenty-four languages, but had no ideas to express in any one of them.

"The only valuable kind of study," said Sydney Smith, "is to read so heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it;

S. T. Coleridge possessed marvelous powers of mind, but he had no definite purpose; he lived in an atmosphere of mental dissipation which consumed his energy, exhausted his stamina, and his life was in many respects a miserable failure.

He lived in dreams and died in reverie.

He was continually forming plans and resolutions, but to the day of his death they remained simply resolutions and plans.

He lived in dreams and died in reverie. He was continually forming plans and resolutions, but to the day of his death they remained simply resolutions and plans.

He was always just going to do something, but never did it.

"Coleridge is dead," wrote Charles Lamb to a friend, "and is said to have left behind him above forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and divinity—not one of them complete!"

He was always just going to do something, but never did it.

"Coleridge is dead," wrote Charles Lamb to a friend, "and is said to have left behind him above forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and divinity—not one of them complete!"

Every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded, in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.

One unwavering aim has ever characterized successful men.

"Daniel Webster," said Sydney Smith, "struck me much like a steam-engine in trousers."

As Adams suggests, Lord Brougham, like Canning, had too many talents;

In the picture of our century, as taken from the life by history, this very man should have been the central figure. But, owing to his want of steadfastness, there will be forever a blur where Lord Brougham should have been.

How many lives are blurs for want of concentration and steadfastness of purpose!

"

Every leaf, every flower, every crystal, every atom even, has a purpose stamped upon it which unmistakably points to the crowning summit of all creation—man.

Young men are often told to aim high, but we must aim at what we would hit.

A general purpose is not enough. The arrow shot from the bow does not wander around to see what it can hit on its way, but flies straight to the mark.

"Pooh, pooh," replied Mozart, "you must wait." "But you began when you were younger than I am," said the boy. "Yes, so I did," said the great composer, "but I never asked anything about it.

When one has the spirit of a composer, he writes because he can't help it.

"

"There are important cases," says A. H. K. Boyd, "in which the difference between half a heart and a whole heart makes just the difference between signal defeat and a splendid victory."

"Should I die this minute," said Nelson at an important crisis, "want of frigates would be found written on my heart."

The simple, innocent Maid of Orleans with her sacred sword, her consecrated banner, and her belief in her great mission, sent a thrill of enthusiasm through the whole French army such as neither king nor statesmen could produce. Her zeal carried everything before it. Oh!

The simple, innocent Maid of Orleans with her sacred sword, her consecrated banner, and her belief in her great mission, sent a thrill of enthusiasm through the whole French army such as neither king nor statesmen could produce. Her zeal carried everything before it.

Oh! what a great work each one could perform in this world if he only knew his power! But, like a bitted horse, man does not realize his strength until he has once run away with himself.

"Underneath is laid the builder of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived more than ninety years, not for himself, but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, look around!"

… Australia, where, if a person is to succeed, he must be on the jump with all the ardor of his being, has finally extended until what used to be the peculiar strength of a few great minds has now become characteristic of the leading nations.

Enthusiasm is the being awake; it is the tingling of every fiber of one's being to do the work that one's heart desires.

Enthusiasm made Victor Hugo lock up his clothes while writing "Notre Dame," that he might not leave the work until it was finished. The great actor Garrick well illustrated it when asked by an unsuccessful preacher the secret of his power over audiences:

It was the enthusiasm of conviction which enabled this poor, ignorant, despised Bedford tinker to write his immortal allegory with such fascination that a whole world has read it.

Only thoughts that breathe in words that burn can kindle the spark slumbering in the heart of another.

Rare consecration to a great enterprise is found in the work of the late Francis Parkman. While a student at Harvard he determined to write the history of the French and English in North America.

The glory of age is only the glory of its enthusiasm, and the respect paid to white hairs is reverence to a heart fervent, in spite of the torpid influence of an enfeebled body.

The "Odyssey" was the creation of a blind old man, but that old man was Homer.

The contagious zeal of an old man, Peter the Hermit, rolled the chivalry of Europe upon the ranks of Islam.

Robert Hall learned Italian when past sixty, that he might read Dante in the original. Noah Webster studied seventeen languages after he was fifty. Cicero said well that men are like wine: age sours the bad and improves the good.

With enthusiasm we may retain the youth of the spirit until the hair is silvered, even as the Gulf Stream softens the rigors of northern Europe.

"How ages thine heart,—towards youth? If not, doubt thy fitness for thy work."

"Who cannot but see oftentimes how strange the threads of our destiny run? Oft it is only for a moment the favorable instant is presented. We miss it, and months and years are lost."

By the street of by and by one arrives at the house of never.

—CERVANTES.

He put the letter in his pocket without reading it until the game was finished, when he rallied his men only to die just before his troops were taken prisoners. Only a few minutes' delay, but he lost honor, liberty, life!

Success is the child of two very plain parents—punctuality and accuracy.

There are critical moments in every successful life when if the mind hesitate or a nerve flinch all will be lost.

Promptness takes the drudgery out of an occupation. Putting off usually means leaving off, and going to do becomes going undone.

Doing a deed is like sowing a seed: if not done at just the right time it will be forever out of season.

The summer of eternity will not be long enough to bring to maturity the fruit of a delayed action. If a star or planet were delayed one second, it might throw the whole universe out of harmony.

Promptness takes the drudgery out of an occupation.

Putting off usually means leaving off, and going to do becomes going undone.

Doing a deed is like sowing a seed: if not done at just the right time it will be forever out of season. The summer of eternity will not be long enough to bring to maturity the fruit of a delayed action.

But presently he roused himself, full of his penitent resolutions, and murmured again, brokenly, 'I'll take it to—Pembroke—Street to—morrow; to—morrow.' The morrow found him, and so did the detectives, dead."

"To-morrow." It is the devil's motto.

All history is strewn with its brilliant victims, the wrecks of half-finished plans and unexecuted resolutions. It is the favorite refuge of sloth and incompetency.

When President Washington dined at four, new members of Congress invited to dine at the White House would sometimes arrive late, and be mortified to find the President eating.

"My cook," Washington would say, "never asks if the visitors have arrived, but if the hour has arrived."

When his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by saying that his watch was too slow, Washington replied, "Then you must get a new watch, or I another secretary."

When his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance by saying that his watch was too slow, Washington replied,

"Then you must get a new watch, or I another secretary."

Franklin said to a servant who was always late, but always ready with an excuse, "I have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else."

Franklin said to a servant who was always late, but always ready with an excuse, "

I have generally found that the man who is good at an excuse is good for nothing else.

"

Amid the cares and distractions of a singularly busy life, Horace Greeley managed to be on time for every appointment. Many a trenchant paragraph for the "Tribune" was written while the editor was waiting for men of leisure, tardy at some meeting.

Punctuality is the soul of business, as brevity is of wit.

During the first seven years of his mercantile career, Amos Lawrence did not permit a bill to remain unsettled over Sunday. Punctuality is said to be the politeness of princes. Some men are always running to catch up with their business:

The man who, like Napoleon, can on the instant seize the most important thing and sacrifice the others, is sure to win.

Many a wasted life dates its ruin from a lost five minutes.

"Too late" can be read between the lines on the tombstone of many a man who has failed. A few minutes often makes all the difference between victory and defeat, success and failure.

Many a wasted life dates its ruin from a lost five minutes.

"Too late" can be read between the lines on the tombstone of many a man who has failed.

A few minutes often makes all the difference between victory and defeat, success and failure.

"

Clothes don't make the man, but good clothes have got many a man a good job.

If you have twenty-five dollars, and want a job, it is better to spend twenty dollars for a suit of clothes, four dollars for shoes, and the rest for a shave, a hair-cut, and a clean collar, and walk to the place, than go with …

Artists have been touched by the power of inspiration through a masterpiece, or by some one they happened to meet who saw in them what no one else had ever seen,—the power to do an immortal thing.

The man who mixes with his fellows is ever on a voyage of discovery, finding new islands of power in himself which would have remained forever hidden but for association with others.

Everybody he meets has some secret for him, if he can only extract it, something which he never knew before, something which will help him on his way, something which will enrich his life. No man finds himself alone. Others are his discoverers.

Everybody he meets has some secret for him, if he can only extract it, something which he never knew before, something which will help him on his way, something which will enrich his life.

No man finds himself alone. Others are his discoverers.

It is astonishing how much you can learn from people in social intercourse when you know how to look at them rightly.

There is something about the very inclination to conceal or cover up which arouses suspicion and distrust. We cannot have the same confidence in people who possess this trait, no matter how good they may seem to be, as in frank, sunny natures.

Dealing with these secretive people is like traveling on a stage coach on a dark night.

There is always a feeling of uncertainty. We may come out all right, but there is a lurking fear of some pitfall or unknown danger ahead of us. We are uncomfortable because of the uncertainties.

There is a helpful suggestion in this advice.

The way to learn to talk is to talk.

The temptation for people who are unaccustomed to society, and who feel diffident, is to say nothing themselves and listen to what others say.

nobody would appreciate it until it was ground and polished and the light let into its depths to reveal its hidden brilliancy.

Conversation is to the man what the cutting of the diamond is to the stone. The grinding does not add anything to the diamond. It merely reveals its wealth.

How little parents realize the harm they are doing their children by allowing them to grow up ignorant of or indifferent to the marvelous possibilities in the art of conversation!

He should not be obliged to give a stranger an inventory of his possessions in order to show that he has achieved something. A greater wealth should flow from his lips, and express itself in his manner.

No amount of natural ability or education or good clothes, no amount of money, will make you appear well if you use poor English.

Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes wherever he goes; he has not the trouble of earning or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess.—EMERSON.

Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes wherever he goes; he has not the trouble of earning or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess.—EMERSON.

With hat in hand, one gets on in the world.

—GERMAN PROVERB.

What thou wilt, Thou must rather enforce it with thy smile, Than hew to it with thy sword. SHAKESPEARE.

Politeness has been compared to an air cushion, which, although there is apparently nothing in it, eases our jolts wonderfully.

—GEORGE L. CAREY.

Politeness has been compared to an air cushion, which, although there is apparently nothing in it, eases our jolts wonderfully.—GEORGE L. CAREY.

Birth's gude, but breedin's better.

—SCOTCH PROVERB.

Birth's gude, but breedin's better.—SCOTCH PROVERB.

Conduct is three fourths of life.

—MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Now, the reason why the lower classes there are so polite is because the upper classes are polite and civil to them."

A fine courtesy is a fortune in itself.

The good-mannered can do without riches, for they have passports everywhere. All doors fly open to them, and they enter without money and without price. They can enjoy nearly everything without the trouble of buying or owning.

They can enjoy nearly everything without the trouble of buying or owning. They are as welcome in every household as the sunshine; and why not? for they carry light, sunshine, and joy everywhere. They disarm jealousy and envy, for they bear good will to everybody.

Bees will not sting a man smeared with honey.

"A man's own good breeding," says Chesterfield, "is the best security against other people's ill manners. It carries along with it a dignity that is respected by the most petulant. Ill breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid.

After Stephen A. Douglas had been abused in the Senate he rose and said: "

What no gentleman should say no gentleman need answer.

