X.
GARFIELD.--MAXIMS.
GATHERED FROM HIS SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, LETTERS, ETC.
I would rather be beaten in right than succeed in wrong.
I feel a profounder reverence for a boy than for a man. I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that I may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned under his coat.
Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but, nine times out of ten, the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself. In all my acquaintance, I never knew a man to be drowned who was worth the saving.
If the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best possible substitute for it.
We can not study nature profoundly without bringing ourselves into communion with the spirit of art which pervades and fills the universe.
If there be one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man; it is a man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.
It is one of the precious mysteries of sorrow that it finds solace in unselfish thought.