Duty determines destiny. Destiny which results from duty performed may bring anxiety and perils, but never failure and dishonor.—William McKinley.
When quite young, the poet, Cowley, happened upon a copy of Spenser’s “Faerie Queen”, which chanced to be nearly the only book at hand, and becoming interested he read it carefully and often, until, enchanted thereby, he irrevocably determined to be a poet. The effect this same poem had upon the Earl of Southampton when he first read it is worth remembering. As soon as the book was finished Spenser took it to this noble patron of poets and sent it up to him. The earl read a few pages and said to a servant, “Take the writer twenty pounds.” Still he read on, and presently he cried in rapture, “Carry that man twenty pounds more.” Entranced he continued to read, but presently he shouted: “Go turn that fellow out of the house, for if I read further I shall be ruined!”
Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.—Franklin.
Dr. Franklin tells us that the chance perusal of De Foe’s “Essay on Projects” influenced the principal events and course of his life. The reading of the “Lives of the Saints” caused Ignatius Loyola to form the purpose of creating a new religious order,—which purpose eventuated in the powerful society of the Jesuits.
It is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.—Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Dickens’s earliest and best literary work, the “Pickwick Papers,” was begun at the suggestion of a publisher of a magazine for whom Dickens was doing some job-work at the time. He was asked to write a serial story to fit some comic pictures which chanced to be in the publisher’s possession.
Blessed is he who has found his work. From the heart of the worker rises the celestial force, awakening him to all nobleness, to all knowledge.—Thomas Carlyle.
While yet a mere boy Scott chanced upon a copy of Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient Poetry,” which he read and re-read with great interest. He purchased a copy as soon as he could get the necessary sum of money and thus was early instilled into his soul a taste for poetry in the writing of which he was destined to attain such eminence. The translation of “Götz von Berlichingen” was Scott’s first literary effort and this work, Carlyle says, had a very large and lasting influence on the great novelist’s future career. In his opinion this translation was “the prime cause of ‘Marmion’ and the ‘Lady of the Lake,’ with all that has followed from the same creative hand. Truly a grain of seed that had lighted in the right soil. For if not firmer and fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any other tree; and all nations of the earth are still yearly gathering of its fruit.”
Nothing that is excellent can be wrought suddenly.—Jeremy Taylor.
Character is centrality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset.—Emerson.