"

He will never choose danger, nor seek it. He is not given to talk about himself or others. He does not care that he himself should be praised, nor that other people should be blamed."

A gentleman is just a gentle man: no more, no less; a diamond polished that was first a diamond in the rough.

A gentleman is gentle, modest, courteous, slow to take offense, and never giving it. He is slow to surmise evil, as he never thinks it.

"You replace Dr. Franklin, I hear," said the French Minister, Count de Vergennes, to Mr. Jefferson, who had been sent to Paris to relieve our most popular representative.

"I succeed him; no man can replace him,"

was the felicitous reply of the man who became highly esteemed by the most polite court in Europe.

"You should not have returned their salute," said the master of ceremonies, when Clement XIV bowed to the ambassadors who had bowed in congratulating him upon his election.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," replied Clement. "I have not been pope long enough to forget good manners."

A modest, sensible, and well-bred man Would not insult me, and no other can.

Manners are what vex or soothe, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us by a constant, steady, uniform, invincible operation like that of the air we breathe.

Even power itself has not half the might of gentleness, that subtle oil which lubricates our relations with each other, and enables the machinery of society to perform its functions without friction.

"Have you not seen in the woods, in a late autumn morning," asks Emerson, "a poor fungus, or mushroom,—a plant without any solidity, nay, that seemed nothing but a soft mush or jelly,—by its constant, total, and inconceivably gentle pushing, manage to break its way …

They indulge in few or no recriminations; are faithful to old associations; more considerate of the prejudices of others than others are of theirs; not more worldly-minded and money-loving than people generally are; and, everything considered, they surpass all nations in courtesy, affability, and forbearance.

"Men, like bullets," says Richter, "go farthest when they are smoothest."

Napoleon was much displeased on hearing that Josephine had permitted General Lorges, a young and handsome man, to sit beside her on the sofa.

It may well indicate the kind of wood below, but not always whether it be sound or decayed. Etiquette is but a substitute for good manners and is often but their mere counterfeit.

Sincerity is the highest quality of good manners.

The following recipe is recommended to those who wish to acquire genuine good manners:—

Timidity, shyness, and self-consciousness belong to the same family. We usually find all where we find any one of these qualities, and they are all enemies of peace of mind, happiness, and achievement.

No one has ever done a great thing while his mind was centered upon himself. We must lose ourselves before we can find ourselves.

Self analysis is valuable only to learn our strength; fatal, if we dwell upon our weaknesses.

Everything must be swallowed up in his zeal, fused in the fire of his genius,—then, and then only, can he really create.

No singer ever captivated her audience until she forgot herself, until she was lost in her song.

Could anything be more foolish and short-sighted than to allow a morbid sensitiveness to interfere with one's advancement in life?

"I never will surrender to a nigger," said a Confederate officer, when a colored soldier chased and caught him. "Berry sorry, massa," said the negro, leveling his rifle; "must kill you den; hain't time to go back and git a white man." The officer surrendered.

"When God endowed human beings with brains," says Montesquieu, "he did not intend to guarantee them."

When Abraham Lincoln was running for the legislature the first time, on the platform of the improvement of the Sangamon River, he went to secure the votes of thirty men who were cradling a wheatfield.

"Sire," said the cook, "the reason is, that every quarter of an hour I put a fresh chicken down to roast, so that your Majesty is sure always to have it at perfection."

Talent in this age is no match for tact.

We see its failure everywhere. Tact will manipulate one talent so as to get more out of it in a lifetime than ten talents will accomplish without it. "Talent lies abed till noon; tact is up at six." Talent is power, tact is skill.

Talent in this age is no match for tact. We see its failure everywhere. Tact will manipulate one talent so as to get more out of it in a lifetime than ten talents will accomplish without it. "

Talent lies abed till noon; tact is up at six.

" Talent is power, tact is skill. Talent knows what to do, tact knows how to do it.

We see its failure everywhere. Tact will manipulate one talent so as to get more out of it in a lifetime than ten talents will accomplish without it. "Talent lies abed till noon; tact is up at six."

Talent is power, tact is skill. Talent knows what to do, tact knows how to do it.

"Talent is something, but tact is everything. It is not a sixth sense, but it is like the life of all the five. It is the open eye, the quick ear, the judging taste, the keen smell, and lively touch;

Many great men are very impractical even in the ordinary affairs of life.

Isaac Newton could read the secret of creation; but, tired of rising from his chair to open the door for a cat and her kitten, he had two holes cut through the panels for them to pass at will, a large hole for the cat, and a small one for the kitten.

Beethoven was a great musician, but he sent three hundred florins to pay for six shirts and half a dozen handkerchiefs.

Dean Swift nearly starved in a country parish where his more practical classmate Stafford became rich. One of Napoleon's marshals understood military tactics as well as his chief, but he did not know men so well, and lacked the other's skill and tact.

Napoleon might fall; but, like a cat, he would fall upon his feet.

For his argument in the Florida Case, a fee of one thousand dollars in crisp new bills of large denomination was handed to Daniel Webster as he sat reading in his library.

"Oh, very well," replied Lessing. "No matter, I'll call at another time."

Louis Philippe said he was the only sovereign in Europe fit to govern, for he could black his own boots.

The world is full of men and women apparently splendidly endowed and highly educated, yet who can scarcely get a living.

They readily promised, and when the sun had passed out of the shadow they leaped and danced and sang for joy. Thereafter the Spaniards had all the provisions they needed.

"Common sense," said Wendell Phillips, "bows to the inevitable and makes use of it."

When Caesar stumbled in landing on the beach of Britain, he instantly grasped a handful of sand and held it aloft as a signal of triumph, hiding forever from his followers the ill omen of his threatened fall.

Goethe, speaking of some comparisons that had been instituted between himself and Shakespeare, said:

"Shakespeare always hits the right nail on the head at once; but I have to stop and think which is the right nail, before I hit."

It has been said that a few pebbles from a brook in the sling of a David who knows how to send them to the mark are more effective than a Goliath's spear and a Goliath's strength with a Goliath's clumsiness.

"Will you lecture for us for fame?" was the telegram young Henry Ward Beecher received from a Young Men's Christian Association in the West.

"Yes, F. A. M. E. Fifty and my expenses,"

was the answer the shrewd young preacher sent back.

Walpole was an ignorant man, and Charlemagne could hardly write his name so that it could be deciphered; but these giants knew men and things, and possessed that practical wisdom and tact which have ever moved the world.

Tact, like Alexander, cuts the knots it cannot untie, and leads its forces to glorious victory.

A practical man not only sees, but seizes the opportunity. There is a certain getting-on quality difficult to describe, but which is the great winner of the prizes of life.

According to an old custom a Cape Cod minister was called upon in April to make a prayer over a piece of land.

"No," said he, when shown the land, "this does not need a prayer; it needs manure."

To see a man as he is you must turn him round and round until you get him at the right angle. Place him in a good light, as you would a picture. The excellences and defects will appear if you get the right angle.

"Antonio Stradivari has an eye That winces at false work and loves the true."

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty.—C. SIMMONS.

Genius is the infinite art of taking pains.—CARLYLE.

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty.—C. SIMMONS.

Genius is the infinite art of taking pains.—CARLYLE.

I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly; if it be wrong, leave it undone.—GILPIN.

They were usually sold without any warrant of excellence, the word "Maydole" stamped on the head being universally considered a guaranty of the best article the world could produce.

Character is power, and is the best advertisement in the world.

"We have no secret," said the manager of an iron works employing thousands of men. "We always try to beat our last batch of rails. That is all the secret we've got, and we don't care who knows it."

Six years later he invited her brother, J. Q. A. Ward, to become a pupil in his studio. To-day the name of Ward is that of the most prosperous of all Americans sculptors.

"Paint me just as I am, warts and all," said Oliver Cromwell to the artist who, thinking to please the great man, had omitted a mole.

"I can remember when you blacked my father's shoes," said one member of the House of Commons to another in the heat of debate. "True enough," was the prompt reply, "but did I not black them well?"

"I can remember when you blacked my father's shoes," said one member of the House of Commons to another in the heat of debate.

"True enough," was the prompt reply, "but did I not black them well?"

"It is easy to tell good indigo," said an old lady. "Just take a lump and put it into water, and if it is good, it will either sink or swim, I am not sure which; but never mind, you can try it for yourself."

The doctor apologized, expressed great regrets, and said that the blunder would ruin him. "No," said Wellington, "I will never mention it." "But you will allow me to attend you, so that people will not withdraw their confidence?"

"No," said the Iron Duke, "that would be lying."

"Father," said a boy, "I saw an immense number of dogs—five hundred, I am sure—in our street, last night." "Surely not so many," said the father. "Well, there were one hundred, I'm quite sure." "It could not be," said the father;

and it is very certain that the employer will get rid of such a blunderer as soon as he can."

"If you make a good pin," said a successful manufacturer, "you will earn more than if you make a bad steam-engine."

"There are women," said Fields, "whose stitches always come out, and the buttons they sew on fly off on the mildest provocation;

Glue starts at joints, chairs and bedsteads break down at the slightest provocation, castors come off, handles pull out, many things "go to pieces" altogether, even while practically new.

"Made to sell, not for service," would be a good label for the great mass of manufactured articles in our markets to-day.

It is difficult to find anything that is well and honestly made, that has character, individuality and thoroughness wrought into it. Most things are just thrown together.

you should regard every task that goes through your hands, every piece of work you touch, as Tampion regarded every watch that went out of his shop. It must be the very best you can do, the best that human skill can produce.

It is just the little difference between the good and the best that makes the difference between the artist and the artisan.

It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that make the master's fame.

"Are your discoveries often brilliant intuitions?" asked a reporter of Thomas A. Edison. "Do they come to you while you are lying awake nights?"

"I never did anything worth doing by accident,"

was the reply, "nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead on it and make trial after trial until it comes.

another, seven. How came popular writers famous? By writing for years without any pay at all; by writing hundreds of pages as mere practise-work; by working like galley-slaves at literature for half a lifetime with no other compensation than—fame.

"Never despair," says Burke; "but if you do, work on in despair."

The head of the god Hercules is represented as covered with a lion's skin with claws joined under the chin, to show that when we have conquered our misfortunes, they become our helpers. Oh, the glory of an unconquerable will!

The head of the god Hercules is represented as covered with a lion's skin with claws joined under the chin, to show that when we have conquered our misfortunes, they become our helpers.

Oh, the glory of an unconquerable will!

"Never give up; for the wisest is boldest, Knowing that Providence mingles the cup; And of all maxims, the best, as the oldest, Is the stern watchword of 'Never give up!'"

He has the grip of a bulldog; when he once gets his teeth in, nothing can shake him off." It was "On to Richmond," and

"I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer,"

that settled the fate of the Rebellion.

Luck lies in bed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy; labor turns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays the foundation of a competence.

Luck whines; labor whistles. Luck relies on chance; labor, on character.

"

There's a brave fellow! There's a man of pluck! A man who's not afraid to say his say, Though a whole town's against him. LONGFELLOW.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.—GOLDSMITH.

The barriers are not yet erected which shall say to aspiring talent, "Thus far and no farther."—BEETHOVEN.

