Thou must be true thyself
If thou the truth wouldst teach;
Thy soul must overflow if thou
Another's soul wouldst reach.
It needs the overflow of heart
To give the lips full speech.
Think truly, and thy thoughts
Shall the world's famine feed;
Speak truly, and each word of thine
Shall be a fruitful seed;
Live truly, and thy life shall be
A great and noble creed.
--Horatius Bonar.
Keep pure thy soul!
Then shalt thou take the whole
Of delight;
Then, without a pang,
Thine shall be all of beauty whereof the poet sang--
The perfume and the pageant, the melody, the mirth,
Of the golden day and the starry night;
Of heaven and of earth.
Oh, keep pure thy soul!
--Richard Watson Gilder.
Somebody did a golden deed;
Somebody proved a friend in need;
Somebody sang a beautiful song;
Somebody smiled the whole daylong;
Somebody thought, "'Tis sweet to live."
Somebody said, "I'm glad to give";
Somebody fought a valiant fight;
Somebody lived to shield the right;
Was it you?
Then draw we nearer, day by day,
Each to his brethren, all to God;
Let the world take us as she may,
We must not change our road;
Not wondering, though in grief, to find
The martyr's foe still keep her mind;
But fixed to hold Love's banner fast,
And by submission win at last.
--John Keble.
Knowing, what all experience serves to show,
No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.
--James Russell Lowell.
Be no imitator; freshly act thy part;
Through this world be thou an independent ranger;
Better is the faith that springeth from thy heart
Than a better faith belonging to a stranger.
--From the Persian.
None but one can harm you,
None but yourself who are your greatest foe,
He that respects himself is safe from others,
He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
And some innative weakness there must be
In him that condescends to victory
Such as the _present_ gives, and cannot wait--
Safe in himself as in a fate.
--James Russell Lowell.
To be the thing we seem,
To do the thing we deem
Enjoined by duty;
To walk in faith, nor dream
Of questioning God's scheme
Of truth and beauty.
To live by law, acting the law we live by without fear,
And, because right is right, to follow right,
Were wisdom, in the scorn of consequence.
--Alfred Tennyson.
Though love repine, and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply:
"'Tis man's perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Whatever you are--be that;
Whatever you say--be true;
Straightforwardly act--
Be honest--in fact
Be nobody else but you.
If thou _hast_ something, bring thy goods;
A fair exchange be thine!
If thou _art_ something, bring thy soul,
And interchange with mine.
--Schiller, tr. by Edward Bulwer Lytton.
However others act toward thee,
Act thou toward them as seemeth right;
And whatsoever others be,
Be thou the child of love and light.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
--William Shakespeare.
My time is short enough at best,
I push right onward while I may;
I open to the winds my breast,
And walk the way.
--John Vance Cheney.
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves are triumph and defeat.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
It becomes no man to nurse despair,
But in the teeth of clenched antagonisms
To follow up the worthiest till he die.
--Alfred Tennyson.