Honest labor bears a lovely face.—Dekker.
The gods give nothing really beautiful without labor and diligence.—Xenophon.
The key to pleasure is honest work. All dishes taste good with that sauce.—H. R. Haweis.
Work is as necessary for peace of mind as for health of body.—Lord Avebury.
A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.—Thoreau. Sir John Lubbock has said: "I cannot, however, but think that the world would be better and brighter if our teachers would dwell on the duty of Happiness, as well as the happiness of Duty, for we ought to be as cheerful as we can, if only because to be happy ourselves is the most effectual contribution to the happiness of A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.—Milton.others."
Surely we cannot include among good habits the habit of making those about us unhappy. Hence it is that they who are careless of the state of mind into which Happiness is the natural flower of duty.—Phillips Brooks. they throw those about them are not good mannered. While it is but simple kindness to allow our friends to sympathize in the great griefs that may overtake us, it is not kindness for us to be forever stirring them with all the real or fancied ills with which we can regale them. Either extreme is more or By wisdom wealth is won; but riches purchased wisdom yet for none.—Bayard Taylor. less absurd and unwarranted. Perhaps, as a rule, we thrust our troubles quite too willingly upon others. On the other hand, some of the peoples of the Orient we deem to be so ludicrously polite in matters of this nature as to almost arouse our mirth.
It is surely better to pardon too much than to condemn too much.—George Eliot. An English writer in speaking of the Japanese says: "There must really have been a double portion of politeness bestowed upon these people who in the deepest domestic grief would smile and smile, so that a guest in the home might not be burdened with their sorrow. The habit is in striking contrast with the weeping and wailing, the mourning streamers, the hatbands, plumes, palls, black To be a strong hand in the dark to another in the time of need, to be a cup of strength to a human soul in a crisis of weakness, is to know the glory of life.—Hugh Black. chargers, and funeral hearses with which we struggle to stir the envy, if not the hearts of all beholders!"
In Japan, so we are told, manners are included in the public teaching of morality. Among our western peoples our public school boys would deem it strange It is not the result of our acts that makes them brave and noble, but the acts themselves and the unselfish love that moved us to do them.—R. L. Stevenson. if a master gave them an hour’s instruction in the correct manner of behaving toward their father and mother or sisters. Yet such knowledge might be urgently needed and do good here as it does in Japan where it is counted the most vital instruction of all. Step by step the Japanese child is led along the course of behavior, learning how to stand up, sit down, bow, hang up its hat, and how to think of its parents, brothers and sisters, and of its country. Later on these lessons are repeated with illustrations from short stories, and still later by incidents from actual history and the lives of great men of all Use thy youth so that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee.—Walter Raleigh. countries. Before the end of the course of instruction is reached all manner of virtues and points of behavior have been introduced, such as patriotism, cleanliness, and (especially in the case of girls) the proper way of advancing and retiring, offering and accepting things, sleeping and eating, visiting, congratulating and condoling, mourning and holding public meetings. So the school course continues It is easy to condemn; it is better to pity.—Abbott. from year to year, the elementary school course lasting four years and the secondary course four years more, and leading the boys and girls up to the study of benevolence, their duty to ancestors, to other people’s property, other people’s honor, other people’s freedom, and, finally, to self-discipline, modesty, dignity, dress, labor, the treatment of animals, and the due relations of men and women, both of whom are to be regarded equally as "lords" of creation. From end to end of the long course of training, behavior rather than knowledge is insisted upon, even down to the tiniest detail of what our good great-grandmothers valued as deportment.
To such scrupulous deportment and close attention to minuteness of habit, If you don’t scale the mountain, you can’t view the plain.—Chinese Proverb. some objection can be raised, perhaps. "Some men’s behavior," said Bacon, "is like a verse wherein every syllable is measured," and he warned us that manners must be like apparel, "not too strait or point-device, but free for exercise or For him who aspires, and for him who loves his fellow-beings, life may lead through the thorns, but it never stops in the desert.—Anonymous. motion." However, it is better to err on the side of too much attention to our manners rather than to be thought careless of our persons and our behavior.
Civilized peoples cannot help but be concerned with manners, refinement, good Be cheerful; wipe thine eyes; some falls are means the happier to arise.—William Shakespeare. breeding, and in a more minute sense, with the forms of etiquette. It is these things that distinguish civilization from savagery, and so unmistakably lift the cultured person above the one who does not see fit to cultivate the grace of gentility.