Frank Crane

“ There isn’t a human being but could save a little. Every man, in America at least, could live on nine tenths of what he does live on, and save the other tenth. And the man who regularly saves no money is a fool, just a plain fool, whether he be an actor getting one thousand dollars a week or a ditch-digger getting one dollar a day.
And I would get my life insured. Life insurance is the most practical way for a young man, especially if he be a professional man, or any one not gifted with the knack of making money, to achieve financial comfort. ”

“ The more thoroughly you do nothing when there is nothing to do, the better you can do something when there is something to do.
The very cream of life comes from rest. The blush, the aroma, the shine of your best work lie in the hours of idleness massed behind it. The secret of brilliant work is in throwing every atom of your reserve force into it. ”

“ In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society. Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men----zeal for the common good----to the business of killing human beings and de-stroying the results of their collective work. ”

“ I only say that if I were twenty-one, as I now see life, I would do as I have here suggested. But perhaps I would not. I might go about barking my shins and burning my fingers, making idiotic experiments in the endeavour to prove that I was an exception to all the rules, and knew a little more than all the ancients. So let not the young man be discouraged if he has committed follies; for there seems to emerge a peculiar and vivid wisdom from error, from making an ass of one’s self, and all that, more useful to one’s own life than any wisdom he can get from sages or copybooks. ”

“ Thus, although great ideals present themselves to men as beneficial, yet in the carrying out of them men often become cruel, unjust, and tyrannical. So the greatest crimes of earth are committed under the influence of movements designed to do the greatest good.
Under the church we have seen persecution, a ruthless disregard of human feeling, families torn asunder, opinion coerced, bodies tortured.
The humanities in time destroyed the baleful power of the religious ideal, its dreams of dominance and its inhuman fanaticism. ”

“ The human heart is a band playing in a park at a distance; we see crowds listening, but we catch but fragments of the music now and again, and cannot make out the tune.
The human heart is a great city, teeming with myriad people, full of business and mighty doings, and we wander its crowded streets unutterably alone ”

“ I have lived an average life. I have had the same kind of follies, fears, and fires my twenty-one-year-old reader has. I have failed often and bitterly. I have loved and hated, lost and won, done some good deeds and many bad ones. I have had some measure of success and I have made about every kind of mistake there is to make. In other words, I have lived a full, active, human life, and have got thus far safely along.
I am on the shady side of fifty. As people grow old they accumulate two kinds of spiritual supplies: one, a pile of doubts, questionings, and mysteries ”

“ It is good that the greater part of the world is in love. For love is the Song of Songs. To the young lover Nature is transformed. Some Ithuriel has touched the deadly commonplace; all is miraculous. The moon, the dead companion to our earth, the pale and washed-out pilgrim of the sky, has been changed into a silver-fronted fairy whose beams thrill him with a heady enchantment. Every breeze has its secret. ”

“ Better than big business is clean business. To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean. What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the ob-vious needs restating every once in a while. A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow. This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty. Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare. ”

“ If a philanthropist gave me a million dollars I would decline it. If a rich father or uncle left me a fortune, I would hand it over to the city treasury. All great wealth units come, directly or indirectly, from the people and should go to them. All inheritance should be limited to, say, $100,000. If Government would do that there would be no trouble with the wage system.
If I were twenty-one I would keep clean of endowed money. The happiest people I have known have been those whose bread and butter depended upon their daily exertion. ”

“ The human heart to youth is a fairy-land of adventure, to old age it is a sitting room where one knows his way in the dark.
The human heart is a cup of love, where some find life and zest, and some drunken-ness and death. ”

“ In the little affairs of a day it seems sometimes as if the wicked prosper. The gambler is flush, the lecher flourishes, the swindler gets away with his swag, and the pirate, the assassin, and the robber feast on their booty. 112 But when this sort of thing is stretched out over any considerable space of time or territory, so that the cosmic laws, which move slowly, have a chance, it is sure to break down.
What we call righteousness and justice is just as much a part of nature as the physical laws. ”

“ The great, useful, redeeming, and lasting work of the world is that work which is a reaction from idleness. The continent of labor is barren. It is the little island of labor that is green and fruitful in the sea of leisure.
The curse of America is its deification of labor. Our little gods are the men who are ceaselessly forthputting. ”

