“It is not what we would like to do in this life,” says Clarence E. Flynn
in ‛The Riverside,’ “but what we really get done that counts.”
“Heaven in its mercy may take the will for the deed, but human destiny in
its justice never does.”
“What the world of men needs is not kindly thoughts which never come to
expression nor the good will which never reaches the form of action. What
it needs is the helpful word and the real deed of kindness. It is for the
concrete service that the hearts of men rise up in thankfulness.”
“And, in the working out of our own careers, progress is not made by the
dream which never become more than a dream nor the purpose which was never
carried to fulfillment. ‛We rise by the things that are under our feet,’
and push forward by the virtue of the things really accomplished.
Fate, like men, does not ask how we have felt, but what we have done.”
“Upon the record of our own characters and personalities we may get
credits for feelings and our purposes, even though they were all smothered
silence and inaction, but these things do not enter into the record formed
by the impressions we make upon our age. It is a record of deed, and it
stands when the eyes of this world have ceased to see any other.”
“A thought or a feeling of aspiration, however great or strong, is not
meant to be an end within itself. It is a means to the end of its actual
realization in action and accomplishment.”
“A heavenly vision is given only to shed light on a way to perform a
heavenly deed. A great thought is given only to make possible a great
work. A noble feeling is God’s way of pointing to a noble mission.
Columbus did not have a conviction that a new world lay beyond the sea for
naught. The conviction led the way to the fact and its important result.
It has been so in countless similar instances.”
“It is what men do that lives after them. There is an earthly side to
immortality. The deeds done in the flesh make an epitaph which
cannot deceive.”