Chautauqua Institution

“ The man who always pays, as well as the sneak who never pays if he can avoid it, says, “Charge it,” when he buys goods. Goods are sold by the manufacturer to the jobber on credit; the jobber sells to the wholesale houses on credit; the wholesale dealers sell to retailers on credit; the retailers sell to consumers on credit. It is within the mark to say, that more is lost in these four credit traps than capital gets—much more. It is not, in fact, the capitalist, but the well-dressed and the shabbily-dressed thieves who cheat and rob labor. ”

“ Sometimes I have gone a number of weeks without drinking, and I flattered myself that the temptation was gone, but it returned, and now if there was a spot on earth where men lived and could not get spirits, and I could get there, I would start in a minute.’ I thought I had understood something of the difficulties of hard drinkers before, but this gave me a new impression of the matter, and most solemnly did I charge myself to do what I could to make a spot on earth where men could live and couldn’t get spirits. ”

“ But notwithstanding the marvelous advance that has been made in the manufacture of machinery, and the intelligent application of mechanical powers, we look for still greater things as possible in the future.
It is well, however, never to forget that whatever the seeming may be, the most perfect machine of human invention does not create force. That is as impossible for man as it is to give life or create matter. All he can do is to collect, concentrate and use, to the best advantage, the forces that exist. ”

“ Nothing can be more evident, therefore, than that this matter of manners and breeding is a no unimportant part of one’s education, constituting, truly, a no insignificant part of every true man’s character. How greatly, then, does that youth stand in his own light, who, for any cause, neglects his manners. The thoroughly courteous youth, other things equal, will surely win his way to success. ”

“ The members of the “Circle” stand on a higher plane than the Assembly, because they put will into the work. They read what they ought, for months and years, everywhere, getting larger views of the world, and worthier views of life, and nobler views of the race, and of God the Father of all.
The “Circle” takes a wide sweep in the world of letters. Its themes are those of the college world. It puts the preparatory and college curriculums into good, readable English, and helps people out of college to know what is going on there; what the young people study in history, language, and literature ”

“ Since the war New Orleans has been transformed from the likeness of a quiet old French city like Orleans which gave it name, to the appearance of a new French city with pretty relics here and there, and strong cosmopolitan attachments. The great river which sweeps in splendid curves past this city has compelled the streets to conform to some extent to its shores, but the consequence is a charming disposition of streets to both those who hate crooked streets, and those who hate straight ones. ”

“ Why should not we make an experiment? Alaska, at least, might safely be used for the purpose. It would not be difficult to devise a system under which the best class of reformed men should be offered land and a small outfit in some remote corner of our country. By selecting the best, and making their removal voluntary, we might save to society the larger part of the men whom our prisons reform. We do not wish to disguise the fact that, however remote the place, the men who have lived by crime and escaped punishment would endanger the virtue of the ex-convict. ”

“ The method of observation and experiment, by which such great results are obtained in science, is identically the same as that which is employed by every one, every day of his life, but refined and rendered precise. If a child acquires a new toy, he observes its characters and experiments upon its properties; and we are all of us constantly making observations and experiments upon one thing or another. ”

“ No one is likely to question the statement that the Smithsonian Institution has done what was absolutely indispensable to the rapid and symmetrical development of American scientific institutions, and it is equally certain that the progress of American science has had an immense influence upon the welfare of America in every department of intellectual and industrial activity. It has offered a helping hand to every institution and every individual in America capable of profiting by its generous aid, and has stimulated coöperation by them with similar workers abroad. ”

“ Visitors to the national capital usually carry away pleasant memories of the quiet old building among the trees in the mall, with its mediæval battlements and turrets of brown stone conspicuous from every point of view, and the multitude who enter its halls are at least impressed with the fact that the national treasure houses are becoming filled with valuable collections rather faster than the available money and space will allow to be properly arranged and displayed. ”

“ The attempt to increase national revenues by enforcing an artificial balance of trade has ever defeated its own object. It is almost equally certain that compulsory charities do on the whole more harm than good. On the other hand, there are no more undoubtedly legitimate functions of government than the suppression, and the, if possible, prevention, of crime, and the enforcement of health laws; and it can be demonstrated by every rule of logic and equity that the liquor traffic can be held amenable in both respects. The favorite argument of our opponents is the distinction of crime and vice. ”

“ Where a window is filled with plants, the little half curtain running upon a brass wire and falling over the lower sash serves, on winter nights, as a slight protection for the plants from outer air, and can be thrust to one side by day, and tucked up out of sight. A little drapery is a great relief in a room where there are bare floors and much display of woodwork in doors and window frames. ”

“ We are proud of the attainments of our men of letters; we rejoice in the achievements of our scientists and inventors; we glory in our rapid advance among the nations to wealth and power; and we fail to give serious heed to the hundreds of thousands of our people who are growing up every year in clouded ignorance, without even the rudiments of education.
If we examine with care our census returns and the reports of our Bureau of Education, we will be startled by some of the facts they reveal. ”

