We owe more to Columbus than to Isabella; to Descartes than to Louis XIV.; to Bacon than to Elizabeth; to Pestalozzi than to Napoleon; to Goethe than to Blücher; to Pasteur than to Bismarck. If thou wouldst be persuaded and convinced, persuade and convince thyself. Be thy aim not increase of happiness, but of knowledge, wisdom, power, and virtue; and thou shalt, without thinking of it, find thyself also happy. Character is formed by effort, resistance, and patience. If necessity is the mother of invention, suffering is the mother of high moods and great thoughts. Poets have sung to ease their sorrow-burdened or love-tortured hearts; and the travail of souls yearning with ineffable pain for truth has led to the nearest view of God. Wisdom is the child of suffering, as beauty is the child of love. If a truth discourages thee, thou art not yet ripe for it; for thee it is not yet wholly true. Work not like an ox at the plough, but like a setter afield; not because thou must, but because thou takest delight in thy task. Only they have come of age who have learned how to educate themselves. Education, like life, works from within outward: the teacher loosens the soil and removes the obstacles to light and warmth and moisture; but growth comes of the activity of the soul itself.
A new century will not make new men; but if, in truth, it be a new century, it will be made so by the deeper thought and diviner love of men and women. Let the old tell what they have done, the young what they are doing, and fools what they intend to do.
The power to control attention, as a good rider holds his horse to the road and to his gait, is a result of education; and when it is acquired other things become easy.
Let not poverty or misfortune or insult or flattery or success, O seeker after truth and beauty! turn thee from thy divine task and purpose. Pardon every one except thyself, and put thy trust in God and in thyself. "If I buy thee," asked one of a Spartan captive, "and treat thee well, wilt thou be good?"—"I will," he replied, "if thou buy me or not; or if, having bought me, thou treat me ill."
If there be anything of worth in thee, it will make thee strong and contented; it is so good for thee to have it that thou canst easily forget it is unrecognized by others.
If all sufferings, sorrows, and disappointments had been left out of thy life, wouldst thou be more or less than thou art? Less worthy, doubtless, and less wise. In these evils, then, there is something good. If thou couldst but bear this always in mind, thou shouldst be better able to suffer pain, whether of body or soul. There are things thou hast greatly desired which, had they been given thee, would make thee wretched. The wiser thou growest, the better shalt thou understand how little we know what is for the best.
"Had I but lived!" cried Obermann. And a woman of genius replied: "Be consoled, O Obermann! Hadst thou lived, thou hadst lived in vain." So it is. In the end we neither regret that pleasures have been denied us, nor feel that those we have enjoyed were a gain unless they are associated with the memory of high faith and thought and virtuous action. He who is careful to fill his mind with truth and his heart with love will not lack for retreats in which he may take refuge from the stress and storms of life. Noise, popularity, and buncombe: onions, smoke, and bedbugs.
Be thy own rival, comparing thyself with thyself, and striving day by day to be self-surpassed. If thy own little room is well lighted the whole world is less dark. If thou art busy seeking intellectual and moral illumination and strength, thou shalt easily be contented. Higher place would mean for thee less liberty, less opportunity to become thyself. The secret of progress lies in knowing how to make use, not of what we have chosen, but of what is forced upon us. To occupy one's self with trifles weans from the habit of work more effectually than idleness. Perfect skill comes of talent, study, and exercise; and the study and exercise must continue through the whole course of life. To cease to learn is to lose freshness and the power to interest. We lack will rather than strength; are able to do more and better than we are inclined to do; and say we can not because we have not the courage to say we will not. The law of unstable equilibrium applies to thee, as to whatever has life. Thou canst not remain what thou art, but must rise or fall. The body is under the sway of physical law, but the progress of the mind is left in a large measure to the play of free will. If thou willest what thou oughtest, thou canst do what thou willest; for obligation cannot transcend ability. Happy are they who from earliest youth understand the meaning of duty, and hearken to the stern but all-reasonable voice of this daughter of God, the smile upon whose face is the fairest thing we know.
He who willingly accepts the law of moral necessity is free; for in thus accepting it he transcends it, and is self-determined; while he who rebels against this law sinks to a lower plane of being than the properly human, and becomes the slave of appetite and passion. Duty means sacrifice; it is a turning from the animal to the spiritual self; from the allurements of the world of manifold sensation—from ease, idleness, gain, and pleasure—to the high and lonely regions, where the command of conscience speaks in the name of God and of the nature of things. Forget thyself and do thy best, as unconscious of vain-glorious thoughts as though thou wert a wind or a stream, an impersonal force in the service of God and man. Obey conscience, and laugh in the face of death. Convince thyself that the best thing for thee is to know truth and to make truth the law of thy life. Let this faith subordinate all else, as it is, indeed, faith in reason and in God. Abhorrence of lies is the test of character. Hold fast by what thou knowest to be true, not doubting for a moment because thou canst not reconcile it with other truth. Somewhere, somehow, truth will be matched with truth, as love mates heart with heart.
A man's word is himself, his reason, his conscience, his faith, his love, his aspiration. If it is false or vain or vile, he is so. It is the expression of life as it has come to consciousness within him. It is the revelation of quality of being; it is of the man himself, his sign and symbol, the form and mould and mirror of his soul.