better than he who has none at all.--_Samuel Smiles._
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments that
stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when
you have done things in a spirit of love.--_Henry Drummond._
And let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth
as he carries.--_Emerson._
As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is
needful for you--in a book, or a friend, or, best of all, in your
own thoughts, the eternal thought speaking in your thought.--_George
Macdonald._
Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life!
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray.
--_Byron._
Displays of moral excellence, truths set forth in living actions, are
multiplied as they are shown. Men are won by what they approve. They
are led to imitate what they admire. Laudable actions never stand
alone. They go from eye to eye, from heart to heart, creating fresh
copies of their immortal worth.--_Dr. Frothingham._
Wouldst shape a noble life? Then cast
No backward glances toward the past,
And though somewhat be lost and gone,
Yet do thou act as one new-born;
What each day needs, that shalt thou ask,
Each day will set its proper task.
--_Goethe._
We should think just as though our thought were visible to all
about us. Real character is not outward conduct, but quality of
thinking.--_Henry Wood._
It is a much shallower and more ignoble occupation to detect faults
than to discover beauties.--_Carlyle._
Whatever you wish to accomplish, be willing to do, and to commence your
work at once, right where you find yourself, and decide that you do not
want anything better to begin with than the conditions that surround
you, for God is with you.--_Raja Yoga._
No one is respectable who is not doing his best.--_Horace Fletcher._
The broad-minded see the truth in different religions; the
narrow-minded see only their differences.--_Chinese Proverb._
The dawn is not distant,
Nor is the night starless;
Love is eternal!
God is still God, and
His faith shall not fail us;
Christ is eternal!
--_Longfellow._
Let us be like the bird for a moment perched
On a frail branch while he sings;
Though he feels it bend, yet he sings his song,
Knowing that he hath wings.
--_Victor Hugo._
Let us love so well
Our work shall still be sweeter for our love,
And still our love be sweeter for our work.
--_Elizabeth Barrett Browning._
“If you have gracious words to say
Oh, give them to our hearts to-day,
But if your words will cause us sorrow,
Pray keep them till the last to-morrow.”
High thoughts and noble in all lands
Help me: my soul is fed by such.
But ah, the touch of life and hands,
The human touch!
Warm, vital, close, life’s symbols dear,
These need I most, and now, and here.
--_Richard Burton._
To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led
by permanent ideals,--that is what keeps a man patient when the world
ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.--_Dr.
A. Peabody._
The test of an enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves
behind.--_Jean Paul._
No education is complete, nor, indeed, of great permanent value,
that does not teach how to live contentedly and to economize nerve
energy.--_Mary Roberts Smith._
I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal
beauty, that give us the like exhilaration, and refine us like that.
But they must be marked by fine perception, they must always show
self-control. Then they must be inspired by the good heart.--_Emerson._
Patience! have faith and thy prayer will be answered.--_Longfellow._
“Sentiment cannot do duty for humanity.”
The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming
dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.--_Longfellow._
We find in life exactly what we put into it.--_Emerson._
Every duty we omit obscures some truth we should have known.--_Ruskin._
From Socrates to Browning the thinkers and poets have all been
emancipators. In the end, this bringing of new light into the minds of
the world will be counted their chief service.--_Hamilton W. Mabie._
By all means use sometimes to be alone.
Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear.
Dare to look in thy chest--for ’tis thine own,--
And tumble up and down what thou findest there.
Who cannot rest till he good fellows finde,
He breaks up house, turns out of doors his minde.
--_George Herbert._
Personal happiness is almost synonymous with personal interests;
the wider the range of the latter, the higher is the degree of
happiness.--_Lilian Whiting._
Thoughts of courage, and hope, and highest expectation growing
habitual, may lift out and up many a weary pilgrim.--_L. Purington._
“The ornaments of a home are the guests who frequent it.”
Do not waste a minute--not a second--in trying to demonstrate to others
the merit of your own performance. If your work does not vindicate
itself, you cannot vindicate it.--_Thomas Wentworth Higginson._
To go about moping, depressed, blue, out of spirits in general, is to
exist, but not to live. It is the condition of a mollusk, and unworthy
a human being. Worry is a state of spiritual corrosion. A trouble
either can be remedied, or it cannot. If it can be, then set about
it; if it cannot be, dismiss it from your consciousness, or bear it
so bravely that it may become transfigured to a blessing.--_Lilian
Whiting._
“It is easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the man who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong;
For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with years,
And the smile that comes with the praises of earth
Is the smile that shines through tears.”