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer," said Harriet Beecher Stowe, "never give up then, for that's just the place and time that the tide'll turn."

Charles Sumner said "three things are necessary to a strong character: First, backbone; second, backbone; third, backbone."

While digging among the ruins of Pompeii, which was buried by the dust and ashes from an eruption of Vesuvius A. D. 79, the workmen found the skeleton of a Roman soldier in the sentry-box at one of the city's gates.

A little boy was asked how he learned to skate.

"Oh, by getting up every time I fell down," he replied.

Whipple tells a story of Masséna which illustrates the masterful purpose that plucks victory out of the jaws of defeat.

But that steadfast soul seemed altogether unaffected by bodily prostration. Half dead as he was with fatigue, he rose painfully and said courageously, 'Tell the Emperor that I will hold out for two hours.' And he kept his word."

"Often defeated in battle," said Macaulay of Alexander the Great, "he was always successful in war."

In the battle of Marengo, the Austrians considered the day won. The French army was inferior in numbers, and had given way. The Austrian army extended its wings on the right and on the left, to follow up the French.

Once when Marshal Ney was going into battle, looking down at his knees which were smiting together, he said,

"You may well shake; you would shake worse yet if you knew where I am going to take you."

It is victory after victory with the soldier, lesson after lesson with the scholar, blow after blow with the laborer, crop after crop with the farmer, picture after picture with the painter, and mile after mile with the traveler, that secures what all so much …

yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings."

Great men never wait for opportunities; they make them.

Nor do they wait for facilities or favoring circumstances; they seize upon whatever is at hand, work out their problem, and master the situation. A young man determined and willing will find a way or make one. A Franklin does not require elaborate apparatus;

You can not keep a determined man from success. Place stumbling-blocks in his way and he takes them for stepping-stones, and on them will climb to greatness. Take away his money, and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on.

Cripple him, and he writes the Waverley Novels.

All that is great and noble and true in the history of the world is the result of infinite painstaking, perpetual plodding, of common every-day industry.

"Adversity is the prosperity of the great."

"Kites rise against, not with, the wind."

"Many and many a time since," said Harriet Martineau, referring to her father's failure in business, "have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing and economizing and …

"Returned with thanks" has made many an author. Failure often leads a man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping.

Men of mettle turn disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearl the sand which annoys it.

"Let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast of the storm wind is to the eagle,—a force against him that lifts him higher."

A kite would not fly unless it had a string tying it down. It is just so in life.

The man who is tied down by half a dozen blooming responsibilities and their mother will make a higher and stronger flight than the bachelor who, having nothing to keep him steady, is always floundering in the mud.

When Napoleon's school companions made sport of him on account of his humble origin and poverty he devoted himself entirely to books, and, quickly rising above them in scholarship, commanded their respect. Soon he was regarded as the brightest ornament of the class.

"The gods look on no grander sight than an honest man struggling with adversity."

"Then I must learn to sing better," said Anaximander, when told that the very boys laughed at his singing.

Strong characters, like the palm-tree, seem to thrive best when most abused. Men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for years are often unable to bear prosperity.

the noblest characters are developed in a similar way. The harder the diamond, the more brilliant the luster, and the greater the friction necessary to bring it out. Only its own dust is hard enough to make this most precious stone reveal its full beauty.

The spark in the flint would sleep forever but for friction; the fire in man would never blaze but for antagonism.

Suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to a standstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an opposite direction.

All the urging of the teamster and the straining of the horses were in vain,—until the motorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavy wheels, and then the truck lumbered on its way.

"Friction is a very good thing," remarked a passenger.

The philosopher Kant observed that a dove, inasmuch as the only obstacle it has to overcome is the resistance of the air, might suppose that if only the air were out of the way it could fly with greater rapidity and ease.

The rude and rough experience of the eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and expert in pursuing his prey.

Boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually "turn out," while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to "come out."

"It was not the victories but the defeats of my life which have strengthened me," said the aged Sidenham Poyntz.

The most beautiful as well as the strongest woods are found not in tropical climates, but in severe climates, where they have to fight the frosts and the winter's cold.

Many a man has never found himself until he has lost his all. Adversity stripped him only to discover him.

Obstacles, hardships, are the chisel and mallet which shape the strong life into beauty. The rough ledge on the hillside complains of the drill, of the blasting which disturbs its peace of centuries:

Often we can not see the angel in the quarry of our lives, the statue of manhood, until the blasts of misfortune have rent the ledge, and difficulties and obstacles have squared and chiseled the granite blocks into grace and beauty.

Many a man has been ruined into salvation.

The lightning which smote his dearest hopes opened up a new rift in his dark life, and gave him glimpses of himself which, until then, he had never seen.

The greatest men will ever be those who have risen from the ranks. It is said that there are ten thousand chances to one that genius, talent, and virtue shall issue from a farmhouse rather than from a palace.

Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, but draws out the faculties of the wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of trying their skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious.

The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill, and fortitude of the voyager. A man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained.

Learn, then, to will strongly and decisively; thus fix your floating life and leave it no longer to be carried hither and thither, like a withered leaf, by every wind that blows.

An undecided man is like the turnstile at a fair, which is in everybody's way but stops no one.

"The secret of the whole matter was," replied Amos Lawrence, "we had formed the habit of prompt acting, thus taking the top of the tide; while the habit of some others was to delay till about half tide, thus getting on the flats."

Ruskin says:

"Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think; but thousands can think for one who can see."

I once traveled abroad with two young men, one of whom was all eyes,—nothing seemed to escape him,—and the other never saw anything.

The efficient man is always growing. He is always accumulating knowledge of every kind. He does not merely look with his eyes. He sees with them. He keeps his ears open. He keeps his mind open to all that is new and fresh and helpful.

The majority of people do not see things; they just look at them.

The power of keen observation is indicative of a superior mentality; for it is the mind, not the optic nerve, that really sees.

Once down, they are as helpless as capsized turtles, or unhorsed men in armor. Many a frontier boy has succeeded beyond all his expectations simply because all props were early knocked out from under him and he was obliged to stand upon his own feet.

"A man's best friends are his ten fingers," said Robert Collyer, who brought his wife to America in the steerage.

There is no manhood mill which takes in boys and turns out men. What you call "no chance" may be your only chance. Don't wait for your place to be made for you; make it yourself. Don't wait for somebody to give you a lift;

His salary was only about $200 a year,—but he knew that a fine church and great salary can not make a great man. It was work and opportunity that he wanted. He felt that if there were anything in him work would bring it out.

When Beethoven was examining the work of Moscheles, he found written at the end, "Finis, with God's help." He wrote under it, "Man, help yourself."

A young man stood listlessly watching some anglers on a bridge. He was poor and dejected. At length, approaching a basket filled with fish, he sighed, "If now I had these I would be happy. I could sell them and buy food and lodgings."

When it seemed that the crisis had really come, the largest and strongest man in the party, in a state of intense fear, said, "Let us pray."

"No, no, my man," shouted the bluff old boatman; "let the little man pray. You take an oar."

The grandest fortunes ever accumulated or possessed on earth were and are the fruit of endeavor that had no capital to begin with save energy, intellect, and the will.

"Every one is the artificer of his own fortune," says Sallust.

Man is not merely the architect of his own fate, but he must lay the bricks himself.

Bayard Taylor, at twenty-three, wrote: "I will become the sculptor of my own mind's statue." His biography shows how often the chisel and hammer were in his hands to shape himself into his ideal.

It is interesting to note that the men who talk most about genius are the men who like to work the least.

The lazier the man, the more he will have to say about great things being done by genius.

The greatest geniuses have been the greatest workers.

Francis Parkman, half blind, became one of America's greatest historians in spite of everything, because he made himself such.

Personal value is a coin of one's own minting; one is taken at the worth he has put into himself.

Franklin was but a poor printer's boy, whose highest luxury at one time was only a penny roll, eaten in the streets of Philadelphia.

Every bit of education or culture is of great advantage in the struggle for existence.

The microscope does not create anything new, but it reveals marvels.

To educate the eye adds to its magnifying power until it sees beauty where before it saw only ugliness. It reveals a world we never suspected, and finds the greatest beauty even in the commonest things.

For all who seek self-improvement "there is a lion in the way," the lion of self-indulgence, and it is only by the conquest of this enemy that progress is assured.

Show me how a youth spends his evenings, his odd bits of time, and I will forecast his future.

Does he look upon this leisure as precious, rich in possibilities, as containing golden material for his future life structure? Or does he look upon it as an opportunity for self-indulgence, for a light, flippant good time?

Think of a boy working nearly all the daylight in a blacksmith shop, and yet finding time to study seven languages in a single year.

It is not lack of ability that holds men down but lack of industry.

In many cases the employee has a better brain, a better mental capacity than his employer. But he does not improve his faculties. He dulls his mind by cigarette smoking.

Self-help has accomplished about all the great things of the world. How many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose, because they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good luck to give them a lift!

But success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It can not be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours.

One of the sad things about the neglected opportunities for self-improvement is that it puts people of great natural ability at a disadvantage among those who are their mental inferiors.

… into power, if we do not do some building somewhere, if we do not transform the material which she gives us into force and utilize that force, we not only find the supply cut off, but we find that we are growing weaker, less efficient.

Everything in nature is on the move, either one way or the other.

It is either going up or down. It is either advancing or retrograding; we cannot hold without using.

They have become weaklings without knowing it. They constantly say to themselves, "I have a college education, I must have some ability, I must amount to something in the world."

But the college diploma has no more power to hold the knowledge you have gained in college than a piece of tissue paper over a gas jet can hold the gas in the pipe.

Everything which you do not use is constantly slipping away from you. Use it or lose it. The secret of power is use. Ability will not remain with us, force will evaporate the moment we cease to do something with it.

But the college diploma has no more power to hold the knowledge you have gained in college than a piece of tissue paper over a gas jet can hold the gas in the pipe.

Everything which you do not use is constantly slipping away from you. Use it or lose it.

The secret of power is use. Ability will not remain with us, force will evaporate the moment we cease to do something with it.

Just as a bar of iron, if exposed to the elements, will oxidize, and become worthless, so will character deteriorate if there is no constant effort to improve its form, to increase its ductility, to temper it, or to better it in some way.

It is easy to remain a common bar of iron, or comparatively so, by becoming merely a horseshoe; but it is hard to raise your life-product to higher values.

Many of us consider our natural gift-bars poor, mean, and inadequate, compared with those of others;

While one boy is regretting his want of opportunities, his lack of means to get a college education, and remains in ignorance, another with half his chances picks up a good education in the odds and ends of time which other boys throw away.

From the same material, one man builds a palace and another a hovel.

From the same rough piece of marble, one man calls out an angel of beauty which delights every beholder, another a hideous monster which demoralizes every one who sees it.

If the chance does not come to you, make it. Jump to your feet and say something upon every question that is up for discussion. Do not be afraid to rise to put a motion or to second it or give your opinion upon it.

Do not wait until you are better prepared. You never will be.

