Albert J. Beveridge

“ I like to see patriotism have a religious ardor. It will put you in harmony with the people you are living among, which, I repeat, is the first condition of success.
Also it puts a vigor, manliness, mental productivity into you. Make it a practise, when going to your business or your work each morning, to reflect how blessed a thing it is to be an American, and why it is a blessed thing. Then observe how your backbone stiffens as you think, how your step becomes light and firm, how the very soul of you floods with a kind of sunlight of confidence. ”

“ If, then, a man can mount upon this humble stepping-stone of low personal interest to sincerity for the sake of his own advantage, he will, after a while, be able to climb higher, to the exalted plane of truthfulness for the sake of truth; and then he will behold the beatitudes of righteous living, and experience the joys which putting oneself in harmony with the order of the universe and the on-going of events never fails to bring. As a great scientist puts it, "Establish your polarity, young man, and sleep soundly at night." ”

“ Let a man go each year to the everlasting mountains; to the solitude of the ancient forests; to the eternal ocean with its manifestation of power and repose. Let him sit by its solemn shore listening to it sing that song which for a million years before our civilization was thought of it had been singing, and which for a million years after our civilization has become merely a line in history it will continue to sing, and he will realize how unimportant are the things which only a few weeks before seemed to him of such vast moment. ”

“ The greatest people on earth—to be one of that people; the most powerful Nation—to be a member of that Nation; the best and freest institutions among men—to live under those institutions; the richest land under any flag—to know that land for your country and your home; the most fortunate period in human history—to live in such a day. This is a dim and narrow outline of what it means to be an American. Glory in that fact, therefore. Your very being cannot be too highly charged with Americanism. ”

“ Of course, being an American and a gentleman, you will have the American gentleman's conception of all womanhood, and his adoring reverence for the one woman who has blessed him with her life's companionship. You will cherish her, therefore, in that way which none but the American gentleman quite understands. You will be gentle with her, and watchful of her health and happiness.
You will be ever brave and kind, wise and strong, deserving that respect which she is so anxious to accord you; earning that devotion which by the very nature of her being she must bestow on you ”

“ The woman's mission shall be different. It shall be for her to create and preserve human happiness. She shall do this in the dwelling-place which the man constructs for her, and which will be called home. There shall she bind up his wounds and give him rest and comfort. I will give into her keeping also the making of the race, and thus the control of the destiny of the world. And so this woman shall be given delicate bones and a deft touch and voice of music and eye of peace and heart of tenderness and mind of beautiful wisdom. ”

“ I am told that the leader of the American bar has a standing order with his booksellers to send him every new book of approved merit in all the departments of literature. The result is that when he comes before the court his mind is fresh and sparkling with clear ideas and varied knowledge poured into his brain from every mountain-peak of inspiration in all the world of human thought. He brings to the service of his client not only a study of his case and an understanding of the grand science of the law, but the vivifying, vitalizing power of all the great minds in all the realms of intellect. ”

“ Remember always that your only reason for belonging to any particular party is because you find that the best method of being an American.
When your party is fundamentally wrong on some absolutely vital question of principle which affects the fate of the Republic, do not hesitate to leave it. It has ceased to be of any use to you. Because your political association has been with certain men is no reason at all for continuing it. Or, rather, it is purely a sentimental reason, like that which makes the companionship of friends so dear, or the comradeship of soldiers so lasting. ”

“ How noble the attitude of that intellect which is uplifted by a belief so glorious. No wonder that he who possesses this faith works miracles in human character more astounding than the dazzling wonders which science wrings from reluctant matter. No, not he who possesses this faith, but him whom this faith POSSESSES. The faith is the reality—you are but the instrument through which that faith works out the winning of the world. ”

“ Talk to most young men in college or school, and you will find this feeling, like a pathetic minor chord, running through their highest and most daring boasts.
Is not our college training responsible for some of this melancholy negativeness of life? However it happens, the truth is that too few young men come out of our great universities with the greater part of the boldness of youth left in them. Somehow or other those fine, and, if you will, absurd enthusiasms which nobody but young men and geniuses are blessed with, have been educated out of the graduate. ”

“ But the noblest of all prospecting is for strength and high purpose and thoroughbred quality among the young manhood of our Nation. For any one who helps some young man to make his life righteously successful has enriched humanity more than he who reveals a Klondike to the uses and the greed of the clans of trade.
Yes; and he or she who, in the search for strong minds and pure hearts among young men, discovers to the world a great man has in that achievement wrought immortality for himself and herself, while rendering to mankind a service like that of a Columbus or a Pasteur. ”