I think we should treat our minds as innocent children whose guardian
we are--be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their
attention.--_Henry D. Thoreau._
Gather roses while they blossom; to-morrow is not to-day! Allow no
moment to escape; to-morrow is not to-day.--_Gleim._
Cheapness of nature can be redeemed only from one source--that of
the invisible power on the divine side of life. By seeking this in
silence and concentration for a little time each day all refinement and
loveliness and charm can be achieved. It is the magic of life.--_The
World Beautiful, Lilian Whiting._
I have wished to teach a single lesson, true alike to all men--the
lesson of the saving of time.--_David Starr Jordan._
There are so many things--best things--that can only come when youth is
past, that it may well happen to many of us to find ourselves happier
and happier to the last.--_George Eliot._
This world is no blot for us
Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good.
--_Browning._
Poetry frequents and keeps habitable those upper chambers of the mind
that open toward the sun’s rising.--_James Russell Lowell._
The individual who cultivates grievances, and who is perpetually
exacting explanations of his assumed wrongs, can only be ignored, and
left to the education of time and of development.... One does not argue
or contend with the foul miasma that settles over stagnant water; one
leaves it and climbs to a higher region, where the air is pure and the
sunshine fair.--_Lilian Whiting._
“Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world.”
Let not future things disturb thee, for thou wilt come to them if it
shall be necessary, having with thee the same reason which thou now
usest for present things.--_Marcus Aurelius._
We hear much said of “environment.” We need to realize that environment
should never be allowed to make the man, but that man should always,
and always can, condition the environment. When we realize this, we
will find that many times it is not necessary to take ourselves out of
any particular environment, because we may yet have a work to do there;
but by the very force we carry with us, we can so affect and change
matters that we will have an entirely new set of conditions in an old
environment.--_Ralph Waldo Trine._
FABLE.
The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel,
And the former called the latter “Little Prig”;
Bun replied,
“You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I’m not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I’ll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.”
--_Emerson._
O the paralyzing effect of fear of evil! It surely doth make “cowards
of us all.” It makes us pygmies where we might be giants, were we only
free from it.--_H. Emilie Cady._
As you grow old, guard against the tendency to live more coarsely, to
relax in your discipline. Obey your finest instincts. Be fastidious to
the extreme of sanity.--_Thoreau._
“Then let us smile when skies are gray,
And laugh at stormy weather,
And sing life’s lonesome times away:
So worry and the dreariest day
Will find an end together.”
Character is not only written in the face, expressed in conduct and
language, but is sent forth as a thought atmosphere.--_Dresser._
Others shall
Take patience, courage, to their heart and hand
From thy hand and thy heart and thy brave cheer,
And God’s grace fructify through thee to all.
--_Elizabeth Barrett Browning._
To love one soul for its beauty and grace and truth is to open the
way to appreciate all beautiful and true and gracious souls, and to
recognize spiritual beauty wherever it is seen.--_H. Black._
We must alter for the better always and unceasingly. Nature seems to be
at rest only because she is perpetually renewed. The soul enjoys repose
on the same terms.--_De Ravignon._
God gives us power to bear all the sorrows of His making: but He does
not give the power to bear the sorrows of our own making, which the
anticipation of sorrow most assuredly is.--_Ian MacLaren._
Ever laughs the sunlight in our eyes at morning and at noon,
Comes the pure, cool wind, to whisper past our cheek its cheery tune,
Just to tell us Earth is beautiful, and at the quiet even
Every star looks down lest we forget that earth is crowned with
Heaven.
--_E. R. Sill._
“The whole world unites in pushing us the way we have really made up
our mind to go.”
Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination,
love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially
upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals,
where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of
all.--_Henry Drummond._
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute!
What you can do, or think you can, begin it!
--_Goethe._
’Tis better to live rich than to die rich.--_Dr. Johnson._
It seems to me there is no maxim for a noble life like this: Count
always your highest moments your truest moments. Believe that in the
time when you were the greatest and most spiritual man, then you were
your truest self.--_Phillips Brooks._
Fine society is the graceful, genial, sympathetic intercourse of fine
souls.--_Lilian Whiting._
The stream of content must flow from ourselves, taking its source
from a deliberate disposition to learn what is good, and a determined
resolution to seek for and enjoy it, however small the portion may
be.--_Zimmermann._
When you have a number of disagreeable duties to perform, always do the
most disagreeable first.--_Josiah Quincy._
God says, live deeply, earnestly in the present, and the spirit of all
the ages shall come and reveal itself to you.--_Phillips Brooks._
To try too hard to make people good is one way to make them worse. The
only way to make them good, is to be good, remembering well the beam
and the mote.--_George Macdonald._
“Ask God to give thee skill
For comfort’s art,
That thou may’st consecrated be,
And set apart
Unto a life of sympathy!
For comforters are needed much
Of Christ-like touch.”
For he that wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about
A silent court of justice in his breast,
Himself the judge and jury, and himself
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned.