Every time you rise to your feet will increase your confidence, and after awhile you will form the habit of speaking until it will be as easy as anything else, and there is no one thing which will develop young people so rapidly and effectively …

Even a partial failure on the platform has good results, for it often arouses a determination to conquer the next time, which never leaves one. Demosthenes' heroic efforts, and Disraeli's "The time will come when you will hear me," are historic examples.

It is not the speech, but the man behind the speech, that wins a way to the front.

One man carries weight because he is himself the embodiment of power, he is himself convinced of what he says. There is nothing of the negative, the doubtful, the uncertain in his nature.

"His words are laws" may be well said of the statesmen whose orations sway the world.

What art is greater than that of changing the minds of men?

Wendell Phillips so played upon the emotions, so changed the convictions of Southerners who hated him, but who were curious to listen to his oratory, that, for the time being he almost persuaded them that they were in the wrong.

He had no very brilliant talents, but he averaged well. He had good common sense and was a hard worker. He had tact and diplomacy and made the most of every opportunity.

Nothing can keep from success the man who has iron in his blood and is determined that he will succeed.

When he is confronted by barriers he leaps over them, tunnels through them, or makes a way around them. Obstacles only serve to stiffen his backbone, increase his determination, sharpen his wits and develop his innate resources.

It has been well said that from the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect makes them something else.

The boulder which was an obstacle in the path of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the resolute.

The difficulties which dishearten one man only stiffen the sinews of another, who looks on them as a sort of mental spring-board by which to vault across the gulf of failure to the sure, solid ground of full success.

His classmates used to say that, if the course was ten years instead of four, he would come out first.

The world always stands aside for the determined man.

You will find no royal road to your triumph. There is no open door to the Temple of Success.

Tenacity of purpose has been characteristic of all characters who have left their mark on the world. Perseverance, it has been said, is the statesman's brain, the warrior's sword, the inventor's secret, the scholar's "open sesame."

Persistency is to talent what steam is to the engine.

It is the driving force by which the machine accomplishes the work for which it was intended. A great deal of persistency, with a very little talent, can be counted on to go farther than a great deal of talent without persistency.

Persistency is to talent what steam is to the engine. It is the driving force by which the machine accomplishes the work for which it was intended.

A great deal of persistency, with a very little talent, can be counted on to go farther than a great deal of talent without persistency.

You cannot keep a determined man from success. Take away his money, and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on. Lock him up in a dungeon, and he writes the immortal "Pilgrim's Progress."

You cannot keep a determined man from success.

Take away his money, and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on. Lock him up in a dungeon, and he writes the immortal "Pilgrim's Progress."

Stick to a thing and carry it through in all its completeness and proportion, and you will become a hero. You will think better of yourself; others will exalt you.

Thoroughness is another of the common virtues which all may cultivate. The man who puts his best into every task will leave far behind the man who lets a job go with the comment "That's good enough."

Nothing is good enough unless it reflects our best.

Daniel Webster had no remarkable traits of character in his boyhood. He was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and stayed there only a short time when a neighbor found him crying on his way home, and asked the reason.

Fidelity to duty has been a distinguishing virtue in men who have risen to positions of authority and command.

It has been observed that the dispatches of Napoleon rang with the word glory. Wellington's dispatches centered around the common word duty.

Nowadays people seem unwilling to tread the rough path of duty and by patience and steadfast perseverance step into the ranks of those the country delights to honor.

by trying to be the best possible citizen, a good, accommodating, helpful neighbor, a kind, encouraging father; it is by all these simple things that we attain success.

There is no great secret about success. It is just a natural persistent exercise of the commonest every-day qualities.

We have seen people in the country in the summer time trampling down the daisies and the beautiful violets, the lovely wild flowers in their efforts to get a branch of showy flowers off a large tree, which, perhaps, would not compare in beauty and …

This may make all the difference to you between a grand success and a mediocre existence. Stick to those who are trying to do something and to be somebody in the world,—people of high aims, lofty ambition.

Keep close to those who are dead-in-earnest. Ambition is contagious.

You will catch the spirit that dominates in your environment. The success of those about you who are trying to climb upward will encourage and stimulate you to struggle harder if you have not done quite so well yourself.

A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.—J. STUART MILL.

Ideas go booming through the world louder than cannon. Thoughts are mightier than armies.

Principles have achieved more victories than horsemen or chariots.—W. M. PAXTON.

Many distinguished foreign and American statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where wine was freely poured, but Schuyler Colfax, then vice-president of the United States, declined to drink from a proffered cup.

"Colfax dares not drink," sneered a Senator who had already taken too much. "You are right," said the Vice-President, "I dare not."

When Grant was in Houston many years ago, he was given a rousing reception.

"An honest man is not the worse because a dog barks at him."

We live ridiculously for fear of being thought ridiculous.

Tis he is the coward who proves false to his vows, To his manhood, his honor, for a laugh or a sneer."

Tis he is the coward who proves false to his vows, To his manhood, his honor, for a laugh or a sneer."

The youth who starts out by being afraid to speak what he thinks will usually end by being afraid to think what he wishes.

How we shrink from an act of our own! We live as others live. Custom or fashion, or your doctor or minister, dictates, and they in turn dare not depart from their schools. Dress, living, servants, carriages, everything must conform, or we are ostracized.

Don't be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the liberty of being in the world.

There is nothing attractive in timidity, nothing lovable in fear.

Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manly courage is always dignified and graceful.

"I should have thought fear would have kept you from going so far," said a relative who found the little boy Nelson wandering a long distance from home.

"Fear?" said the future admiral, "I don't know him."

"To think a thing is impossible is to make it so." Courage is victory, timidity's defeat.

He at once ordered a halt, and flogged four of the ringleaders under fire. The men yielded at once, and then marched three miles under a heavy cannonade as coolly as if it were a review.

Execute your resolutions immediately. Thoughts are but dreams until their effects be tried.

Does competition trouble you? work away; what is your competitor but a man? Conquer your place in the world, for all things serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously.

"If, therefore, you perceive any weakness in me, I beseech you ascribe it to my sickness rather than to myself." He took the ax and kissed the blade, and said to the sheriff: "'T is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases."

Don't waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in crossing bridges you have not reached.

To half will and to hang forever in the balance is to lose your grip on life.

"Our enemies are before us," exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopylae. "And we are before them." was the cool reply of Leonidas. "Deliver your arms," came the message from Xerxes. "Come and take them," was the answer Leonidas sent back.

A Persian soldier said: "You will not be able to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows." "Then we will fight in the shade," replied a Lacedemonian.

What wonder that a handful of such men checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth!

"It is impossible," said a staff officer, when Napoleon gave directions for a daring plan.

"Impossible!" thundered the great commander, "impossible is the adjective of fools!"

The courageous man is an example to the intrepid. His influence is magnetic. Men follow him, even to the death.

"The brave man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational; But he whose noble soul its fear subdues And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."

Many a bright youth has accomplished nothing of worth to himself or the world simply because he did not dare to commence things.

Whatever people may think of you, do that which you believe to be right. Be alike indifferent to censure or praise.—PYTHAGORAS.

"Circumstances," says Milton, "have rarely favored famous men. They have fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles."

The true way to conquer circumstances is to be a greater circumstance yourself.

Yet, while desiring to impress in the most forcible manner possible the fact that will-power is necessary to success, and that, other things being equal, the greater the will-power, the grander and more complete the success, we can not indorse the theory that there is …

there are no "ifs" or "ands" about it. If he has his health, nothing can keep him from final success.

No tyranny of circumstances can permanently imprison a determined will.

The world always stands aside for the determined man.

Webster wrote and thanked him, and added: "But my boots needs other doctoring, for they not only admit water, but even peas and gravel-stones." Yet he became one of the greatest men in the world. Sydney Smith said:

"Webster was a living lie, because no man on earth could be as great as he looked."

Carlyle said of him: "One would incline at sight to back him against the world."

To succeed to-day a man must concentrate all the faculties of his mind upon one unwavering aim, and have a tenacity of purpose which means death or victory. Every other inclination which tempts him from his aim must be suppressed.

A man may starve on a dozen half-learned trades or occupations; he may grow rich and famous upon one trade thoroughly mastered, even though it be the humblest.

Even Gladstone, with his ponderous yet active brain, said he could not do two things at once; he threw his entire strength upon whatever he did. The intensest energy characterized everything he undertook, even his recreation.

It is a Bancroft, working twenty-six years on his "History of the United States." It is a Field, crossing the ocean fifty times to lay a cable, while the world ridicules. It is a Newton, writing his "Chronology of Ancient Nations" sixteen times.

A one-talent man who decides upon a definite object accomplishes more than a ten-talent man who scatters his energies and never knows exactly what he will do.

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers upon one thing, can accomplish something; the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything.

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers upon one thing, can accomplish something; the strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything.

A great purpose is cumulative; and, like a great magnet, it attracts all that is kindred along the stream of life.

A Yankee can splice a rope in many different ways; an English sailor only knows one way, but that is the best one.

One talent utilized in a single direction will do infinitely more than ten talents scattered.

A thimbleful of powder behind a ball in a rifle will do more execution than a carload of powder unconfined.

The rifle-barrel is the purpose that gives direct aim to the powder, which otherwise, no matter how good it might be, would be powerless.

A wavering aim, a faltering purpose, has no place in the twentieth century. "Mental shiftlessness" is the cause of many a failure.

The world is full of unsuccessful men who spend their lives letting empty buckets down into empty wells.

"Mr. A. often laughs at me," said a young American chemist, "because I have but one idea. He talks about everything, aims to excel in many things;

Improve it as we may, we shall always, in the end, when the merit of the matter has become apparent to us, painfully lament the loss of time and strength devoted to such botching. An old proverb says:

"The master of one trade will support a wife and seven children, and the master of seven will not support himself."

It is the single aim that wins. Men with monopolizing ambitions rarely live in history. They do not focus their powers long enough to burn their names indelibly into the roll of honor.

An old proverb says: "The master of one trade will support a wife and seven children, and the master of seven will not support himself."

It is the single aim that wins.

Men with monopolizing ambitions rarely live in history. They do not focus their powers long enough to burn their names indelibly into the roll of honor. Edward Everett, even with his magnificent powers, disappointed the expectations of his friends.

Some people think that if they "keep everlastingly at it" they will succeed, but this is not always so.

Working without a plan is as foolish as going to sea without a compass.

A ship which has broken its rudder in mid-ocean may "keep everlastingly at it," may keep on a full head of steam, driving about all the time, but it never arrives anywhere, it never reaches any port unless by accident;

Whatever comes, his life will not be purposeless.

Even a wreck that makes its port is a greater success than a full-rigged ship with all its sails flying, with every mast and every rope intact, which merely drifts along into an accidental harbor.

To fix a wandering life and give it direction is not an easy task, but a life which has no definite aim is sure to be frittered away in empty and purposeless dreams. "Listless triflers," "busy idlers," "purposeless busy-bodies," are seen everywhere.

Short cuts and abridged methods are the demand of the hour. But the way to shorten the road to success is to take plenty of time to lay in your reserve power. Hard work, a definite aim, and faithfulness will shorten the way.

Don't risk a life's superstructure upon a day's foundation.

Patience is Nature's motto. She works ages to bring a flower to perfection. What will she not do for the greatest of her creation? Ages and aeons are nothing to her; out of them she has been carving her great statue, a perfect man.