“ The peddler of obscene literature poisons the souls of our children without a shadow of ill-will against his individual customer. The gambler, the lottery-shark, use no manner of force in the pursuit of their prey. By what logic can we justify the interdiction of their industry and condemn that of the liquor traffic? By the criterion of comparative harmlessness? Have all the indecencies published since the invention of printing occasioned the thousandth part of the misery caused by the yearly and inevitable consequences of the poison vice? ”

“ To speak of the violation, or the suspension, of a law of nature is an absurdity. All that the phrase can really mean is that, under certain circumstances the assertion contained in the law is not true; and the just conclusion is, not that the order of nature is interrupted, but that we have made a mistake in stating that order. A true natural law is a universal rule, and, as such, admits of no exceptions.
Again, human laws have no meaning apart from the existence of human society. Natural laws express the general course of nature, of which human society forms only an insignificant fraction. ”

“ The Deity is intended to be the everlasting field of the human intellect, as well as the everlasting object of the human heart, the everlasting portion of all holy and happy minds, who are destined to spend a blissful but ever active eternity in the contemplation of his glory.... ”

“ A great many of the things brought to our knowledge by our senses, such as houses and furniture, carriages and machines, are termed artificial things or objects, because they have been shaped by the art of man; indeed, they are generally said to be made by man. But a far greater number of things owe nothing to the hand of man, and would be just what they are if mankind did not exist—such as the sky and the clouds; the sun, moon and stars; the sea with its rocks and shingly or sandy shores; the hills and dales of the land; and all wild plants and animals. ”

“ But the more carefully nature has been studied, the more widely has order been found to prevail, while what seemed disorder has proved to be nothing but complexity; until, at present, no one is so foolish as to believe that anything happens by chance, or that there are any real accidents, in the sense of events which have no cause. And if we say that a thing happens by chance, everybody admits that all we really mean is, that we do not know its cause or the reason why that particular thing happens. ”

“ It is not necessary in this age of enlightenment to dwell upon the manifest and manifold advantages to a people and to a nation, of education. They are palpable, and conceded by all men. Illiteracy, then, must as plainly be a disadvantage to a nation, a hindrance to the advancement and welfare of its people, and an evil which should be eradicated. ”

“ The beauty of a mirror is to have it absolutely clear and free from dust and dirt, finger marks or paint blotches, throughout its entire surface. Flower painting in polychrome upon frames and easels is utterly out of place, as it calls the eye off from the picture which the frame or easel holds, and reminds one of a servant decked out in finery surreptitiously borrowed from her mistress’s wardrobe. ”

“ To everything that moves there is force applied greater than the resistance to be overcome. A number of forces may act on an object at the same time, accelerating, retarding, or changing the direction of the motion given to it. When the forces are so balanced as to hold the body on which they act in a state of equilibrium, their action and consequent phenomena are investigated under the head of Statics, or the science which treats of bodies at rest. When motion is produced, Dynamics considers the laws that govern the moving bodies and the phenomena that result. ”

“ The simple form of the English language is the result of two causes. Of these the first in order of time was the conflict and subsequent mingling of the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and the Norman-French. When two languages are thus brought together and are both spoken by two peoples, all that is superfluous in the words of each soon begins to disappear. Each people grasps only the essential in the foreign words which it is obliged to use; each soon adopts the curtailed form of its speech used by the neighbors of another race and speech with whom it is obliged to live in daily communication ”

“ Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice can not sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among the possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest. ”

“ To the patriot, to the lover of republican institutions, to the advocate of unrestricted individual suffrage, this fact is appalling. But it is none the less a fact that should be known. Nor may the advocates of monarchical systems of government and of restricted suffrage take comfort from that fact. That the deciding ballot in our political contests may be an ignorant one does not prove the evil or folly of unrestricted suffrage. Not at all. Cancer in the breast does not prove the folly of life. Nor is a jammed finger necessarily fatal. ”

“ The sciences we have been considering under the general name of mechanics, which is derived from a Greek word that means to contrive, invent, construct, have much to do with machinery, with the methods of construction, the propelling forces, and the phenomena produced. There were machinists and some simple machines propelled by human or brute force, by weights and springs, by falling or running water, and air in motion before the laws of motion and forces were understood, or the rude mechanic arts began to assume the character of a science. ”

“ The risks of manufacturing probably bleed labor; but the bleeding is not in the form of which the workman thinks. It is not profit but loss which drives the lancet in to the hilt. Political economists have shown (and they are entirely unanimous) that the high profits produce a competition which brings down profits. Capital is cheap; large profits can be made only in conditions which are monopolistic.
Our system of industrial exchange has one very weak place, called credit. This credit is a hole in the net through which industrial gains are dropped into the bottomless sea ”