--_Tennyson._
The sense of humor is the oil of life’s engine. Without it, the
machinery creaks and groans. No lot is so hard, no aspect of things is
so grim, but it relaxes before a hearty laugh.--_G. S. Merriam._
The happiest heart that ever beat
Was in some quiet breast,
That found the common daylight sweet
And left to Heaven the rest.
--_John Vance Cheney._
“Of all work,” said the Bishop of Exeter, “that produces results,
nine-tenths must be drudgery. There is no work, from the highest to the
lowest, which can be done well by any man who is unwilling to make that
sacrifice.”
It is a hard thing to close up a discourse and to cut it short, when
you are once in, and have a great deal more to say. There is nothing
wherein the strength and breeding of a horse is so much seen as in a
round, graceful, and sudden stop.--_Montaigne._
Greatly begin! though thou have time
But for a line, be that sublime--
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
--_James Russell Lowell._
Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never
begun.--_Christina Rossetti._
When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice on others, it is
usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to
suspect our own.--_Colton._
Sorrow is the mere rust of the soul. Activity will cleanse and brighten
it.--_Dr. Johnson._
Efforts to be permanently useful, must be uniformly joyous--a
spirit all sunshine--graceful from very gladness, beautiful because
bright.--_Carlyle._
Read the philosophers, and learn how to make life happy; seeking useful
precepts and brave and noble words which may become deeds.--_Seneca._
“I pray the prayer of Pluto old;
God make thee beautiful within,
And let thine eye the good behold
In everything save sin.”
Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real
strength.--_St. Francis de Sales._
Oh! square thyself for use; a stone that may
Fit in the wall is left not in the way.
--_R. C. French._
The best piece of good fortune which can come to one is opportunity
for intimacy with a leader, in whatever line of life he may be
engaged.--_Edward Everett Hale._
God has delivered yourself to your care, and says: “I had no fitter to
trust than you.”--_Epictetus._
I gazed on the throng of hurrying faces,
Some in tatters and some in laces,
And I said to myself, “How will it be,
When the soul of each is at last set free?”
For she who is plainest and most forlorn,
May, by her beauty, God’s heaven adorn;
While she who is fairest of form and face,
May, near God’s beautiful, look out of place.
So I said, “How, my soul, will it be with thee?”--_Laura Barker._
Half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They
think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others.
It consists in giving and in serving others.--_Henry Drummond._
What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are;
and to teach taste is inevitably to form character.--_Ruskin._
One feast of holy days the crest
I, though no Churchman, love to keep;
All-Saints--the unknown good that rest
In God’s still memory folded deep.
--_Lowell._
Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.--_Horace Mann._
Of nothing may we be more sure than this, that if we cannot sanctify
our present lot, we could sanctify no other. Our heaven and our
Almighty Father are there or nowhere.--_Dr. James Martineau._
“Whether in large or small affairs, there must be perpetual adjustment.
Neither men nor women, more than our finely strung musical instruments,
can escape the need of constant tuning.”
As nothing reveals character like the company we like and keep,
so nothing foretells futurity like the thoughts over which we
brood.--_Newell Dwight Hillis._
Simply do the best you know, then trust. He who seeks to live by
the Spirit and who cares above all for that, will not be without
guidance.--_Horatio W. Dresser._
Though to-day may not fulfill
All thy hopes, have patience still;
For perchance to-morrow’s sun
Sees thy happier day begun.
--_P. Gerhardt._
There are beautiful things far out in the years:
Can we not bear bravely some burdens and fears?
--_From Dream Land Sent, Lilian Whiting._
The years
Have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons, none
Wiser than this, to spend in all things else,
But of old friends to be most miserly.
--_Lowell._
“It is better to endure all the frowns and anger of the greatest on
earth, than to have an uneasy conscience within our breast. O, let the
bird in the soul be always kept singing whatsoever one may suffer.”
The men and women that are lifting the world upward and onward are
those who encourage more than criticise.--_Elizabeth Harrison._
I ought not to pronounce judgment on a fellow creature until I know
all that enters into his life; until I can measure all the forces of
temptation and resistance; until I can give full weight to all the
facts in the case. In other words, I am never in a position to judge
another.--_Hamilton W. Mabie._
What I am thinking and doing day by day is resistlessly shaping my
future--a future in which there is no expiation except through my own
better conduct. No one can save me. No one can live my life for me. If
I am wise I shall begin to-day to build my own truer and better world
from within.--_H. W. Dresser._
I am an enemy to long explanation; they deceive either the maker or the
hearer, generally both.--_Goethe._
He who is false to present duty, breaks a thread in the loom, and
will find a flaw, when he may have forgotten the cause.--_Henry Ward
Beecher._
“When the outlook is not good, try the uplook.”
Every advance we make toward the realization of the truth of the
permanence and immanence of law, brings us nearer to Him, who is the
First Cause of all law and all phenomena.--_David Starr Jordan._
When in the mid-day march we meet
The outstretched shadows of the night,
The promise, how divinely sweet,
“At eventide, it shall be light.”
