Durant Drake

“ It will not be the same kind of happiness that we had as children, before the shocks of life awoke us. It will be a happiness that meets and rises above pain. Life will always have its tragedies, sickness and separation, pain and sudden death. They are the common inheritance of mankind. But it is not these things in themselves that make life unendurable, it is the way we take them, our fear of them, our worry over them, our longings and rebelliousness, our magnifying and brooding over and shrinking from them ”

“ That is the age-long war against evil, the unending summons to duty, the service of God. Once a man learns this deepest of joys, nothing can take it from him; whatever his limitations, however narrow his sphere, there will not fail to be a right way, a brave way, a beautiful way to live. There is comradeship in it; in this common service of God - or of good, if we must avoid religious terms - we stand shoulder to shoulder with the saints and heroes of all races and times, with all, of whatever land or tongue, who are striving to push forward the line, to make the right prevail and banish evil. ”

“ The real superman will be a BETTER man, a man of tenderness and chivalry, of loyalty and self-control, a man of disciplined heart and purified will; to attain to such a supermanliness is, indeed, a heroic and splendid achievement, worthy of our utmost endeavor, and calling into play all our noblest powers.
Some there are, accustomed to the vision of tables of stone engraved by the hand of God and set up for man's obedience amid Sinaitic thunders, for whom the discovery of the humble human and prehuman origin, and the stumbling hit-or-miss evolution, of morality dulls its sanctity. ”

“ We often hang back from a recognized duty. But we feel an inward push. When the wrong impulse is pungent and enticing, and the right one insipid and tame, when we would forget if we could the perils of sin, conscience surges up in us and saves us from ourselves. It is a mechanism of extreme value, which nature has evolved in us for imposing on our weak and vacillating wills action that makes for a truer good than we should otherwise choose. No wonder, then, if we reverence this saving power within us, and crown it with a halo as the divine spark in the midst of our grosser nature. ”

“ A few blessed souls we know who have learned the secret, who go about with perpetually radiant face and take smilingly the very mishaps that worry and sadden the rest of us. To some extent this may be merely a matter of better nerves, of less sensitive temperament, of more abounding vitality; but there are many of the weakest and most sensitive among those who have learned that better way; they can turn everything into happiness as Midas turned everything into gold. It is surprising, looking through such a one's eyes, to see how full life is of delight. ”

“ In the Iliad, indeed, we read: "With everything man is satiated, sleep, sweet singing, and the joyous dance; of all these man gets sooner tired than of war." In primitive times, and even, though decreasingly, in modern times, the cause of war has lain not merely in the ends to be attained thereby, but in the sheer love of war for its own sake-the quickened heartbeats, the sense of power and daring and achievement, the joy in martial music and uniforms, in the rhythmic footsteps of marching men, in the awakened thrill of patriotism, the love of effort and sacrifice for a cherished cause. ”

“ The true lover of beauty will not need to seek forever-new scenes and objects to admire. He will find that which can feed his heart in the clouds of morning, the blue of noon, or the stars of night. One graceful vase with a flower-stalk bending over to display its drooping blossoms, will fill him with a quiet happiness; the merry laughter of a child, the tender smile of a lover, the rugged features of a weather beaten laborer, will stir his soul to response ”

“ For better or worse, we are, and cannot shirk being, judges of our own conduct. We may be prejudiced, and may properly try to correct our prejudices; we may discount our own disapprovals, and seek to escape from our own self- condemnation. But after all, we must live with ourselves; and it pays to aim to please not only the evanescent impulses whose disapproval will soon be forgotten, but that more deeply rooted and insistent judgment that cannot wholly be stilled. Regret and remorse are among the greatest poisoners of happiness, and prospective ideals must bear that truth in mind. ”

“ No one can feel the spell of a landscape by Corot or Innes without delighting more deeply in such scenes in the outdoor world; no one can live long in the atmosphere of Greek art without longing for such a body and such a poise of spirit. We are not accustomed to look at nature, or at man, with observing eyes, to see the richness of color in sun-kissed meadows or humming city streets, the infinite variations of light and shade, the depth of distance, the charm of line and composition. The picturesque is everywhere about us, undiscerned and unloved. ”

“ Legislation has so often been mischievous that it is well to have as little of it as possible. The masses are uneducated, the prey of impulse and passion; politics are corrupt; to submit the genius of free ENTREPRENEURS to the clumsy and ill-fitted yoke of a popularly wrought legal control is to stifle their enterprise and interfere with their chances of success. After all, every one knows his own needs best; and if we leave people alone, they will secure their own welfare better than if we try to dictate to them how they shall seek it. ”

“ If the "ought" is really shot out of the blue at us, if there is no justification, no imperious demand for morality but the existence of this inner push, why might we not raise our heads, refuse to be dominated by it, and live the life of free men, following the happy breezes of our desires? That is precisely what many have done, men who have reached maturity enough of mind to see the emptiness of following an ingrained impulse simply because it exists, but not a full enough maturity to see beyond to the real justification and significance of conscience. ”

“ Should art be censored in the interests of morality? Art, then, with its vast potentialities of both good and harm, needs supervision in the interests of human welfare. The motto, "Art for art's sake," should not be taken to mean that what is detrimental to human life must be tolerated, just because it is art. There is, indeed, this truth in the adage, that art does not need to have a moral or practical use to justify its existence. It may be merely pleasant, serving no end beyond the enjoyment of the moment. ”