“ The human heart is a deep still pool; in it are fishes of gold and silver, darting playfully, and slow-heaving slimy monsters, and tarnished treasure hoards, the infinite animalar life; but when you look down at it you see but your own reflected face.
The human heart is an undiscovered country; men and women are forever perishing as they explore its wilds. ”

“ Outward success may depend somewhat upon what is in you, but it depends more upon luck. It is a gambling game. And it is hardly worth a strong man’s while. Inward and real success, on the contrary, is not an affair of chance at all, but is as certain as any natural law. Any human being that will observe the laws of life as carefully as successful business men observe the laws of business will come to that inward poise and triumph which is life’s happiest crown, as certainly as the stars move in their courses.
I would, therefore, if I were twenty-one, study the art of life. ”

“ Charity makes the Old Man of the Sea feed sugar-plums to the poor devil he is riding and choking; justice would make him get off his victim’s back.
Conventional charity piously accepts things as they are, and helps the unfortunate; justice goes to the legislature and changes things.
Charity swats the fly; justice takes away the dung-heaps that breed flies.
Charity gives quinine in the malarial tropics; justice drains the swamps.
Charity sends surgeons and ambulances and trained nurses to the war; justice struggles to secure that internationalism that will prevent war. ”

“ The human heart is a wide moor under a dull sky, with voices of invisible birds calling in the distance.
The human heart is a lonely lane in the evening, and two lovers are walking down it, whispering and lingering. ”

“ Life is not a science, to be learned; it is an art, to be practised. Ability comes by doing. Wisdom comes not from others; it is a secretion of experience.
Life is not like a problem in arithmetic, to be solved by learning the rule ”

“ The man whose increase of contentment is most assured, as he grows older, is the one who has discovered how to enjoy his past.
To many of us the past is always sad. We turn from it with impatience. “Man never is, but always to be, blest.” Naturally this habit of mind sees in the ever-shortening future nothing but tragedy. ”

“ Any man of twenty-one has a better chance for happiness, moral stature, and earthly success, if married than if unmarried.
I married young, and poor as Job’s turkey. I have been in some hard places, seen poverty and trial, and I have had more than my share of success, but in not one instance, either of failure or triumph, would I have been better off single. My partner in this task of living has doubled every joy and halved every defeat. ”

“ The human heart is the throne of God, the council-chamber of the devil, the dwelling of angels, the vile heath of witches' Sabbaths, the nursery of sweet children, the blood-spattered scene of nameless tragedies. ”

“ Rich people are not those who earn large salaries. They are those who handle money, who make money earn money.
Of course, in this argument we exclude two classes—those who have money given them, by inheritance or otherwise, and those who get money by chance. These two classes merely step into money some one else has made.
But very few people get rich, for the simple reason that money-making requires a certain order of genius. Money-makers are born. They have a natural gift. ”

“ The human heart is a tangled wood wherein no man knows his way.
The human heart is a roaring forge where night and day the smiths are busy fashioning swords and silver cups, mitres and engine-wheels, the tools of labor, and the gauds of precedence. ”

“ If any man will stick to this, make it his anchor in times of storm, his pole-star in nights of uncertainty, he will cast out of his life that which is life’s greatest enemy—Fear. He need not fear man nor woman, nor governments nor mischief-makers, nor the devil nor God. ”

“ The human heart is a garden, wherein grow weeds of memory and blooms of hope, and the snow falls at last and covers all.
The human heart is a meadow full of fireflies, a summer western sky of shimmering distant lightnings, a shore set round with flashing lighthouses, far-away voices calling that we cannot understand. ”

“ The thrifty man lays up money for his old age. The farmer lays up fodder for his winter feeding. The medical student lays up information for use in his future practise. The intelligent, by due exercise and diet, lay up health, and the wastrel lays up trouble and disease by his excesses.
All of us lay up something, willy-nilly.
It is a good idea to ask one’s self, in considering any act we are about to perform, not only what will be the immediate pleasure in it, but what sort of product we are laying up for ourselves by it.
We are always coming into our inheritance from our past deeds. ”

“ Many a delicate child has been more horribly tormented by suggested fears than he could ever have been hurt by corporal punishment.
The most deeply moral lesson any mother can instil into her child is that he be UNAFRAID—of anything in life or death. And whoso teaches a child a fear has made an incurable wound in his soul. ”