A rich man asked Howard Burnett to do a little something for his album. Burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "But it took you only five minutes," objected the rich man.

"Yes, but it took me thirty years to learn how to do it in five minutes."

What the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and wait, whether the world applaud or hiss;

A large part of every successful life must be spent in laying foundation stones underground. Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance and depends upon "knowing how long it takes to succeed."

Endurance is a much better test of character than any one act of heroism, however noble.

The pianist Thalberg said he never ventured to perform one of his celebrated pieces in public until he had played it at least fifteen hundred times. He laid no claim whatever to genius; he said it was all a question of hard work.

"For years I was in my place of business by sunrise," said a wealthy banker who had begun without a dollar; "and often I did not leave it for fifteen or eighteen hours."

Patience, it is said, changes the mulberry leaf to satin.

The giant oak on the hillside was detained months or years in its upward growth while its root took a great turn around some rock, in order to gain a hold by which the tree was anchored to withstand the storms of centuries.

… the rags possibilities which would have developed him into a magnificent man, an ornament to the human race instead of a foul blot and ugly scar, had he only been fortunate enough early in life to have enjoyed the benefits of efficient and systematic training!

Laziness begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains.

Edison described his repeated efforts to make the phonograph reproduce an aspirated sound, and added: "From eighteen to twenty hours a day for the last seven months I have worked on this single word 'specia.'

I said into the phonograph 'specia, specia, specia,' but the instrument responded 'pecia, pecia, pecia.' It was enough to drive one mad. But I held firm, and I have succeeded."

The road to distinction must be paved with years of self-denial and hard work.

Horace Mann, the great author of the common school system of Massachusetts, was a remarkable example of that pluck and patience which can work and wait. His only inheritance was poverty and hard work.

Ole Bull said:

"If I practise one day, I can see the result; if I practise two days, my friends can see it; if I practise three days, the great public can see it."

The habit of seizing every bit of knowledge, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time, every opportunity, every occasion, and grinding them all up into experience, can not be overestimated. You will find use for all of it.

Cuyler, "and I find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures lies in the single element of staying power.

Permanent success is oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant.

The easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time dropping to the rear—to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher of charity.

"A pebble on the streamlet scant Has turned the course of many a river."

"The bad thing about a little sin is that it won't stay little."

"Arletta's pretty feet, glistening in the brook, made her the mother of William the Conqueror," says Palgrave's "History of Normandy and England."

Who can calculate the future of the smallest trifle when a mud crack swells to an Amazon and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold? The act of a moment may cause a life's regret.

A trigger may be pulled in an instant, but the soul returns never.

A spark falling upon some combustibles led to the invention of gunpowder. A few bits of seaweed and driftwood, floating on the waves, enabled Columbus to stay a mutiny of his sailors which threatened to prevent the discovery of a new world.

When the little insect scented the land, it broke its long silence by a shrill note, and thus warned them of their danger.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

A little boy in Holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of a dike.

Henry Ward Beecher came within one vote of being elected superintendent of a railway. If he had had that vote America would probably have lost its greatest preacher.

What a little thing fixes destiny!

Trifles light as air often suggest to the thinking mind ideas which have revolutionized the world.

Henry Ward Beecher came within one vote of being elected superintendent of a railway. If he had had that vote America would probably have lost its greatest preacher. What a little thing fixes destiny!

Trifles light as air often suggest to the thinking mind ideas which have revolutionized the world.

A famous ruby was offered to the English government. The report of the crown jeweler was that it was the finest he had ever seen or heard of, but that one of the "facets" was slightly fractured.

"But," said the sculptor, "I have retouched this part, polished that, softened that feature, brought out that muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to that limb, etc." "But they are trifles!" exclaimed the visitor.

"It may be so," replied the great artist, "but trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle."

That infinite patience which made Michael Angelo spend a week in bringing out a muscle in a statue, with more vital fidelity to truth, or Gerhard Dow a day in giving the right effect to a dewdrop on a cabbage leaf, makes all the difference …

The children of a spectacle-maker placed two or more pairs of the spectacles before each other in play, and told their father that distant objects looked larger. From this hint came the telescope.

Every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated.

Those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, desperate. What is the happiness of your life made up of? Little courtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendly letter, good wishes, and good deeds.

… soldier who escapes the bullets of a thousand battles may die from the scratch of a pin, and many a ship has survived the shocks of icebergs and the storms of ocean only to founder in a smooth sea from holes made by tiny insects.

Small things become great when a great soul sees them.

A single noble or heroic act of one man has sometimes elevated a nation. Many an honorable career has resulted from a kind word spoken in season or the warm grasp of a friendly hand.

… dollars and cents he will sell his services for, little realizes how he is cheating himself by not looking at the larger salary he can pay himself in increasing his skill, in expanding his experience, and in making himself a better, stronger, more useful man.

The few dollars he finds in his pay envelope are to this larger salary as the chips which fly from the sculptor's chisel are to the angel which he is trying to call out of the marble.

You can draw from the faithfulness of your work, from the grand spirit which you bring to it, the high purpose which emanates from you in its performance, a recompense so munificent that what your employer pays you will seem insignificant beside it.

you will always be conscious that you have done a little, mean thing, and no amount of juggling with yourself can induce that inward monitor which says "right" to the well-done thing and "wrong" to the botched work, to alter its verdict in your favor.

There is something within you that you cannot bribe; a divine sense of justice and right that can not be blindfolded.

Nothing will ever compensate you for the loss of faith in yourself. You may still succeed when others have lost confidence in you, but never when you have lost confidence in yourself. If you do not respect yourself;

There is something within you that you cannot bribe; a divine sense of justice and right that can not be blindfolded. Nothing will ever compensate you for the loss of faith in yourself.

You may still succeed when others have lost confidence in you, but never when you have lost confidence in yourself.

If you do not respect yourself; if you do not believe in yourself, your career is at an end so far as its upward tendency is concerned.

Look upon it as a man-builder, a character-builder, and not as a mere living-getter. Regard the living-getting, money-making part of your career as a mere incidental as compared with the man-making part of it.

The smallest people in the world are those who work for salary alone.

The little money you get in your pay envelope is a pretty small, low motive for which to work. It may be necessary to secure your bread and butter, but you have something infinitely higher to satisfy than that;

… actually to work harder in scheming, shirking, trying to keep from working hard in the performance of their duties, than they would have worked if they had tried to do their best, and had given the largest, the most liberal service possible to their employers.

The hardest work in the world is that which is grudgingly done.

Start out with a tacit understanding with yourself that you will be a man, that you will express in your work the highest thing in you, the best thing in you.

The effort always to do your best will enlarge your capacity for doing things, and will encourage you to push ahead toward larger triumphs.

Everywhere we see people who are haunted by the ghosts of half-finished jobs, the dishonest work done away back in their youth.

These covered-up defects are always coming back to humiliate them later, to trip them up, and to bar their progress. The great failure army is full of people who have tried to get square with their employers for the small salary and lack of appreciation.

No matter how small your salary, or how unappreciative your employer, bring the entire man to your task; be all there; fling your life into it with all the energy and enthusiasm you can muster.

Poor work injures your employer a little, but it may ruin you.

Be proud of your work and go to it every morning superbly equipped; go to it in the spirit of a master, of a conqueror. Determine to do your level best and never to demoralize yourself by doing your second best.

Conduct yourself in such a way that you can always look yourself in the face without wincing; then you will have a courage born of conviction, of personal nobility and integrity which have never been tarnished.

What your employer thinks of you, what the world thinks of you, is not half as important as what you think of yourself.

Others are with you comparatively little through life. You have to live with yourself day and night through your whole existence, and you can not afford to tie that divine thing in you to a scoundrel.

Count that man an enemy who shakes your faith in yourself, in your ability to do the thing you have set your heart upon doing, for when your confidence is gone, your power is gone.

Your achievement will never rise higher than your self-faith.

It would be as reasonable for Napoleon to have expected to get his army over the Alps by sitting down and declaring that the undertaking was too great for him, as for you to hope to achieve anything significant in life while harboring grave doubts …

A great success must have a great source in expectation, in self-confidence, and in persistent endeavor to attain it. No matter how great the ability, how large the genius, or how splendid the education, the achievement will never rise higher than the confidence.

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't.

This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

They do not realize how they weaken themselves by this mental attitude of self-depreciation or self-effacement. They do not claim enough, expect enough, or demand enough of or for themselves.

You will never become a giant if you only make a pygmy's claim for yourself; if you only expect small things of yourself.

There is no law which can cause a pygmy's thinking to produce a giant. The statue follows the model. The model is the inward vision.

We fail to see that we can control our own destiny: make ourselves do whatever is possible; make ourselves become whatever we long to be.

"If we choose to be no more than clods of clay," says Marie Corelli, "then we shall be used as clods of clay for braver feet to tread on."

The persistent thought that you are not as good as others, that you are a weak, ineffective being, will lower your whole standard of life and paralyze your ability.

… assertion of superiority, the assumption of power, the affirmation of belief in yourself, the mental attitude that claims success as an inalienable birthright, will strengthen the whole man and give power to a combination of faculties which doubt, fear, and a lack of confidence undermine.

Confidence is the Napoleon of the mental army.

It doubles and trebles the power of all the other faculties. The whole mental army waits until confidence leads the way.

We think ourselves into smallness, into inferiority by thinking downward. We ought to think upward, then we would reach the heights where superiority dwells. The man whose mind is set firmly toward achievement does not appropriate success, he is success.

Self-confidence is not egotism. It is knowledge, and it comes from the consciousness of possessing the ability requisite for what one undertakes.

Civilization to-day rests upon self-confidence.

There is nothing which will multiply one's ability like self-faith. It can make a one-talent man a success, while a ten-talent man without it would fail.

Faith walks on the mountain tops, hence its superior vision. It sees what is invisible to those who follow in the valleys.

It was the sustaining power of a mighty self-faith that enabled Columbus to bear the jeers and imputations of the Spanish cabinet; that sustained him when his sailors were in mutiny and he was at their mercy in a little vessel on an unknown sea;

The only inferiority in us is what we put into ourselves. If only we better understood our divinity we should all have this larger faith which is the distinction of the brave soul.

We think ourselves into smallness.

Were we to think upward we should reach the heights where superiority dwells.

… the yearning for infinite achievement without giving us the ability and the opportunity for realizing it, any more than he would have mocked the wild birds with an instinct to fly south in the winter without giving them a sunny South to match the instinct.

The cause of whatever comes to you in life is within you. There is where it is created.

The thing you long for and work for comes to you because your thought has created it; because there is something inside you that attracts it. It comes because there is an affinity within you for it. Your own comes to you;

… into the soul's limitless possibilities and reveals such powers there, such unconquerable forces, that we are not only encouraged to go on, but feel a great consciousness of added power because we have touched omnipotence, and gotten a glimpse of the great source of things.

Faith is that something within us which does not guess, but knows.

It knows because it sees what our coarser selves, our animal natures can not see. It is the prophet within us, the divine messenger appointed to accompany man through life to guide and direct and encourage him.