“ The threefold key to happiness:
I. HEARTY ALLEGIANCE TO DUTY. The one thing above all others that makes life worth living is the utter devotion of the heart and will to the commands of morality. To throw one's self whole-heartedly into the game, to play one's part for all it is worth, transforms what were else a grim and unhappy necessity into a glorious opportunity. The happy man is the loyal man, the man who has taken sides, who has enrolled himself definitely on the side of right and tastes the zest of battle. He has something to live for, and something lasting. ”

“ We need not dwell on the physical and mental suffering caused by war; General Sherman's famous declaration, "War is hell!" sums the matter up. Agonizing wounds, pitiless disease, the permanent crippling, enfeeblement, or death of vigorous men in the prime of life, the anguish of wives and sweethearts, the loneliness of widows, the lack of care for orphans-it is impossible for those who have not lived through a great war to realize the horror of it, the cruel pain suffered by those on the field, the torturing suspense of those left behind. ”

“ All of our most vexing moral problems are those in which benefit to some must be weighed against benefit to others. Shall a man who is needed by his family risk his life to save a ne'er-do-well? Shall we insist that people unhappily married shall endure their wretchedness and forego the possibility of a happier union in order that heedlessness and license may not be encouraged in the lives of others? Life is full of such two- sided problems; it is not enough that an act may bring good to some, it must be the act that brings most good to most. ”

“ The little worries and disappointments will cease to trouble us. And the same attitude that enables us to rise above them will, when more staunchly held, lift us over the great sorrows also, and keep alive in us an under glow of joy. An under glow of joy-that is what can be found in life in any but its highly abnormal phases, by conforming to its conditions and taking it for what it is, stuff which, we have to shape into service to the ideal. ”

“ If our conscience had been properly acute, it would have made us stop. Insight, however comprehensive and clear, is apt to remain somewhere in a locked drawer in our minds when the hot blooded impulse appears. If we were but to pause and reflect, we should be sensible and kind. But our intellect is dulled by our emotions, it does not get working. We need a more instinctive, a deeper-rooted mechanism, an imperious "Halt!" at the brief moment between the thought of sin and the act. Conscience is not only a teacher and a driver, it is a sentinel. ”

“ In a very real sense, then, morality is objective; it is valid whether we recognize its validity and want it or not. It represents our needs more truly than our own wills, and thus has a greater authority, just as the rules of dietetics are not a matter of appetite or whim, but have a rational authority over our caprices. Morality is not, like imagination, something we can shape at will; it is imposed upon us from without, like sensation. Its development is predetermined by the structure of human nature and its environment; we do not invent it, we accept it. ”

“ The object of systems of morality is to take possession of human life, to save it from being abandoned to passion or allowed to drift at hazard, to give it happiness by establishing it in the practice of virtue; and this object they seek to attain by presenting to human life fixed principles of action, fixed rules of conduct. In its uninspired as well as in its inspired moments, in its days of languor or gloom as well as in its days of sunshine and energy, human life has thus always a clue to follow, and may always be making way towards its goal. ”

“ He will gaze eagerly at the masterpieces of color and form that he cannot have forever about him, he will enrich his imagination with the great scenes of drama, he will solace his soul with the cadenced lines of poetry and the melody of music, he will live with the heroes of fiction for a day, and return to his work ennobled and sweetened by the contact with these forms of excellence which lie beyond the bounds of his own outward life. ”

“ To awake in the morning with red blood stirring in the veins, to come to the table with hearty appetite, to go about the day's work with the springing step of abounding energy, and to reach the close of day with that healthy fatigue that quiets restless desire and betokens the blessed boon of sound and dreamless sleep-this is to be a long way on the road to contentment. ”

“ When these ends have been attained and a just industrial order evolved, the citizens of the future will take pride in using the powers of the State to bring the greatest possible health and happiness to all.
Our forefathers had great wrongs to right-political tyranny to overthrow, human slavery to eradicate, civil and religious liberty to win, a system of popular education to inaugurate, and with it all the wilderness to tame and a new land to develop. For these ends they sacrificed much. It is for us to attack with equal courage the evils of the present. ”

“ He can feel the beauty of the world without being dependent upon it, not looking for mortal things to be immortal or human things to be ideal, but whole-heartedly enjoying today what he has today and tomorrow what he shall have to-morrow. The things he cannot have at all, instead of spoiling his happiness in what he has, will rather add to it by forming another dimension of the actual, full of beautiful visions and glorious possibilities. And meantime the real world, of events that actually occur, will not fail, in spite of its flaws and rebuffs, to bring him ever-fresh delights. ”

“ It is so much easier to read something new than to meditate fruitfully upon what one has read, to pass from picture to picture in a gallery and win no genuine insight from any. A single great book thoroughly mastered-the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare-were better for a man than the superficial skimming of many, one beautiful picture well loved than a hundred idly glanced at and labeled with some trite comment. ”

“ Literature and art, by revealing to us unsuspected possibilities of beauty, breed a healthy discontent with ugliness and urge us on to its banishment. The ultimate aim of art should be to make life beautiful in every nook and corner, to elevate the humdrum working days of common men by fair and sunny surroundings, to make manners gentle and gracious, speech melodious and refined, homes, pleasant and restful. ”

“ The one real value of alcohol to man has been the boon of stimulating his emotional and impulsive life, bringing him an elevation of spirits, drowning his sorrows, helping him to forget, helping to free his mind from the burden of care, anxiety, and regret. As William James, with his unerring discernment, wrote twenty-five years ago: "The reason for craving alcohol is that it is an unaesthetic, even in moderate quantities. It obliterates a part of the field of consciousness and abolishes collateral trains of thought." ”