“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.