Enter upon to-morrow with a clean slate and a free mind. Don't be mortgaged to the past, and never look back.

There is no use in castigating yourself for not having done better.

Form a habit of expelling from your mind thoughts or suggestions which call up unpleasant subjects or bitter memories, and which have a bad influence upon you.

… experience, a loss or any misfortune, we let the tearing-down thought, doubt, fear, despondency, like a bull in a china shop, tear through our mentalities, perhaps breaking up and destroying the work of years of building up, and we have to start all over again.

We work and live like the frog in the well; we climb up only to fall back, and often lose all we gain.

One of the worst things that can ever happen to a person is to get it into his head that he was born unlucky and that the Fates are against him. There are no Fates, outside of our own mentality. We are our own Fates.

One of the worst things that can ever happen to a person is to get it into his head that he was born unlucky and that the Fates are against him.

There are no Fates, outside of our own mentality. We are our own Fates.

We control our own destiny.

There is no fate or destiny which puts one man down and another up.

"It is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." He only is beaten who admits it.

The man is inferior who admits that he is inferior, who voluntarily takes an inferior position because he thinks the best things were intended for somebody else.

Resolve that you will go no further in that direction. Stop and face the other way, and go the other way.

Every time you think you are a failure, it helps you to become one, for your thought is your life pattern and you can not get away from it.

You can not get away from your ideals, the standard which you hold for yourself, and if you acknowledge in your thought that you are a failure, that you can't do anything worth while, that luck is against you, that you don't have the same …

This is not always easy, but it is possible to everybody. It requires only skilful thinking, the forming of the right thought habits.

The best way to keep out darkness is to keep the life filled with light

; to keep out discord, keep it filled with harmony; to shut out error, keep the mind filled with truth; to shut out ugliness, contemplate beauty and loveliness; to get rid of all that is sour and unwholesome, contemplate all that is sweet and wholesome.

to keep out discord, keep it filled with harmony; to shut out error, keep the mind filled with truth; to shut out ugliness, contemplate beauty and loveliness; to get rid of all that is sour and unwholesome, contemplate all that is sweet and wholesome.

Opposite thoughts can not occupy the mind at the same time.

No matter whether you feel like it or not, just affirm that you must feel like it, that you will feel like it, that you do feel like it, that you are normal and that you are in a position to do your best.

I am myself a part of the great creative, sustaining principle of the universe, because my real, divine self and my Father are one"—what a revolution would come to earth's toilers!

The greatest thing that can be said of a man, no matter how much he has achieved, is that he has kept his record clean.

Why is it that, in spite of the ravages of time, the reputation of Lincoln grows larger and his character means more to the world every year? It is because he kept his record clean, and never prostituted his ability nor gambled with his reputation.

Where, in all history, is there an example of a man who was merely rich, no matter how great his wealth, who exerted such a power for good, who was such a living force in civilization, as was this poor backwoods boy?

What a powerful illustration of the fact that character is the greatest force in the world!

A man assumes importance and becomes a power in the world just as soon as it is found that he stands for something; that he is not for sale;

No man ever really does a great thing who loses his character in the process.

No substitute has ever yet been discovered for honesty. Multitudes of people have gone to the wall trying to find one.

Our prisons are full of people who have attempted to substitute something else for it.

you are not the man you pretend to be." The consciousness of not being genuine, not being what others think him to be, robs a man of power, honeycombs the character, and destroys self-respect and self-confidence.

When Lincoln was asked to take the wrong side of a case he said, "I could not do it. All the time while talking to that jury I should be thinking, 'Lincoln, you're a liar, you're a liar,' and I believe I should forget myself and say it out loud."

Character as capital is very much underestimated by a great number of young men. They seem to put more emphasis upon smartness, shrewdness, long-headedness, cunning, influence, a pull, than upon downright honesty and integrity of character.

Is it not remarkable that so many men should work so hard to establish a business on an unreliable, flimsy foundation, instead of building upon the solid masonry of honest goods, square dealing, reliability?

A name is worth everything until it is questioned; but when suspicion clings to it, it is worth nothing.

There is nothing in this world that will take the place of character. There is no policy in the world, to say nothing of the right or wrong of it, that compares with honesty and square dealing.

It is true that he may reach something. He may get money, but is that success? The thief gets money, but does he succeed?

Is it any honester to steal by means of a long head than by means of a long arm?

It is very much more dishonest, because the victim is deceived and then robbed—a double crime.

Man is a watch, wound up at first but never Wound up again: once down he's down forever. HERRICK.

Old age seizes upon an ill-spent youth like fire upon a rotten house.

—SOUTH.

Old age seizes upon an ill-spent youth like fire upon a rotten house.—SOUTH.

Last Sunday a young man died here of extreme old age at twenty-five.

—JOHN NEWTON.

Last Sunday a young man died here of extreme old age at twenty-five.—JOHN NEWTON.

If you will not hear Reason, she'll surely rap your knuckles.

—POOR RICHARD'S SAYINGS.

"Oh! oh! ah!" exclaimed Franklin; "what have I done to merit these cruel sufferings?" "Many things," replied the Gout; "you have eaten and drunk too freely, and too much indulged those legs of yours in your indolence."

Nature seldom presents her bill on the day you violate her laws.

But if you overdraw your account at her bank, and give her a mortgage on your body, be sure she will foreclose. She may loan you all you want; but, like Shylock, she will demand the last ounce of flesh.

Nature gives to him that hath. She shows him the contents of her vast storehouse, and bids him take all he wants and be welcome. But she will not let him keep for years what he does not use.

Use or lose is her motto.

Every atom we do not utilize this great economist snatches from us.

She will replace a clear complexion with muddy hues and sallow spots. She will take away the elastic step, the luster from the eye.

Don't expect to have health for nothing. Nothing in this world worth anything can be had for nothing.

Health is the prize of a constant struggle.

It is our own fault that even one-tenth of them get a respectable living. What a commentary upon our modern American civilization that three hundred and fifty thousand people in this country die annually from absolutely preventable diseases!

Seneca said, "The gods have given us a long life, but we have made it short."

Few people know enough to become old. It is a rare thing for a person to die of old age. Only three or four out of a hundred die of anything like old age.

Nothing else is so important to man as the study and knowledge of himself, and yet he knows less of himself than he does of the beasts about him.

The human body is the great poem of the Great Author.

Not to learn how to read it, to spell out its meaning, to appreciate its beauties, or to attempt to fathom its mysteries, is a disgrace to our civilization.

What a price mortals pay for their ignorance, let a dwarfed, half-developed, one-sided, short-lived nation answer.

"A brilliant intellect in a sickly body is like gold in a spent swimmer's pocket."

Often, from lack of exercise, one side of the brain gradually becomes paralyzed and deteriorates into imbecility. How intimately the functions of the nervous organs are united! The whole man mourns for a felon.

and the body is returned in the morning as fresh and good as new. The American honey does not always pay for the sting.

Labor is the eternal condition on which the rich man gains an appetite for his dinner, and the poor man a dinner for his appetite

; but the habit of constant, perpetual industry often becomes a disease.

Professional men often sacrifice everything that is valuable in life for the sake of reputation, influence, and money. Business men sacrifice home, family, health, happiness, in the great struggle for money and power.

The American prize, like the pearl in the oyster, is very attractive, but is too often the result of disease.

Charles Linnaeus, the great naturalist, so exhausted his brain by over-exertion that he could not recognize his own work, and even forgot his own name. Kirk White won the prize at Cambridge, but it cost him his life.

"Then you have lost just two years," replied he, gravely.

"You must begin with his grandmother," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, when asked a similar question.

"At the mouth of the Mississippi," says Beecher, "how impossible would it be to stay its waters, and to separate from each other the drops from the various streams that have poured in on either side,—of the Red River, the Arkansas, the Ohio, and the …

yet how much more impossible would it be when character is the river, and habits are the side-streams!"

"We sow an act, we reap a habit; we sow a habit, we reap a character."

While correct habits depend largely on self-discipline, and often on self-denial, bad habits, like weeds, spring up, unaided and untrained, to choke the plants of virtue and as with Canada thistles, allowed to go to seed in a fair meadow, we may have "one day's …

but it is a great comfort to think that, when one is young, it is almost as easy to acquire a good habit as a bad one, and that it is possible to be hardened in goodness as well as in evil.

Take good care of the first twenty years of your life, and you may hope that the last twenty will take good care of you.

A writer on the history of Staffordshire tells of an idiot who, living near a town clock, and always amusing himself by counting the hour of the day whenever the clock struck, continued to strike and count the hour correctly without its aid, when at …

"Even thought is but a habit."

Heredity is a man's habit transmitted to his offspring.

A special study of hereditary drunkenness has been made by Professor Pellman of Bonn University, Germany.

Out of hundreds of replies from successful men as to the probable cause of failure, "bad habits" was in almost every one.

How easy it is to be nobody; it is the simplest thing in the world to drift down the stream

, into bad company, into the saloon; just a little beer, just a little gambling, just a little bad company, just a little killing of time, and the work is done.

A reward of five hundred thousand dollars was offered to any man who would stop it; but it was too late—it could not be done.

Beware of "small sins" and "white lies."

A man of experience says: "There are four good habits,—punctuality, accuracy, steadiness, and dispatch. Without the first, time is wasted; without the second, mistakes the most hurtful to our own credit and interest, and those of others, may be committed;

Quick, quick! Pull for your lives! Pull till the blood starts from the nostrils, and the veins stand like whip-cords upon the brow! Set the mast in the socket! hoist the sail—ah! ah! it is too late! Shrieking, cursing, howling, blaspheming, over you go.

"Thousands go over the rapids every year, through the power of habit, crying all the while, 'When I find out that it is injuring me, I will give it up!'"

A community is often surprised and shocked at some crime. The man was seen on the street yesterday, or in his store, but he showed no indication that he would commit such crime to-day.

Lustily they plied the oars, but after another hour's work still found themselves no farther advanced. By this time they had become tolerably sober; and one of them, looking over the side, said to the other,

"Why, Tom, we haven't pulled the anchor up yet."

And thus it is with those who are anchored to something of which they are not conscious, perhaps, but which impedes their efforts, even though they do their very best.

This is nature's wonderful economy to release the brain from the drudgery of individual acts, and leave it free to command all its forces for higher service.

Man's life-work is a masterpiece or a botch, according as each little habit has been perfectly or carelessly formed.

It is said that if you invite one of the devil's children to your home the whole family will follow. So one bad habit seems to have a relationship with all the others.

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" He referred to the ancient custom of binding a murderer face to face with the dead body of his victim, until suffocated by its stench and dissolution.

"I would give a world, if I had it," said an unfortunate wretch, "to be a true man; yet in twenty-four hours I may be overcome and disgraced with a shilling's worth of sin."

"How shall I a habit break?" As you did that habit make. As you gathered, you must lose; As you yielded, now refuse. Thread by thread the strands we twist, Till they bind us, neck and wrist;

Even from the body's purity the mind Receives a secret sympathetic aid. THOMSON.

Purity is a broad word with a deep meaning.

It denotes far more than superficial cleanness. It goes below the surface of guarded speech and polite manners to the very heart of being. "Out of the heart are the issues of life."