“ The young man is the future incarnate. His soul is the abiding-place of uplifting ideals, and the world—that vast collective individuality to which you and I belong—too often dispels those sensitive enthusiasms by its neglect or disapproval. Do we not find in our daily speech a certain cynicism toward youth? Does not our skeptic wisdom paste the label "illusions" over the word "ideals" written on the young man's brow? Is there not a refusal to recognize young manhood's force until it compels recognition by sheer mastery? ”

“ The men who never went to college have not only built great railroads, but also have written immortal words; not only have they been great editors, but also they have created vast industries, and piled mountain high their golden fortunes; not only have they made epoch-making discoveries in science, but they have set down in words of music a poetry whose truth and sweetness makes nobler human character and finer the life's work of all who read those sentences of light. ”

“ Is it not plain that the great novel of modern society is yet to be written? The contest between human nature and the complex machinery of our industrial system, and the mastery of human nature over the latter, present a theme such as Homer, or Vergil, or Dante never had.
The world awaits this genius! If you are not he, but talented in that direction, there are a thousand phases of American life that are of permanent historic value, which are rapidly passing away forever, and need to be perpetuated by literature and art. ”

“ And to crown it all, you will discover in this hard discipline of your faculties and of your soul a happiness whose steady felicity is unknown to the lounger of the club or the frequenter of the ballroom. For remember this—you who in your heart cherish a secret envy of those other young men whom you believe, by reason of family, wealth, or any favorable circumstance, are getting more of the joy of living than you get—remember this, that this world knows only one higher degree of happiness than that which comes from discipline, only one pleasure nobler than the pleasure of achieving. ”

“ The first thing that the world should remember about the young man who is confronting it, asking his daily bread of it, is the inestimable value of the qualities of freshness, of innocence, of faith, of confidence, of high honesty, of Don Quixote courage which the young man brings to it. These are qualities which in human character are worth all the wisdom of the market-place many million times multiplied. They are the qualities which, in spite of itself, keep the world young and tolerable. ”

“ For it will take a man with veins and arteries swollen with masculine blood pumped by a great, big, strong heart, working as easily and joyfully as a Corliss engine; with thews of steel wire and step as light as a tiger's and masterful as an old-time warrior's; with brain so fertile and vision so clear that he fears not the future, and knows that what to weaker ones seem dangers are in reality nothing but shadows—it will take this kind of a man to make any "career" that is going to be made. ”

“ Don't expect her to be helpful to you in your profession or occupation except by counsel.
Of course there is the great and inestimable help that comes from the mere fact that she is your wife. After all, that is the very greatest help any woman can be to any man. The care of home, the upbringing of children, the strengthening of a husband's character here and there, the detection of those thousand little vices of manner and speech and thought which develop in every man—in short, the living of a natural woman's life—is the only method of real helpfulness of a woman to a man. ”

“ Be an American. And do not be an American of imagination. You cannot be an American by seeing visions and dreaming dreams. You cannot be an American by reading about them. Professor Munsterberg's volume will not make you an American any more than a study of tactics out of a book will make you a soldier.
It is the field that makes you a soldier. It is marching shoulder to shoulder with other soldiers that makes you a soldier. It is mingling with other Americans that makes you an American. Our eighty millions will make you American. Keep close to them. The soil will make you American. ”

“ The very nature of things, and the constitution of society as he comes to examine it in its concrete manifestations, will chasten his illusions.
The rarity of the air as he mounts upward in life will weight his wings at last. The limitations of Nature and of affairs will in themselves be all the chastisement he needs to correct abnormal hope, courage, faith, or honor—yes, even more than enough. Let the world, then—the men and women who have won their places in life—let them nourish the enthusiasms and the elemental "illusions" of youth wherever they see them. ”

“ You would better have your confidence broken a dozen times a day than to fall into the attitude of universal suspicion.
Keep your sweet faith in our common humanity, do not excite your nerves and intellect by intoxicants, keep close to the saving and elevating influence of women, and then—go ahead and work as hard as you please, be as keen as you choose, fight as savagely as you like, and there is no power that can stay your conquest of the world; for the very nature of things themselves and the whole order of the universe are your allies and your servants. ”

“ I am simply calling your attention to the fact that there are opportunities for you to be greater in the world of journalism than Greeley, or Raymond, or Bennett, or Bowles, or Dana, or any of the extraordinary men that have illumined the whole science of journalism by their intellect, accomplishments, and character.
Electricity is a mysterious force which excites not only all the speculation but all the mysticism in man. I contemplate its manifestations—equally deadly and vital—with feelings of wonder and awe. ”

“ Let the world understand that these qualities with which the mother labors to endow her child, from the time the blessing of maternity is hers to the time the bright-eyed young fellow steps out from the old home, are more valuable to the world itself than all its gold-mines, all its scientific discoveries, all its electric railroads, all its games of politics, all its commerce. "Il mondo va da sé," said a cynical Italian statesman—"the world goes by itself." ”

