KEEP A-TRYING
Do not hang a dismal picture on your wall, and do not deal with sables and glooms in your conversations.—Emerson.
Say “I will!” and then stick to it—
That’s the only way to do it.
Don’t build up a while and then
Tear the whole thing down again.
Fix the goal you wish to gain,
Then go at it heart and brain,
And, though clouds shut out the blue,
Do not dim your purpose true
With your sighing.
Stand erect, and, like a man,
Know “They can who think they can!”
Keep a-trying.
Pray for a short memory as to all unkindnesses—Spurgeon.
Do to-day thy nearest duty.—Goethe.
Had Columbus, half seas o’er,
Turned back to his native shore,
Men would not, to-day, proclaim
Round the world his deathless name.
So must we sail on with him
Past horizons far and dim,
Till at last we own the prize
That belongs to him who tries
With faith undying;
Own the prize that all may win
Who, with hope, through thick and thin
Keep a-trying.
WATT DISCOVERING THE CONDENSATION OF STEAM
[CHAPTER IV]
OVER AND UNDERDOING
If you will not hear reason, she will surely rap your knuckles.—Franklin.
Learn to do, without overdoing. Too much striving for success is as bad as too little.
Bishop Hall says: “Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.”
The only true conquests—those which awaken no regrets—are those obtained over our ignorance.—Napoleon.
“You have too much respect upon the world,” Shakespeare tells us. “They lose it that do buy it with much care.”
Do not cram books into your head until you crowd pleasant thinking out of it.
A moderately informed man standing firmly on his two good legs is a much superior man to the wise professor who is unable to leave his bed.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise high with the occasion.—Abraham Lincoln.
“What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” And what does it profit him if he shall become a multi-millionaire and lose his health of mind or body?
Success that costs more than it is worth is failure.
If you want to be missed by your friends, be useful.—Robert E. Lee.
Make haste slowly. Be ambitious but not foolish.
Learn a few things and learn them well. He who grasps much holds little. Upon investigating the fund of information possessed by a great many young persons it has been found that the matter with it is the “smatter.”
Herbert Spencer says the brains of precocious children cease to develop after a certain age, like a plant that fails to flower.
The man of grit carries in his presence a power which spares him the necessity of resenting insult.—Whipple.
“Those unhappy children who are forced to rise too early in their classes are conceited all the forenoon of their lives and stupid all the afternoon,” says Professor Huxley. “The keenness and vitality which should have been stored up for the sharp struggle of practical existence have been washed out of them by precocious mental debauchery, by book-gluttony and lesson-bibbing. Their faculties are worn out by the strain put upon their callow brains, and they are demoralized by worthless, childish triumphs before the real tasks of life begin.”
If you would create something you must be something.—Goethe.
Carlyle’s words upon this subject are worth remembering: “The richer a nature, the harder and slower its development. Two boys were once members of a class in the Edinburgh Grammar School: John, ever trim, precise, and a dux; Walter, ever slovenly, confused, and a dolt. In due time John became Baillie John, of Hunter Square, and Walter became Sir Walter Scott, of the universe. The quickest and completest of all vegetables is the cabbage.”
Manners must adorn knowledge and smooth its way through the world.—Chesterfield.
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.—Spurgeon.
We all know that there is a happy medium between too much preciseness and slovenliness; between laziness and an unwarranted degree of mental activity; between ignorance and an intellect ground to an edge too fine to carve its way through a hard world.
The least error should humble, but we should never permit even the greatest to discourage us.—Bishop Potter.
“It is now generally conceded on all hands,” says Professor Mathews, “that the mind has no right to build itself up at the expense of the body; that it is no more justifiable in abandoning itself without restraint to its cravings, than the body in yielding itself to sensual indulgence. The acute stimulants, the mental drams, that produce this unnatural activity or overgrowth of the intellect, are as contrary to nature, and as hurtful to the man, as the coarser stimulants that unduly excite the body. The mind, it has been well said, should be a good, strong, healthy feeder, but not a glutton. When unduly stimulated, it wears out the mechanism of the body, like friction upon a machine not lubricated, and the growing weakness of the physical frame nullifies the power it incloses.”
The most manifest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.—Montaigne.
The foundations for a splendid working constitution are laid during boyhood.
You are laying yours now.
Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they may see twice as much as they say.—Colton.
Is it to be a good, firm, durable foundation that will stand through all the years to come? Or is it being built of faulty material and in a manner so careless that in the by and by when, at great pains and expense you have built your life structure upon it, you will find it untenable or so unstable that it will require a great share of your time and attention to keep it patched up so that you can continue to dwell within it?
The important thing in life is to have a great aim, and to possess the aptitude and perseverance to attain it.—Goethe.
Are you playing and working with moderation or are you so thoughtless that you sometimes, in a single hour, inflict wrongs upon your health and your constitution, the sorry effects of which you cannot overcome during your lifetime?
It may be possible that you are studying too hard at school.
Method is the hinge of business, and there is no method without order and punctuality.—Hannah More.
I know that there are many who will smile at the suggestion that the average American schoolboy sticks too closely to his books, but I am sure that such is frequently the case.
The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.—Emerson.
Sometimes the boy’s parents and teachers are eager to have their boy “show off” to the best advantage possible. They urge him, crowd him, compel him to develop as rapidly as he can. In their eagerness to secure results they employ the formulas that require the least possible time for completing the important task of