HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
CHAPTER III
THE JOY OF DOING
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.—Emerson. Half-way, half-hearted doings never amount to much. Battles are not won with flags at half-mast. No, they are run up to the very tops of their standards and are waved as far toward the heavens as is possible.
Gentle words, quiet words, are, after all, the most powerful words.—Washington Gladden. If we lack enthusiasm we are almost as certain to fail of achieving an end as a locomotive engine that lacks steam is of climbing the grade. Even a listless, lackadaisical spirit may get on all right so long as the path of life is all on a level or is down grade, but when it comes to hill-climbing and the real experiences of life that serve to develop character, it is likely to give up the contest and surrender the prize it might win to other and more earnest competitors.
Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.—Thoreau. "If you would get the best results, do your work with enthusiasm as well as fidelity," says Dr. Lyman Abbott. "Only he can who thinks he can!" says Orison Swett Marden. "The world makes way only for the determined man who laughs at barriers which limit others, at stumbling-blocks over which others fall. The Nothing will be mended by complaints.—Johnson. man who, as Emerson says, ’hitches his wagon to a star,’ is more likely to arrive at his goal than the one who trails in the slimy path of the snail."
Peace! Peace! How sweet the word and tender! Its very sound should wrangling discord still.—Nathan Haskell Dole. Every girl knows that the girl friends whom she loves best are the ones who are alive to the world about them and who feel an enthusiasm in the tasks and privileges that confront them.
Enthusiasm is the breeze that fills the sails and sends the ship gliding over the happy waves. It is the joy of doing things and of seeing that things are well done. It gives to work a thoroughness and a delicious zest and to play a whole-souled, health-giving delight.
The Spartans did not inquire how many the enemy are, but where they are.—Agis II. Only they who find joy in their work can live the larger and nobler life; for without work, and work done joyously, life must remain dwarfed and undeveloped. "If you would have sunlight in your home," writes Stopford Brooke, "see that you have work in it; that you work yourself, and set others to work. Nothing makes moroseness and The man in whom others believe is a power, but if he believes in himself he is doubly powerful.—Willis George Emerson. heavy-heartedness in a house so fast as idleness. The very children gloom and sulk if they are left with nothing to do. If all have their work, they have not only their own joy in creating thought, in making thought into form, in driving on something to completion, but they have the joy of ministering to the movement of the whole house, when they feel that The secrecy of success is constancy to purpose.—Disraeli. what they do is part of a living whole. That in itself is sunshine. See how the face lights up, how the step is quickened, how the whole man or child is a different being from the weary, aimless, lifeless, complaining being who had no work! It is all the difference between life and death."