Arthur Stanwood Pier

“ He is the young poet of good impulses and a little talent, toying with his lyric and indifferent to the science of the stars, of the green and growing things about him, and to the business and endeavors of his active fellow men. He is the lawyer who makes a career out of ingenuity in splitting hairs; he is the business man who carries his ledgers home with him at night; he is any man who, by his devotion to an abstract principle or problem, or to a material fact, neglects his relations with nature and with men. ”

“ He may have energies that in the end win for him eminence, but he will probably be to the end a shy and quiet man. It is not necessary that a boy should be a weakling to arrive at this development; some trifling peculiarity, a curious quality of voice, or a nervous and easily mimicked laugh, or an alien accent may suffice to create in him an undue tendency to hold his tongue. I know one man who attributes his "cursed quietness" to an ailment of the throat that he had when a boy, and that made his speech husky and often liable to break down. ”

“ They may not win so many or so varied experiences and gifts from life as the reckless and ranging adventurer; theirs is not often the genius that builds the greatest and most enduring monuments; yet nearly all that has the charm of fine and perfect workmanship, nearly all that is subtly and beautifully conceived and exquisitely wrought, in manufactures, in machinery, in painting and music and literature, bears testimony to the serene vision, the unremitting toil of the quiet man. ”

“ One Mere Thinker in a million may some time evolve by mathematical and intellectual processes a machine of more than mathematical, even of human value; yet even then it is Man Thinking who will perfect it, and manufacture it, and advertise it, and sell it, and secure to the world at large—and to Man Thinking in particular—its benefits. So Man Thinking is never quiet ”

“ There will always be the horrid, harassing doubt—never shared by the truly adventurous—as to whether he would, indeed, bear himself heroically. To illustrate the point, I must make a confession; I am a quiet man. Although I have often prepared myself in mind, I have not yet set out upon my quest of adventure. ”

“ Of the many small people involved in their struggle with one idea, and abandoned to their solitary interest, Emerson has supplied a phrase that may be appropriated for definition. They are Mere Thinkers, as contrasted with Man Thinking. In them the human element is deficient. They may have an absorbed interest in their one pursuit, perhaps even a kind of dry and laudable enthusiasm; in their narrow range their souls may have conflicts with the devil and issue worthily ”

“ If he has not the weaknesses, but is stanch and strong, a walk with him in the open air, whether in the biting winds of March or over the sunlit fields of May, or a talk with him before the winter fire, may put vigor, as well as the first sense of peace, into the soul. ”

“ The quiet friend may be as faithful as the vociferous, but there should be no presumption in his favor, for his very habit of life is insidious, and tends to breed the germs of doubt if not disloyalty. The looker-on is usually the man dissatisfied with idleness and critical of the activity of others. ”

“ If the principle is important and appeals to a missionary and reforming conscience, and if the man has power, he is not admitted to fellowship among the quiet, but according to one's point of view is hailed as a hero or denounced as a crank, a nuisance, or a fool. ”

“ Perhaps the most worthy office that the quiet man performs is that of the comforter, or at least the sympathetic confidant of grief. He who is stricken in spirit, and must utter his sorrow, turns less readily to the exuberant than to the silent friend, whose speech is apter with eyes than with lips. It matters not very much if such a man has the weaknesses that must so often be imputed ”

“ To support some one besides himself in decency and honor is not all that a man should strive to do, though it is much. He should also feel the obligation to bring gayety into the lives of those whom he loves. ”

“ The others, who really are dull and without being oppressed by the knowledge preserve a befitting retirement, constitute perhaps a majority of the quiet men. To be dull is certainly not to be disliked; and yet I question if any one of this numerous, agreeable, and necessary company quite fills out the original mental picture summoned by the recommendation,—"a nice, quiet sort of fellow." ”

“ In my scheme of life, a cab is the last of all extravagances; yet even if it were not, or if I had found myself in the direst need of one, I am sure it would never have occurred to me to employ this simple, primitive method of securing it. Quietness tends to unfit one for the use of rudimentary instruments. ”

“ Let us suppose, however, that it is neither lack of ideas nor ill digestion of ideas which renders him a quiet man, but that he is indeed a person "with a lot to him." Then, usually, he is the man of one idea. It is rare that he has versatility. ”

“ Even in the larger world outside of college, the same guarantee holds good; let a stranger in a city have but one friend who makes it known that he is a "nice, quiet sort of fellow," and he will not lack for a welcome.
Yet many of the primary and obvious reasons for quietness in a man are not prepossessing. It may be that he is a weakling ”

“ But there, again, does the quiet man become aware of his misfortune; adventure evades him; and while his assertive, unappreciative brother, on going down town in the morning, may have a romantic encounter with a runaway automobile occupied by a beautiful lady, or with a tiger strayed from a circus, he may roam the world and meet with no runaway automobile, no tiger, and, alas and alack! ”

“ For the phrase suggests a man who has reserves of thought or knowledge or moral force. Indeed, we often follow up the designation, as thus: "A nice, quiet sort of fellow, with a lot to him." On closer acquaintance, we are likely to find that his quietness proceeds from lack of strong convictions rather than from moral force, or from mere empty-headedness rather than from thoughts too deep to share. We come to think him a man with a receptive habit but little assimilative power. ”

