Many Thoughts of Many Minds Part 15

The people of this country have shown by the highest proofs human nature can give, that wherever the path of duty and honor may lead, however steep and rugged it may be, they are ready to walk in it.--JAMES A. GARFIELD.

The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our duty and find in it our pleasure.--MME. DE MOTTEVILLE.

Let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this precept well to heart: "Do the duty which lies nearest to thee," which thou knowest to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.--CARLYLE.

Fear G.o.d, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.--ECCLESIASTES 12:13.

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.--SAMUEL SMILES.

Who escapes a duty avoids a gain.--THEODORE PARKER.

Let us do our duty in our shop or our kitchen, the market, the street, the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in the front rank of some great battle, and we knew that victory for mankind depended upon our bravery, strength, and skill. When we do that the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which achieves the welfare of the world.--THEODORE PARKER.

In every profession the daily and common duties are the most useful.

Let men laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, if they will. You have time and eternity to rejoice in.--THEODORE PARKER.

Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power, and consequently should not be any part of your concern.--EPICTETUS.

It is thy duty oftentimes to do what thou wouldst not; thy duty, too, to leave undone that thou wouldst do.--THOMAS a KEMPIS.

There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the utmost parts of the seas, duty performed, or duty violated, is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power, nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close, and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet further onward we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty, to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us so far as G.o.d may have given us grace to perform it.--WEBSTER.

EARLY RISING.--Whoever has tasted the breath of morning, knows that the most invigorating and most delightful hours of the day are commonly spent in bed; though it is the evident intention of Nature that we should enjoy and profit by them.--SOUTHEY.

Who would in such a gloomy state remain Longer than nature craves; when ev'ry muse And every blooming pleasure wait without, To bless the wildly devious morning walk?

--THOMSON.

The difference between rising at five and seven o'clock in the morning, for the s.p.a.ce of forty years, supposing a man to go to bed at the same hour at night, is nearly equivalent to ten additional years to a man's life.--DODDRIDGE.

I would have inscribed on the curtains of your bed, and the walls of your chamber: "If you do not rise early, you can make progress in nothing."--CHATHAM.

When one begins to turn in bed, it is time to get up.--WELLINGTON.

Few ever lived to a great age, and fewer still ever became distinguished, who were not in the habit of early rising.--DR. JOHN TODD.

Next to temperance, a quiet conscience, a cheerful mind and active habits, I place early rising as a means of health and happiness.--FLINT.

Thus we improve the pleasures of the day, While tasteless mortals sleep their time away.

--MRS. CENTLIVRE.

No man can promise himself even fifty years of life, but any man may, if he please, live in the proportion of fifty years in forty;--let him rise early, that he may have the day before him, and let him make the most of the day, by determining to expend it on two sorts of acquaintance only,--those by whom something may be got, and those from whom something may be learnt.--COLTON.

The famous Apollonius being very early at Vespasian's gate, and finding him stirring, from thence conjectured that he was worthy to govern an empire, and said to his companion, "This man surely will be emperor, he is so early."--CAUSSIN.

EARNESTNESS.--Without earnestness no man is ever great, or does really great things. He may be the cleverest of men, he may be brilliant, entertaining, popular; but he will want weight. No soul-moving picture was ever painted that had not in it the depth of shadow.--PETER BAYNE.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give no peace.--EMERSON.

Patience is only one faculty; earnestness the devotion of all the faculties. Earnestness is the cause of patience; it gives endurance, overcomes pain, strengthens weakness, braves dangers, sustains hope, makes light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them.--BOVEE.

There is no subst.i.tute for thorough-going, ardent and sincere earnestness.--d.i.c.kENS.

He who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as to the idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity.--JOHN FOSTER.

ECONOMY.--Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return.--H.W. SHAW.

Economy is half the battle of life; it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well.--SPURGEON.

Let honesty and industry be thy constant companions and spend one penny less than thy clear gains; then shall thy hide-bound pocket soon begin to thrive and will never again cry with the empty belly-ache; neither will creditors insult thee, nor want oppress, nor hunger bite, nor nakedness freeze thee.--FRANKLIN.

He that, when he should not, spends too much, shall, when he would not, have too little to spend.--FELTHAM.

Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.

--DR. JOHNSON.

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.

--FRANKLIN.

If you know how to spend less than you get you have the philosopher's stone.--FRANKLIN.

Be saving, but not at the cost of all liberality. Have the soul of a king and the hand of a wise economist.--JOUBERT.

A penny saved is two pence clear, A pin a day's a groat a year.

--FRANKLIN.

Those individuals who save money are better workmen; if they do not the work better, they behave better and are more respectable; and I would sooner have in my trade a hundred men who save money than two hundred who would spend every shilling they get. In proportion as individuals save a little money their morals are much better; they husband that little, and there is a superior tone given to their morals, and they behave better for knowing that they have a little stake in society.

No man is rich whose expenditures exceed his means; and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings.--HALIBURTON.

EDUCATION.--The true order of learning should be first, what is necessary; second, what is useful, and third, what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top of the edifice.--MRS. SIGOURNEY.

A father inquires whether his boy can construe Homer, if he understands Horace, and can taste Virgil; but how seldom does he ask, or examine, or think whether he can restrain his pa.s.sions,--whether he is grateful, generous, humane, compa.s.sionate, just and benevolent.

--LADY HERVEY.

The world is only saved by the breath of the school children.--THE TALMUD.

It was the German schoolhouse which destroyed Napoleon III. France, since then, is making monster cannon and drilling soldiers still, but she is also building schoolhouses.--BEECHER.

A complete and generous education fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices of peace and war.--MILTON.

Knowledge does not comprise all which is contained in the large term of education. The feelings are to be disciplined, the pa.s.sions are to be restrained; true and worthy motives are to be inspired; a profound religious feeling is to be instilled, and pure morality inculcated under all circ.u.mstances. All this is comprised in education.--WEBSTER.

It is not scholarship alone, but scholarship impregnated with religion, that tells on the great ma.s.s of society. We have no faith in the efficacy of mechanics' inst.i.tutes, or even of primary and elementary schools, for building up a virtuous and well conditioned peasantry so long as they stand dissevered from the lessons of Christian piety.