The Girl Wanted Part 15

To have a friend is to have one of the sweetest gifts that life can bring; to be a friend is to have a solemn and tender education of soul from day to day.--Anna Robertson Brown.

When it comes to doing a thing in this world, I don't ask myself whether I like it or not, but, what's the best way to get it done.

--Ellen Glasgow.

Do you ask to be the companion of n.o.bles? Make yourself n.o.ble, and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it.--Ruskin.

There is no cosmetic for homely folks like character. Even the plainest face becomes beautiful in n.o.ble and radiant moods.--Newell Dwight Hillis.

A single gentle rain makes the gra.s.s many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts.--Th.o.r.eau.

A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.--Milton.

Happiness is the natural flower of duty.--Phillips Brooks.

By wisdom wealth is won; but riches purchased wisdom yet for none.

--Bayard Taylor.

It is surely better to pardon too much than to condemn too much.

--George Eliot.

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.

It is not the result of our acts that makes them brave and n.o.ble, but the acts themselves and the unselfish love that moved us to do them.

--R. L. Stevenson.

Use thy youth so that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee.--Walter Raleigh.

It is easy to condemn; it is better to pity.--Abbott.

If you don't scale the mountain, you can't view the plain.--Chinese Proverb.

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.

Be cheerful; wipe thine eyes; some falls are means the happier to arise.--William Shakespeare.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are, be humbly what you aspire to be.--Th.o.r.eau.

If people only knew their own brothers and sisters, the Kingdom of Heaven would not be far off.--George MacDonald.

The shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angel.

--d.i.c.kens.

If every day we can feel, if only for a moment, the realization of being our best selves, you may be sure that we are succeeding.--Bliss Carman.

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

He only is advancing in life, whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace.--Ruskin.

The fine art of living, indeed, is to draw from each person his best.

--Lilian Whiting.

Reflect upon your present blessings--of which every man has many--not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.--d.i.c.kens.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs--is more elastic, more starry, more immortal--that is your success.--Th.o.r.eau.

Blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds.--Congreve.

The microscope gives us a world, a universe, a single drop of dew. So also there is a world in a single profound, earnest meditation.--Madame Swetchine.

Better is it to have a small portion of good sense, with humility and a slender understanding, than great treasures of science, with vain self-complacency.--Thomas a Kempis.

There is one road to peace and that is truth.--Sh.e.l.ley.

He hath from his childhood conversed with books and bookmen; and always being where the frankincense of the temple was offered, there must be some perfume remaining about him.--Thomas Fuller.

Everything great is not always good, but all good things are great.

--Demosthenes.

The turmoil of the world will always die, if we set our faces to climb heavenward.--Hawthorne.

If I can put one touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with G.o.d.--George MacDonald.

Our business in life is not to get ahead of other people but to get ahead of ourselves.--Maltbie D. Babc.o.c.k.

The narrow kingdom of to-day is better worth ruling over than the widest past or future.--Edith Wharton.

There's always a bloom on the world if one looks.--Abby M. Roach.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.--George Eliot.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

"Nothing succeeds like success."

Perhaps the true meaning of this old French proverb is that once we have a measure of success we are the more likely to achieve still more victories. The discovery that our strength, perseverance and determination have been capable of bending circ.u.mstances to our will and bringing to fulfillment the end for which we have wished and worked, gives us renewed courage and inspiration for the undertaking of new and larger duties.

We learn to do by doing. Achievement leads to still greater achievement. Orison Swett Marden, one of the world's wisest of observers and deepest of philosophers, says, "The world makes way for the determined man." And so it does for the determined woman, or the determined girl or boy.

Regarding this thing called "Success," too many of us are apt to think that it means some one, isolated, remarkable achievement, that comes at the end of a long period of striving in some particular field of endeavor. This is not entirely true. Every great success is made of very many lesser successes that have preceded it. Just as the cap-stone at the top of the tallest building is held in its lofty position by every stone beneath it even down to the ones deep in the earth at the very foundation of the structure, which are indeed perhaps the most important of all.