Old memories of evil things like specters may peer in at the windows and mow and gibber at him, but they can not touch him unless he gives them power, unless he unlocks the door of his heart and bids them enter.

As the lotus flower grows out of the mud, so may purity and beauty spring up from even the vilest past if we but will it so.

As purity is power so impurity is impotence, weakness, degeneracy. Many a man goes on in an impure career thinking himself secure, thinking his secret hidden. But impurity, like murder, will out.

There is a saying of Scripture which is absolutely scientific: "Be sure your sin will find you out."

Note this; it is not that your sin will be found out, but your sin will find you out.

Sin recoils on the sinner, and of all sins that surely find us out, the sins against purity are the most certain to bring retribution.

General Grant, lifting his eyes from the paper which he was reading, and looking the officer squarely in the eye, said slowly and deliberately:

"No, but there are gentlemen present."

"A great trait of Grant's character," said George W. Childs, "was his purity. I never heard him express an impure thought, or make an indelicate allusion in any way or shape.

Do not imagine that impurity can be hidden! One may as well expect to have consumption or any other deadly disease, and to look and appear healthy, as to be impure in thought and mind, and to look and appear manly and noble souled.

Character writes its record in the flesh.

"No, no, these are not trifles," said George Whitefield, when a friend asked why he was so particular to bathe frequently, and always have his linen scrupulously clean; "a minister must be without spot, even in his garments."

The best and holiest is barred to the stained man. Impurity makes it impossible for him to appreciate what is pure and fine, dulls his finer perceptions, and he is not given the place where only pure and fine things are.

There can be no such thing as an impure gentleman. The two words contradict each other.

A gentleman must be pure. He need not have fine clothes. He may have had few advantages. But he must be pure and clean.

Keep innocency! Never lose it; if it be gone, you have lost from the casket the most precious gift of God. The first purity of imagination, of thought, and of feeling, if soiled, can be cleansed by no fuller's soap.

If a harp be broken, art may repair it; if a light be quenched, the flame may kindle it; but if a flower be crushed, what art can repair it?

If an odor be wafted away, who can collect or bring it back?

"When modesty is once extinguished, it knows not a return."

The highest happiness must always come from the exercise of the best thing in us.

When you find happiness in anything but useful work, you will be the first man or woman to make the discovery.

The highest happiness must always come from the exercise of the best thing in us.

When you find happiness in anything but useful work, you will be the first man or woman to make the discovery.

If you take an inventory of yourself at the very outset of your career you will find that you think you are going to find happiness in things or in conditions.

… his part in the world, for every time he sees the poor laboring people who are working for him, who are working everywhere, he is constantly reminded of his meanness in shifting upon others what he is able to do and ought to do himself.

Idleness is the last place to look for happiness.

Idleness is like a stagnant pool. The moment the water ceases to flow, to work, to do something, all sorts of vermin and hideous creatures develop in it. It becomes torpid and unhealthy giving out miasma and repulsive odors.

When people get money they often stop growing because they depend upon the money instead of relying upon their own inherent resources.

Rich people suffer from their indulgences more than poor ones suffer from their hardships.

A great many rich people die with liver and kidney troubles which are effected both by eating and drinking. The kidneys are very susceptible to the presence of alcohol.

Another would see in his money a more comfortable home for his aged parents. To another this money would suggest all sorts of dissipation. Some would see books and leisure for self-improvement, a trip abroad.

We all wear different colored glasses and no two see life with the same tint.

Some find their present happiness in coarse dissipation; others in a quiet nook with a book. Some find their greatest happiness in friends, in social intercourse;

Some find their greatest happiness in friends, in social intercourse; others seek happiness in roving over the earth, always thinking that the greatest enjoyment is in another day, in another place, a little further on, in the next room, or to-morrow, or in another country.

To many people, happiness is never where they are, but almost anywhere else.

Most people lose sight of the simplicity of happiness. They look for it in big, complicated things. Real happiness is perfectly simple. In fact, it is incompatible with complexity. Simplicity is its very essence.

Happiness is made up of very simple ingredients. It flees from the complex life. It evades pomp and show.

The heart would starve amid the greatest luxuries.

Simple joys and the treasures of the heart and mind make happiness.

Do not flatter yourself that you can be really happy unless you are useful.

Happiness and usefulness were born twins. To separate them is fatal.

It is as impossible for a human being to be happy who is habitually idle as it is for a fine chronometer to be normal when not running.

Recently a rich young man was asked why he did not work. "I do not have to," he said.

"Do not have to" has ruined more young men than almost anything else.

The fact is, Nature never made any provision for the idle man. Vigorous activity is the law of life; it is the saving grace, the only thing that can keep a human being from retrograding.

It is a friend of harmony, of truth, of beauty, of affection, of simplicity.

Multitudes of men have made fortunes, but have murdered their capacity for enjoyment in the process.

How often we hear the remark, "He has the money, but can not enjoy it."

The life that would be complete; that would be sweet and sane, as well as strong, must be ornamented, softened, and enriched by a love of the beautiful.

There is a lack in the make-up of a person who has no appreciation of beauty, who does not thrill before a great picture or an entrancing sunset, or a glimpse of beauty in nature.

Savages have no appreciation of beauty. They have a passion for adornment, but there is nothing to show that their esthetic faculties are developed. They merely obey their animal instincts and passions.

One day she asked him what it was that made him so good lately. Pointing to the picture of the Sistine Madonna the boy said,

"How can a feller do bad things when she's looking at him?"

Character is fed largely through the eye and ear.

One day she asked him what it was that made him so good lately. Pointing to the picture of the Sistine Madonna the boy said, "How can a feller do bad things when she's looking at him?"

Character is fed largely through the eye and ear.

The thousand voices in nature of bird and insect and brook, the soughing of the wind through the trees, the scent of flower and meadow, the myriad tints in earth and sky, in ocean and forest, mountain and hill, are just as important for the …

If you take no beauty into your life through the eye or the ear to stimulate and develop your esthetic faculties, your nature will be hard, juiceless, and unattractive.

Beauty is a quality of divinity, and to live much with the beautiful is to live close to the divine.

"The more we see of beauty everywhere; in nature, in life, in man and child, in work and rest, in the outward and the inward world, the more we see of God (good)."

… live in the higher brain are under-developed, and the coarser instincts which dwell in the lower brain close to the brute faculties are over-developed, man must pay the penalty of animality and will lack appreciation of all that is finest and most beautiful in life.

"The vision that you hold in your mind, the ideal that is enthroned in your heart—this you will build your life by, this you will become."

It is the quality of mind, of ideals, and not mere things, that make a man.

Everywhere we go there are a thousand things to educate the best there is in us.

Every sunset, landscape, mountain, hill, and tree has secrets of charm and beauty waiting for us.

In every patch of meadow or wheat, in every leaf and flower, the trained eye will see beauty which would ravish an angel. The cultured ear will find harmony in forest and field, melody in the babbling brook, and untold pleasure in all Nature's songs.

After all, there is no beauty like that produced by a lovely character. Neither cosmetics, massage, nor drugs can remove the lines of prejudice, selfishness, envy, anxiety, mental vacillation that are the results of wrong thought habits.

Beauty is from within.

If every human being would cultivate a gracious mentality, not only would what he expressed be artistically beautiful, but also his body. There would indeed be grace and charm, a superiority about him, which would be even greater than mere physical beauty.

Antoine Berryer says truly: "

There are no ugly women. There are only women who do not know how to look pretty.

"

In fact, if they could get rid of their sensitiveness and be natural, they could, with persistent effort, make up in sprightliness of thought, in cheerfulness of manner, in intelligence, and in cheery helpfulness, what they lack in grace and beauty of face.

We admire the beautiful face, the beautiful form, but we love the face illumined by a beautiful soul.

We love it because it suggests the ideal of the possible perfect man or woman, the ideal which was the Creator's model.

A great scientist tells us that there is no natural object in the universe which, if seen as the Master sees it, coupled with all its infinite meaning, its utility and purpose, is not beautiful.

Beauty is God's handwriting.

Just as the most disgusting object, if put under a magnifying glass of sufficient power, would reveal beauties undreamed of, so even the most unlovely environment, the most cruel conditions, will, when viewed through the glass of a trained and disciplined mind, show something of …

Go about it with the same determination that you would to make money or to learn a trade. There is a divine hunger in every normal being for self-expansion, a yearning for growth or enlargement. Beware of stifling this craving of nature for self-unfoldment.

Man was made for growth.

It is the object, the explanation, of his being.

Yet the eye was intended for a great educator. The brain is a prisoner, never getting out to the outside world. It depends upon its five or six servants, the senses, to bring it material, and the larger part of it comes through the eye.

The man who has learned the art of seeing things looks with his brain.

I know a father who is training his boy to develop his powers of observation.

he must put his finger on the pulse of the great busy world and feel its throbbing life. He must be a part of it, or there will be some lack in his life.

A single talent which one can use effectively is worth more than ten talents imprisoned by ignorance.

Education means that knowledge has been assimilated and become a part of the person. It is the ability to express the power within one, to give out what one knows, that measures efficiency and achievement. Pent-up knowledge is useless.

Many students have reaped a thousand per cent on their educational investment. It has saved them years of drudgery and has shortened wonderfully the road to their goal.

Wisdom will not open her doors to those who are not willing to pay the price in self-sacrifice, in hard work.

Her jewels are too precious to scatter before the idle, the ambitionless.

No man can utilize his normal power who dissipates his nervous energy in useless anxiety. Nothing will sap one's vitality and blight one's ambition or detract from one's real power in the world more than the worrying habit.

Work kills no one, but worry has killed vast multitudes.

It is not the doing things which injures us so much as the dreading to do them—not only performing them mentally over and over again, but anticipating something disagreeable in their performance.

… like a haunted animal from the cradle to the grave, the victim of real or imaginary fears, not only his own, but those reflected upon him from the superstitions, self-deceptions, sensory illusions, false beliefs, and concrete errors of the whole human race, past and present."

Most of us are foolish children, afraid of our shadows, so handicapped in a thousand ways that we can not get efficiency into our life work.

A man who is filled with fear is not a real man. He is a puppet, a mannikin, an apology of a man.

It is always, everywhere, an unmitigated curse. Although there is no reality in fear, no truth behind it, yet everywhere we see people who are slaves to this monster of the imagination.

Shut off your mental steam when you quit work.

Lock up your business when you lock up your office or factory at night. Don't drag it into your home to mar your evening or to distress your sleep.

You can not afford to allow the enemies of your peace and happiness to etch their black pictures deeper and deeper into your consciousness.

Many people lie down to sleep as the camels lie down in the desert, with their packs still on their backs.

They do not seem to know how to lay down their burdens, and their minds go on working a large part of the night.

But when they retire, the whole brood of troubling thoughts and worry ghosts fill the mind with horrors. They grow older instead of younger, as they would under the influence of sound, refreshing sleep.

Mental discord saps vitality, lessens courage, shortens life.

It does not pay to indulge in violent temper, corroding thoughts, mental discord in any form. Life is too short, too precious, to spend any part of it in such unprofitable, soul-racking, health-destroying business.

The wear and tear upon your nervous system and your health takes too much out of you.