“ By finding out one's limitations is not meant, of course, what society will permit you to do, or what men will permit you to do, but what Nature will permit you to do. You have no other master than Nature. Nature's limitations only are the bounds of your success. So far as your success is concerned, no man, no set of men, no society, not even all the world of humanity, is your master; but Nature is. "We cannot," says Emerson, "bandy words with Nature, or deal with her as we deal with persons." ”

“ I have no respect for constitutional learning which deals alone with the written words of the Constitution, or even with the intention of its framers, and ignores the sources and spirit of that great instrument. The Constitution did not give us free institutions; free institutions gave us our Constitution. All our progress toward liberty and popular government, made since the adoption of the Constitution, has been the spirit of our institutions working out its sure results, through the Constitution when possible, modifying it when necessary. ”

“ And yet the fine courage that dared take part in the great struggle just beginning was a quality which was more valuable to his party and to the world and to humanity, than all of the schemes of the men who rejected him.
It is this courage constantly injected into the veins of the world which, little by little, is lifting mankind up to a more and still more endurable estate. I shall never be able to perform a higher service than to light again, as I did, the fires of his confidence and young daring. ”

“ But all the figures large enough to fill history's perspective always have been and always will be geniuses—men in whom the energy, the thought, the imagination, the power of hundreds of men are concentrated. Let us not deceive ourselves, and reap misery and disappointment by thinking that we can, by any effort, equal them. Alexander, Cæsar, Richelieu, Napoleon, Bismarck, Washington, Darwin, Goethe, Shakespeare, Lincoln, Pasteur, Edison, Plato, Rhodes, Ito, Diaz, Peter the Great—we cannot explain these phenomena of human intellect and character except by the word genius. ”

“ Too many Americans cease to count after middle life. They have wasted their ammunition and are sent to the rear—there is no longer use for them on the firing-line. Youth is so strong that it wastes power like a millionaire of vitality. But you will need all this dissipated energy later on—every ounce of it.
And so, while I would have you labor to the last limit of your strength while you are about your work, I would also have you regain the strength thus consumed. I would have you let Nature fill up your empty batteries. Hence the suggestion of vacations, a level mind, and books of serenity. ”

“ With all your faith and the fervor of it, be full of thought. Merely to believe burningly is not enough. Nobody will listen to you declaim the confession and then declaim it over and over again and nothing more. Even pious monotony palls. Bread is the staff of life; and yet too much bread eaten at one time will kill. Food, taken in excess, becomes poison.
I have emphasized the necessity for faith because it will always be the very soul of your influence over your audience. It is the power behind your ideas. Faith is the dynamics of truth. ”

“ They showed that upon the mind of England's greatest captain of the sea the tender influence of the old mother, and the old home in distant England, survived all the variableness of his character, all the supreme efforts of his career, and that a gentleness and an almost womanly yearning for affection were the qualities that ruled the soul of the most desperate ocean fighter the world had seen since Drake. They showed that the heart of the sternest warrior may be beautiful with the humanities. ”

“ For now as ever mankind awaits the magic voice of him whose faith in God the Father, in Christ His son and in the life eternal is strong as knowledge itself. Think of John Wesley, think of Ignatius Loyola, think of the inspired young man who this very year has lifted all Wales to spiritual heights as elevated as those to which Savonarola led beautiful and dissolute Florence, and the fire of whose revival promises to spread over the United Kingdom, purifying all it touches. ”

“ A young man whom fortune had kept from college, but who is too stout-hearted to let that discourage him, said to me the other day: "I don't think that a college education confers, or the absence of it prevents, success. But I do think that where there are two men of equal health, ability, and character, that one will be chosen who has been to college, and to this extent the college man has a better chance." This is true for the ordinary man—the man who is willing to put forth no more than the ordinary effort. ”

“ Reputations men build will vanish almost before they are made. Civilizations they erect will pass from their flowering into the seeds of future civilizations and be forgotten, too.
But the "illusions" with which the young man confronts the world at the beginning of his career are as everlasting as God's word: "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one little shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." The "illusions" of the young man—of the young American particularly—are the manifestations of that law, the eternal law of the eternal verities. ”

“ Nevertheless, the young man was right, and acted with a far-seeing wisdom as rare as the courage which accompanied it. Of course, I assume that you are going into the profession for the purpose of becoming a lawyer, and not a mere conductor of legal strifes. If you are, you must deny yourself.
Self-denial is the price of strength, as any college athlete will tell you. Self-denial is the road to wealth, as any banker will tell you. Self-denial is the method of all excellencies, as all human experience will tell you. ”