--_Alice Cary._
You are never to complain of your birth, your training, your
employments, your hardships; never to fancy that you could be
something if only you had a different lot and sphere assigned you.
God understands his own plan, and He knows what you want a great deal
better than you do yourself.--_H. Bushnell._
Soar on and up, it’s God projecting as it goes,
Expanding into love and joy and peace--but not repose.
--_W. W. Story._
“If you would have a happy family life, remember two things: in matters
of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the
current.”
Learn not only by a comet’s rush, but by a rose’s blush.--_Browning._
When the Kingdom is once found, life ceases to be a plodding, and
becomes an exaltation, an ecstasy, a joy.--_R. W. Trine._
Immortality will come to such as are fit for it; and he who would be a
great soul in the future must be a great soul now.--_Emerson._
There is no kind of bondage which life lays upon us that may not yield
both sweetness and strength; and nothing reveals a man’s character more
fully than the spirit in which he bears his limitations.--_Hamilton W.
Mabie._
The vision of things to be done may come a long time before the
way of doing them appears clear. But woe to him who distrusts the
vision.--_Jenkin Lloyd Jones._
“Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain;
And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning,
Take heart with the day and begin again.”
In order to manage children well, we must borrow their eyes and their
hearts, see and feel as they do, and judge them from their own point of
view.
I pray God to make parents reasonable.--_Eugenie de Guerin._
The finest culture comes from the study of men in their best
moods.--_Plutarch._
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations; I cannot
reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them,
and try to follow where they lead.--_Louisa May Alcott._
No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you,
keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own
consent.--_Channing._
Contentment comes neither by culture nor by wishing; it is
reconciliation with our lot, growing out of an inward superiority to
our surroundings.--_Rev. J. K. McLean._
At times it is only necessary to rest one’s self in silence for a few
minutes, in order to take off the pressure and become wonderfully
refreshed.--_Dresser._
Touchiness, when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the
inward disposition.
It is self-love inflamed to the acute point.--_Drummond._
It is not written, blessed is he that feedeth the poor, but he that
considereth the poor. A little thought and a little kindness are often
worth more than a great deal of money.--_Ruskin._
For life, with all its yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear,--believe the aged friend,--
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love;
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;
And that we hold henceforth to the uttermost
Such prize despite the envy of the world,
And having gained truth, keep truth, that is all.
--_Robert Browning._
Oh, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray
for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks!
Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a
miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of
life which has come in you by the grace of God.--_Phillips Brooks._
What does your anxiety do? It does not empty to-morrow, brother, of its
sorrow; but ah! it empties to-day of its strength. It does not make you
escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with it if it comes.--_Ian
MacLaren._
If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want,
what you like, what respect people ought to pay you; and then to you
nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch, you will
make misery for yourself out of everything which God sends you: you
will be as wretched as you choose.--_Charles Kingsley._
But on God’s dial-plate of time,
’Tis never late to him who stands
Self-centred in a trust sublime,
With mastered force and thinking hands.
--_Minot J. Savage._
“Look for the light that the shadow proves.”
Oh, the little birds sang East,
and the little birds sang West,
And I smiled to think God’s
greatness flowed around our incompleteness,
Round our restlessness, His rest.--_E. B. Browning._
Be thrifty, but not covetous: therefore give
Thy need, thine honor, and thy friend his due.
Never was scraper brave man. Get to live;
Then live, and use it: else it is not true
That thou hast gotten. Surely use alone
Makes money not a contemptible stone.
--_George Herbert._
“I do not deem that it matters not
How you live your life below;
It matters much to the heedless crowd
That you see go to and fro;
For all that is noble and high and good
Has an influence on the rest,
And the world is better for everyone
Who is living at his best.”
Let us beware of losing our enthusiasm. Let us ever glory in something,
and strive to attain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our
interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life.--_Phillips
Brooks._
A high purpose is magnetic and attracts rich resources.--_Lilian
Whiting._
Be firm: one certain element in luck
Is genuine, solid old Teutonic pluck.
--_Oliver Wendell Holmes._
Not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more
difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting
moment.--_George Augustus Sala._
It is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the
day, if one really sets about it.--_Dinah Maria Mulock._
So I will trudge with heart elate,
And feet with courage shod,
For that which men call chance and fate
Is the handiwork of God.
--_Alice Cary._
“This world is a difficult world indeed,
And people are hard to suit,
And the man who plays on the violin
Is a bore to the man with a flute.”
No man can be provident of his time who is not prudent in the choice of
his company.--_Jeremy Taylor._
Every great man is always being helped by everybody; for his gift is to
get good out of all things and all persons.--_Ruskin._