Be at peace with all the world at least once every twenty-four hours.

You can not afford to allow the enemies of your happiness and your manhood or womanhood to etch their miserable images deeper and deeper into your life and character as you sleep.

If you make a habit of clearing the mind every night of its enemies, of driving them all out before you go to sleep, your slumber will be undisturbed by hideous dreams and you will rise refreshed, renewed.

Clean your mental house before retiring.

Throw out everything that causes you pain, everything that is disagreeable, undesirable; all unkind thoughts of anger, hatred, jealousy, all selfish, uncharitable thoughts. Do not allow them to print their black hideous pictures upon your mind.

No one can become prosperous while he really expects or half expects to remain poor.

We tend to get what we expect, and to expect nothing is to get nothing.

When every step you take is on the road to failure, how can you hope to arrive at the success goal?

As long as you radiate doubt and discouragement, you will be a failure. If you want to get away from poverty, you must keep your mind in a productive, creative condition. In order to do this you must think confident, cheerful, creative thoughts.

The model must precede the statue. You must see a new world before you can live in it.

If the people who are down in the world, who are side-tracked, who believe that their opportunity has gone forever, that they can never get on their feet again, only knew the power of reversal of their thought, they could easily get a new start.

You must have faith. No man can make a fortune while he is convinced that he can't. The "I can't" philosophy has wrecked more careers than almost anything else.

Confidence is the magic key that unlocks the door of supply.

I never knew a man to be successful who was always talking about business being bad. The habit of looking down, talking down, is fatal to advancement.

I never knew a man to be successful who was always talking about business being bad. The habit of looking down, talking down, is fatal to advancement.

The Creator has bidden every man to look up, not down. He made him to climb, not to grovel.

There is no providence which keeps a man in poverty, or in painful or distressing circumstances.

are dogged by fear and anxiety so that they can not take any peace; that their lives are one battle with want; that they are always under the harrow of worry, always anxious.

There is something wrong when people are so worried and absorbed in making a living that they can not make a life.

We were made for happiness, to express joy and gladness, to be prosperous. The trouble with us is that we do not trust the law of infinite supply, but close our natures so that abundance cannot flow to us.

Would not everybody say that the man was a failure? Would they not laugh at the idea of his conquering anything?

Poverty itself is not so bad as the poverty thought.

It is the conviction that we are poor and must remain so that is fatal.

The worst did not need correcting or repressing, because the expulsive power of a stronger affection drove out of the nature or discouraged the development of vicious tendencies which, in the absence of a great love, might have become dominant and ruined the life.

Love is a healer, a life-giver, a balm for our hurts.

All through the Bible are passages which show the power of love as a healer and life-lengthener. "With long life will I satisfy him," said the Psalmist, "because he hath set his love upon me."

It is the great balm for all that blights happiness or breeds discontent, a sovereign panacea for malice, revenge, and all the brutal propensities. As cruelty melts before kindness, so the evil passions and their antidote in sweet charity and loving sympathy.

The mother is the supreme shaper of life and destiny.

Many a mother's love for her children has undoubtedly stayed the ravages of some fatal disease.

This mother has a way of drawing the troubled child out of discord into the zone of perpetual harmony. If he is swayed by jealousy, hatred, or anger, she applies the love solvent, the natural antidote for these passion poisons.

She knows that scolding a child when he is already suffering more than he can bear is like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.

Our orphan asylums give pathetic illustration of how quickly the child mind matures and ages prematurely without the uplift and enrichment of the mother love, the mother sympathy,—parental protection and home influence.

We ought to have a great deal of charity for those whose early lives have been soaked in evil, criminal, impurity thoughts.

The minds of children are like the sensitive plates of a photographer, recording every thought or suggestion to which they are exposed.

These early impressions make up the character and determine the future possibility.

It is characteristic of such youths that they distrust their own ability and are very easily discouraged or encouraged. It is a sin to shake or destroy a child's self-confidence, to reflect upon his ability or to suggest that he will never amount to much.

These discouraging words, like initials cut in the sapling, grow wider and wider with the years, until they become great ugly scars in the man.

Most parents do not half realize how impressionable children are, and how easily they may be injured or ruined by discouragement or ridicule. Children require a great deal of appreciation, praise, and encouragement. They live upon it. It is a great tonic to them.

Encourage them in their play, for they are now in their fun age. Many parents ruin the larger, completer, fuller development of their children by repressing them, destroying their childhood, their play days, by trying to make them adults.

There is nothing sadder in American life than the child who has been robbed of its childhood.

Children are little animals, sometimes selfish, often cruel, due to the fact that some parts of their brain develop faster than others, so that their minds are temporarily thrown out of balance, sometimes even to cruel or criminal tendencies, but later the mind becomes more …

"At last he did the Big Thing, and people praised him, and acclaimed him, and nobody thought of the quiet, insignificant little woman in the background, who had been the real power behind the throne.

Sometimes even the king himself forgets who was the kingmaker.

"

"

You can not make a clod shine. You can not make a mollusk aspire.

You must have the material to work with, to produce results.

Many men spend more money on expensive caskets, flowers, and emblems of mourning than they ever spent on their poor, loving, self-sacrificing mothers for many years while alive.

Men who, perhaps, never thought of carrying flowers to their mothers in life, pile them high on their coffins.

Who can ever depict the tragedies that have been enacted in the hearts of American mothers, who have suffered untold tortures from neglect, indifference, and lack of appreciation?

"'O memories that bless—and burn! Oh mighty gain and bitter loss! I kiss each bead and strive at last to learn To kiss the cross, Sweet heart, To kiss the cross.'"

No man worthy of the name ever neglects or forgets his mother.

I have an acquaintance, of very poor parentage, who had a hard struggle to get a start in the world;

This is one of her inalienable rights which no man should dare interfere with. If he does, he deserves the unhappiness which is likely to come to his home.

A wife should neither be a drudge nor a dressed-up doll; she should develop herself by self-effort, just as her husband develops himself.

She should not put herself in a position where her inventiveness, resourcefulness, and individuality will be paralyzed by lack of motive.

my exile may be at the fiat of the first long-suffering man who enters judgement against me; for the flesh that lies nearest my heart, some Shylock may be dusting his scales and whetting his knife.

Every man is needy who spends more than he has; no man is needy who spends less.

I may so ill manage that, with five thousand a year, I purchase the worst evils of poverty,—terror and shame; I may so well manage my money that, with one hundred pounds a year, I purchase the best blessings of wealth,—safety and respect."

Libraries are no longer a luxury, but a necessity.

A home without books and periodicals and newspapers is like a house without windows.

Children learn to read by being in the midst of books; they unconsciously absorb knowledge by handling them. No family can now afford to be without good reading.

It is related that Henry Clay's mother furnished him with books by her own earnings at the washtub.

Wear threadbare clothes and patched shoes if necessary, but do not pinch or economize on books.

If you can not give your children an academic education you can place within their reach a few good books which will lift them above their surroundings, into respectability and honor.

Most of us manage somehow to find time for the things we love. If one is hungry for knowledge, if one yearns for self-improvement, if one has a taste for reading, he will make the opportunity.

Where the heart is, there is the treasure. Where the ambition is, there is time.

It takes not only resolution but also determination to set aside unessentials for essentials, things pleasant and agreeable to-day for the things that will prove best for us in the end. There is always temptation to sacrifice future good for present pleasure;

Such reading takes the spring and snap out of the mental faculties, weakens the intellect, and makes the brain torpid and incapable of grappling with great principles and difficult problems.

What you get out of a book is not necessarily what the author puts into it, but what you bring to it.

If the heart does not lead the head; if the thirst for knowledge, the hunger for a broader and deeper culture, are not the motives for reading, you will not get the most out of a book.

But they might just as well expect to become athletes by eating at every opportunity. It is even more necessary to think than to read.

Thinking, contemplating what we have read, is what digestion and assimilation are to the food.

Some of the biggest fools I know are always cramming themselves with knowledge. But they never think. When they get a few minutes' leisure they grab a book and go to reading.

But they might just as well expect to become athletes by eating at every opportunity. It is even more necessary to think than to read. Thinking, contemplating what we have read, is what digestion and assimilation are to the food.

Some of the biggest fools I know are always cramming themselves with knowledge.

But they never think. When they get a few minutes' leisure they grab a book and go to reading. In other words, they are always eating intellectually, but never digesting their knowledge or assimilating it.

Those who live more quietly do not have so many distracting influences, and consequently think more deeply and reflect more than others. They do not read so much but they are better readers.

You should bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of any subject, as you take an ax to the grindstone; not for what you get from the stone, but for the sharpening of the ax.

The greatest advantage of books does not always come from what we remember of them, but from their suggestiveness, their character-building power.

"

It is a grand thing to read a good book—it is a grander thing to live a good life—and in the living of such life is generated the power that defies age and its decadence.

"

Read, read, read all you can. But never read a bad book or a poor book. Life is too short, time too precious, to spend it in reading anything but the best.

Any book is bad for you, the reading of which takes away your desire for a better one.

Many people still hold that it is a bad thing for the young to read works of fiction.

"The boy who is permitted to saturate his mind with stories of 'battle, murder, and sudden death,' is fitting himself, as the records of our juvenile courts show, for the penitentiary or perhaps the gallows. No man can handle pitch without defilement.

We may choose our books, but we can not choose their effects.

We may plant the vine or sow the thistle, but we can not command what fruit each shall bear. We may loosely select our library, but by and by it will fit us close as a glove.

Realizing this, it is safe to say that there is not a theory of the philosopher, a hope of the reformer, or a prayer of the saint which does not eventually take form in a story.

The novel has wings, while logic plods with a staff.

In the hour it takes the metaphysician to define his premises, the story-teller has reached the goal—and after him tumbles the crowd tumultuous."

. . . . . . 300,000 "Audrey," by Miss Johnston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165,000 "The Helmet of Navarre," by Bertha Runkle . . . . . . 100,000

The great use in reading is for self-discovery.

Inspirational, character-making, life-shaping books are the main thing.

There are books that have raised the ideals and materially influenced entire nations.

Who can estimate the value of books that spur ambition, that awaken slumbering possibilities?

Are we ambitious to associate with people who inspire us to nobler deeds? Let us then read uplifting books, which stir us to make the most of ourselves.

They are a curse; what we need is noble men. National loss comes as the penalty for frivolous boyhood and girlhood, that gains no moral stamina from wholesome books."

If youths learn to feed on the thoughts of the great men and women of all times, they will never again be satisfied with the common or low; they will never again be satisfied with mediocrity; they will aspire to something higher and nobler.

A day which is passed without treasuring up some good thought is not well spent. Every day is a leaf in the book of life. Do not waste a day any more than you would tear out leaves from the book of life.

A day which is passed without treasuring up some good thought is not well spent.

Every day is a leaf in the book of life. Do not waste a day any more than you would tear out leaves from the book of life.

The Bible, such manuals as "Daily Strength for Daily Needs," such books as Professor C. C. Everett's "Ethics for Young People"; Lucy Elliott Keeler's "If I Were a Girl Again"; "Beauty through Hygiene," by Dr. Emma F. Walker, such essays as Robert L.