An act of yours is not simply the thing you do, but it is also the way you do it.—Phillips Brooks.
Of the multitudes of boys who are to become the world’s victors, he will succeed best who earliest in life learns carefully to observe and to appreciate the character of his surroundings, and to build into the structure of his manhood the high and abiding influences that come to his hands. As one of our great thinkers given to deep introspection has so impressively said, life, itself, may be compared to a building in the course of construction. It rises slowly, day by day, through the years. Every new lesson we learn lays a block on the edifice which is rising silently within us. Every experience, every touch of another life on ours, every influence that impresses us, every book we read, every conversation we have, every act of our commonest days adds to the invisible building.
Always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man’s darkened room like a beautiful firefly, whose happy convolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles.—Arthur Helps.
Not in war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, is there any happiness to be found—only in kindly peace, fruitful and free.—Ruskin.
You must help your fellow-men; but the only way you can help them is by being the noblest and the best man that it is possible for you to be.—Phillips Brooks.
The humblest subscriber to a mechanics’ institute has easier access to sound learning than had either Solomon or Aristotle, yet both Solomon and Aristotle lived the intellectual life.—Hammerton.
Plenty of good, wholesome play and healthful recreation, every boy needs and must have if he means to round out a fine physical and moral development, but idleness and indifference, evils that creep into the hours that are given up to something that is neither work nor play, must never be tolerated. “The ruin of most men dates from some vacant hour,” says Hillard. “Occupation is the armor of the soul; and the train of Idleness is borne up by all the vices. I remember a satirical poem, in which the devil is represented as fishing for men and adapting his baits to the taste and temperament of his prey; but the idler, he said, pleased him most, because he bit the naked hook. To a young man away from home, friendless and forlorn in a great city, the hours of peril are those between sunset and bedtime; for the moon and stars see more of evil in a single hour than the sun in his whole day’s circuit. The poet’s visions of evening are all compact of tender and soothing images. They bring the wanderer to his home, the child to his mother’s arms, the ox to his stall, and the weary laborer to his rest. But to the gentle-hearted youth who is thrown upon the rocks of a pitiless city, ‘homeless amid a thousand homes,’ the approaching evening brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation, which comes down upon the spirit like darkness upon the earth. In this mood his best impulses become a snare to him; and he is led astray because he is social, affectionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. If there be a young man thus circumstanced within the sound of my voice, let me say to him, that books are the friends of the friendless, and that a library is the home of the homeless. A taste for reading will always carry you into the best possible society, and enable you to converse with men who will instruct you by their wisdom, and charm you with their wit; who will soothe you when fretted, refresh you when weary, counsel you when perplexed, and sympathize with you at all times.”
The man who tries and succeeds is one degree less of a hero than the man who tries and fails and yet goes on trying.—Ellen Thornycroft Fowler.
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.—Phillips Brooks.
To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.—Henri Frederic Amiel.