DO IT NOW!
The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures and directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking, and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answers.—William Penn.
If you have a task worth doing,
Do it now!
In delay there’s danger brewing,
Do it now!
Don’t you be a “by-and-byer”
And a sluggish patience-trier;
If there’s aught you would acquire,
Do it now!
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.—Franklin.
If you’d earn a prize worth owning,
Do it now!
Drop all waiting and postponing,
Do it now!
Say, “I will!” and then stick to it,
Choose your purpose and pursue it,
There’s but one right way to do it,
Do it now!
Don’t flinch, flounder, fall over, nor fiddle, but grapple like a man. A man who wills it can go anywhere, and do what he determines to do.—John Todd.
Do all the good you can, and make as little fuss as possible about it.—Dickens.
All we have is just this minute,
Do it now!
Find your duty and begin it,
Do it now!
Surely you’re not always going
To be “a going-to-be”; and knowing
You must some time make a showing
Do it now!
GARFIELD AS A CANAL BOY
[CHAPTER VI]
CHEERFULNESS
Joy is not in things, it is in us.—Wagner.
Let us suppose that you must go into partnership for life with some other boy, as the world is about to go into partnership with you, would you not wish him to have, first of all, a cheerful disposition?
Money is good for nothing unless you know the value of it by experience.—P. T. Barnum.
Has it ever occurred to you that the world entertains the same thought regarding yourself?
It is easy to understand why a partnership, the members of which pleasantly pull together, is more likely to thrive than is one wherein they are always complaining of each other and sadly prophesying failure.
The world, as your partner, will be toward you what you are toward it.
The day is immeasurably long to him who knows not how to value and use it.—Goethe.
Smile, once in a while,
’Twill make your heart seem lighter;
Smile, once in a while,
’Twill make your pathway brighter;
Life’s a mirror; if we smile,
Smiles come back to greet us;
If we’re frowning all the while,
Frowns forever meet us.
It is a maxim with me not to ask what, under similar circumstances, I would not grant.—Washington.
Next to virtues, the fun in this world is what we can least spare.—Strickland.
“As you cannot have a sweet and wholesome abode unless you admit the air and sunshine freely into your rooms,” says James Allen, “so a strong body and a bright, happy, or serene countenance can result only from the free admittance into the mind of thoughts of joy and good will and serenity. There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body; there is no comforter to compare with good will for dispersing the shadows of grief and sorrow. To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion and envy, is to be confined in a self-made prison-hole. But to think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all—such unselfish thoughts are the very portals of heaven; and to dwell day by day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to the possessor of such thoughts.”
I resolved that, like the sun, so long as my day lasted, I would look on the bright side of everything.—Thomas Hood.
Says Robert Louis Stevenson: “A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is radiating a focus of good will; and his or her entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.”
Ideas go booming through the world louder than cannon. Thoughts are mightier than armies. Principles have achieved more victories than horsemen or chariots.—Paxton.
“It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor,” says Dickens.
Give but a smile to sorry men,
They’ll give it, bettered, back again.
Method is like packing things in a box; a good packer will get in half as much again as a bad one.—Cecil.
Bovee very truly says, “The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards.”
If it required no brains, no nerve, no energy, no work, there would be no glory in achievement.—Bates.
“I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies,” said Sydney Smith, “but am otherwise very happy.” How often those with whom we meet are sorely afflicted and yet their cheerful faces do not betray their troubles. They are too considerate of our happiness to sadden our minds with their woes. Those whom we deem fretful without sufficient excuse, if indeed any excuse justifies the habit of fretting, may be much more sorely afflicted than we think they are. There is a world of sympathetic truth in that old saying