Elbert Hubbard

“ There is no hell equal to the hell of having to live with a person who is not your own. Either party who wants a divorce should have it. And the proof that it is desired should be reason sufficient for granting it ❦ Make way for liberty! It isn’t the law that brings a man and a woman together, and no law should be invoked to hold them together. ¶ The police should keep their heavy hands off. What can an outside party know of this most subtle and delicate of all human relations! The love of man for woman and of woman for man is the most powerful and persistent force in the universe. ”

“ Emotionalism, charity, altruism, optimism, are not science, and they may be hysteria. ¶ When I speak of success I do not mean it in the sordid sense. A successful man is one who has tried, not cried; who has worked, not dodged; who has shouldered responsibility, not evaded it; who has gotten under the burden, not merely stood off, looking on, giving advice and philosophizing on the situation. In fact, the result of a man’s work is not the measure of success. ”

“ The desire of the mother to protect and care for her child is the most persistent instinct that is implanted in the human heart. If there is anything sacred in the world it is mother-love. If there is anything [98] divine in the universe, it is the love of the mother for her baby ❦ We give pensions to the men who fought to save the State. Why not give a pension to every woman who goes down into the valley of death and kisses the white lips of pain? ❦ Isn’t the mother just as necessary to the perpetuity of the State as the soldier? ”

“ I believe in the blessed Trinity of Father, Mother and Child. ¶ I believe that God is here, and that we are as near Him now as ever we shall be. I do not believe He started this world a-going and went away and left it to run itself. I believe that we are all sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. I believe the only way we can reach the Kingdom of Heaven is to have the Kingdom of Heaven in our hearts. ¶ I believe in freedom—social, economic, domestic, political, mental, spiritual ❦ I believe in every man minding his own business. ”

“ One wide-awake, vigilant man at the switch is worth more to society than all the tramps who ride the brakebeams. Get to work, Jack, and if you can’t find the job you want, then take the one you can get! To prove yourself able to rastle a big job, get busy and take care of a little one. Power does not reveal itself in scolding. ”

“ Also, a vast number of men and women see the fact that immunity and exemption are not desirable, that nothing can ever be given away, and that something for nothing is very dear ❦ To make a man exempt is to take from him just so much manhood; and to make a church exempt is to weaken the fabric and place the institution on a mendicant basis ❦ To accept salvation for yourself, with the consciousness that there is still one soul in hell, would turn your paradise into purgatory, if your soul were worth a damn. ”

“ Just Boys
Be patient with the boys. You are dealing with soul-stuff. Destiny awaits just around the corner. Boys evolve into men, and men sometimes change the boundary-lines of States. They make political parties; they crown kings, and they put them to flight. They bring contention or they make peace. They may build or they may destroy. But boys misused, abused, betrayed, never forget and seldom forgive. ”

“ Can you prophesy to what “class” these boys and girls—curious, quaint, half-frightened—will belong twenty years from now? Many of them will be contractors, lawyers, bankers, scientists, doctors, teachers—it is all a matter of individual energy, intelligence and desire, modified by the antics of the gods of Chance. There is no conspiracy in America to hold people down and under. Class hatred, represented by Marxian Socialism, says there is. There is nothing so savage, cruel and blindly unjust as class hatred. ”

“ I believe in the blessed trinity of Man, Woman and Child. These to me express Divinity. Left alone the woman would be the companion, friend and helpmeet of the man, not his slave, pet, plaything, drudge, doormat and scullion. ¶ Happiness lies in equality. ”

“ It is a terrible thing to plant the germs of suspicion and hate in the mind of a child ❦ Tyranny visited on a boy may implant in his heart dragons’ teeth that spring up and grow into armed men. The breath of hate consumes, [164] and its voice affrights. Gluttony and greed sometimes leave the boy out of the equation ❦ Gluttony and greed fatten and forsake. They invite and they alienate. They welcome and they repel. Grasping greed sometimes forgets. It is the thing that brings mental and moral diseases and disorders of the state that can not be cured. ¶ Boys can not be deceived. ”

“ Within the esoteric lines are circles and inner circles, and no man yet has entered the inmost circle where the Ark of the Covenant is secreted. All is relative. ¶ But you know you belong to the Brotherhood when you feel the absolute nothingness of this world of society, churches, fashion, politics and business; and realize strongly the consciousness of the Unseen World of Truth, Love and Beauty ❦ The first emotion on coming into the Brotherhood is one of loneliness and isolation. You pray for comradeship, and empty arms reach out into the darkness. ”

“ If so, good work is a prayer, prompted by a loving heart—a prayer to benefit and bless. If prayer is not a desire, backed up by a right human effort to bring about its efficacy, then what is it? ¶ Work is a service performed for ourselves and others. If I love you I will surely work for you—in this way I reveal my love. And to manifest my love in this manner is a joy and a gratification to me. Thus, work is for the worker alone, and labor is its own reward. These things being so, if it is wrong to work on Sunday, then it is wrong to love on Sunday ”

“ To clutch for love and demand it makes you both unlovely and unlovable. If you would have friends, be one. ¶ This great spiritual law which provides that we lose the thing for which we selfishly strive has seemingly been overlooked in our universities and institutions that foster the so-called Higher Culture. Fond parents send their sons to college for but one reason—not to earn a living, not to render the world a service, not to perform some necessary task—they send them to college in order to absorb and appropriate a certain imaginary good. ”

“ My esteemed colleague, the editor of The Christian Work and Evangelist, admits that this world is no longer “but a desert drear, heaven is my home.” He admits that we are here, and that this is our home now, at least. When he goes a step further and admits that this is God’s world, not the Devil’s; that every man is doing the best he can with the light and power he possesses; that all human service is sacred; that there is no high nor low; that there are no “saved” so long as men are in bonds to fear, superstition and incompetence ”

“ Science is accurate, organized knowledge founded on fact—or, as Herbert Spencer expressed it, “Science is the classified knowledge of the common people.” All that which is simply assumed, believed, conjectured, taken on dogmatic statement, or mayhap read out of printed books, is unscientific, no matter how plausible ❦ All practical [12] businessmen are scientists. ¶ Business is a vocation. Philosophy is—or should be—an avocation. To make a business of philosophy is to institutionalize and dilute it, just as to institutionalize love and religion is to degrade and lose them. ”

“ Lawyers are men. Preachers are men. So, also, are judges. Marxian Socialists are men, and all these are very much like the people with whom they mix and associate ❦ Rogue clients evolve rogue lawyers to do their work; fool patients evolve fool doctors; and superstitious, silly people in the pew secrete a pretentious, punk party in the pulpit. For the man, himself, I have only admiration, [47] respect and love—and sometimes pity. I may despise his business and some of his acts, but how can I hate the man, when I realize that his life is a part of the Great One from which mine is derived? ”

“ The Sea knows all things, for at night when the winds are asleep the stars confide to him their secrets. In his breast are stored away all the elements that go to make up the round world. Beneath his depths lie buried the sunken kingdoms of fable and legend, whose monarchs have long been lost in oblivion ❦ He appropriates and makes his own all that is—dissolving the rocks that seek to stop his passage—forming, transforming, rearranging, never ceasing, tireless. Tireless ever, for he gets his rest in motion. ”

“ No other bond is required than that of devotion to Truth, the passion of listening in the Silence, the prayer for Wholeness and Harmony, the earnest desire to have your life reflect the Good. All man-made organization would be fatal to the sweet, subtle and spiritual qualities of the Brotherhood ❦ For organization means officers, judicial robes, livery, arbitrary differentiation, and all the vile and foolish claptrap of place and power. ”