“ Quiet men may rarely be charged with breaches of tact, careless and inconsiderate speech, the little slights that gall the sensitive, the little failures to be diplomatic where diplomacy were honest as well as kind. Quiet men are not the busybodies ”

“ Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. ”

“ Once the unlucky weakling is discovered and his susceptibility to teasing exposed, he becomes the plaything of his stronger mates. The amusement is the greater if he resents it with spirit, the keener if he has a sensitiveness which is hurt by the abuse, the more frequently invited if he has the fatal admiration for deeds of strength, and haunts, in spite of its terrors, the society of those who can perform them. ”

“ Or he may by nature be one of those passionless, unenthusiastic, indifferent creatures who find sufficient occupation in buttoning on their clothes in the morning and unbuttoning them at night, eating their three meals, and going through the daily routine work or routine idleness to which necessity or circumstance has accustomed them. The classification is incomplete; there are quiet men who are not weaklings, who are not stupid, who are enthusiastic, men of firm will and steadfast purpose. ”

“ At college it was always easy to create a prepossession in favor of a man by recommending him as a "nice, quiet sort of fellow." In the case of the athlete who had demonstrated his vitality and manly qualities, the reason for this prepossession was clear ”

“ Some blurted truth, some reckless jest, some too searching inquiry, or too downright, blunt debate, may strike dead the gay laughter, and transform cheerful, openhearted contentment into a suffering desire to escape. ”

“ His spirit is not crushed, but it learns discretion; his sensitiveness grows into a shy and morbid pride; he likes to look on at better men, and to know them, but he finds it wise to be inconspicuous, inasmuch as to draw attention to himself usually means to suffer from a display of the very abilities which he admires. ”

“ As such a friend is a resource in time of sadness, so, on happier occasions, he need never be a kill-joy. No merriment was ever stifled because one of those bidden to share it could contribute nothing but appreciation. That quality the quiet man must have. It is the noisy or the active one who, even while giving life to happy gatherings, is most dangerous. ”

“ Since he is quiet, he receives credit for virtues if he does not exhibit boldly their antithetic vices. Loyalty and steadfastness and a good domestic nature are the excellent qualities most often attributed to him. ”

“ The boy who has less strength than his fellows, less athletic skill, and yet admires and longs for these possessions, invites only too often demonstrations upon himself of the vigor and prowess that he covets. A boy likes above all things to show his power over another boy ”

“ The narrowness and inertia of the quiet man are frequently moral as well as mental. He is firm on the point of certain things which he will not do, but his virtue is too likely to be of this negative quality ”

“ But if we pass over these for the present, it will appear that the self-control practiced by quiet persons had oftentimes better give place to self-abandon, and that many a man is respected for his restraint when he should be pitied for his diffidence. ”

“ It may serve the purpose if the man develops a strong outdoor enthusiasm, or a keen spirit of rivalry in games, for either of these will introduce into his existence that element of life that he most needs. ”

“ But out of our own acquaintance let us pick the few who, without an impressive show of energy and activity, perform in the most truly workmanlike way work that they seem willing to let pass unnoticed. ”

“ It is time, after these frank confessions, to rehearse some merits of the quiet man, and particularly to dwell upon the admirable qualities of some quiet men. It is hardly necessary to summon up here the kindly and perhaps not more than three-quarters fallacious banality about the constant need of good listeners. ”

“ Because it might draw upon him comparison to his disadvantage, he does not utter freely his carping criticism of the active; but he bears in mind how much better he himself would do this or that if it were not for some forbidding circumstance. And this habit of comparing himself with others, which is one of the common recreations of the quiet man, sometimes, no doubt, begets the envy which makes it easy to betray. ”

“ Taking an active part in the romps and play of children is a resource that if open to him he should embrace. Probably he has so schooled himself to inexpressiveness that he cannot at once emerge out of the secondary place into which he is relegated at social gatherings ”

“ Then there are the humble-minded people who fancy themselves too dull or too uninformed to be interesting, and who cut themselves off from sharing freely with others their thoughts and opinions. Often they do themselves scant justice in their modesty, and win all the more on that account the regard of the few who come near enough to know them. ”

“ They do not spend a groat portion of their lives in efforts to attract attention to their achievements, to their skill; they do not despise popular appreciation, but they find the courting of it unimportant and unworthy ”

“ If he can acquire some undignified accomplishment,—if he ran learn to sing a "coon song," or to play upon the mouth organ, or to dance a clog, or to recite "Casey at the Bat,"—he will have made an advance in the art of living such as none hut a constitutionally shy and quiet person can understand. ”

“ But they are always understood of but few, and they are bottled-up people, a nervous, self-conscious, timorous folk, of pleasant dispositions and much sentiment, who seldom cut any large figure in the world. ”

“ Now, although we have in our rear a livery stable, our neighborhood is prim and even fastidious; the houses in our block are occupied by families with highly conventional notions of propriety. In some dismay I pulled my guest's coat tails, whispering that I would send out for a cab ”