“ Living on earth, is it not one’s duty to hear many voices that ring in its air? Is one’s life for mere acquirement, or to show results and flower into influence and deed?
—The World Beautiful, Lilian Whiting.
The mountain top must be reached no matter how many times we fall in reaching it. The fall is not counted, it does not register; the picking up and going on counts in life.
—Flora Howard.
Success in life is a matter not so much of talent or opportunity as of concentration and perseverance. ”

“ Gather roses while they blossom; to-morrow is not to-day! Allow no moment to escape; to-morrow is not to-day.
—Gleim.
Cheapness of nature can be redeemed only from one source—that of the invisible power on the divine side of life. By seeking this in silence and concentration for a little time each day all refinement and loveliness and charm can be achieved. It is the magic of life. ”

“ The new conditions of life demand the higher spirituality of the individual. But what is this? Is it a name, a mental state of exaltation, an ecstasy? Is it an exalted hour, or is it conduct? Is it a merely theoretical thing, a vision caught in some rare hour?... If it be thus, it may have a decorative value in ethics, but is devoid of any practical bearing on our common life. Unless spirituality is the power that transforms falsehood to truth, selfishness to generosity, unless it enters into character as a pervasive force, of what use can it be?
Spirituality is not negative. ”

“ No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
—Carlyle.
If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. Toil is the law. Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self-indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his life is a happy one.
—Ruskin.
Nay, never falter; no great deed is done
By falterers who ask for certainty.
No good is certain but the steadfast mind,
The undivided will to seek the good. —George Eliot. ”

“ Compass happiness, since happiness alone is victory. What you make of life, it will be to you. Take it up bravely, bear it on joyfully, lay it down triumphantly.
—Gail Hamilton.
Those things that are not practicable are not desirable. There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish. If we cry like children for the moon, like children we must cry on. ”

“ It is monotony which eats the heart out of joy, destroys the buoyancy of the spirit, and turns hope to ashes; it is monotony which saps the vitality of the emotions; depletes the energy of the will, and finally turns the miracle of daily existence into dreary commonplace. And monotony has its roots, not in our conditions, but in ourselves. ”

“ Browning.
Logic makes only one demand, that of conscience. But life makes a thousand. The body wants health; the imagination cries out for beauty; and the heart for love. Pride asks for consideration; the soul yearns for peace; the conscience for holiness; our whole being is athirst for happiness and for perfection. ”

“ A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
—Ruskin.
[Pg 89]
For life, with all its yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love;
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;
And that we hold henceforth to the uttermost
Such prize despite the envy of the world,
And having gained truth, keep truth, that is all. —Robert Browning.
[Pg 90]
Oh, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! ”

“ If we neglect to exercise any talent, power, or quality, it soon falls away from us.
—Henry Wood.
Every moment of worry weakens the soul for its daily combat.
—Anna Robertson Brown.
With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat of the long day
And wish ’twere done.
Not till the hour of light return
All we have built do we discern. —Matthew Arnold.
What a man is inwardly that to him will the world be outwardly: his mood affects the very “quality of the day.” ”

“ To live in love is to live an everlasting youth. Whoever enters old age by this royal road will find the last of life to be the very best of life. Instead of finding himself descending the hills of life, he will find it up-hill all the way, into clearer air. There the vision reaches further ”

“ It is our part in life to work with all our strength toward the realization of ideal humanity, to add one more link to the chain which joins the man-brute of the past, through the man of the present, to the man of the future. The man who is likest Him, we have chosen for our ideal.
—David Starr Jordan.
My own experience and development deepens every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
—George Eliot. ”

“ It is as amazing as it is sad, that we go about so largely burdening ourselves with strivings that are of no consequence, and miss the gladness and exhilaration of living. No life is successful until it is radiant. The King of Glory is always ready to come in. Why do we bar the way? We cannot all live in palaces; but we can all live in the Kingdom of Heaven, and the material luxuries of the one pale before the glow and thrill and exaltation of the other. ”

“ Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gayety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just, and beautiful. ”

“ Whenever we send out loving thought in generous profusion, every part of our environment echoes back a sweet benediction.
—Henry Wood.
A good book, whether a novel or not, is one that leaves you farther on than when you took it up. If when you drop it, it drops you down in the same old spot, with no finer outlook, no clearer vision, no stimulated desires for that which is better and higher, it is in no sense a good book. ”

“ H. Eliot.
Whenever Conscience calls a halt, it is no place for Reason to debate the question. The way ahead is no thoroughfare.
—Charles Egbert Craddock.
Give what you have. To some one it may be better than you dare to think.
—Longfellow.
“If bitterness has crept into the heart in the friction of the busy day’s unguarded moments, be sure it steals away with the setting sun. Twilight is God’s interval for peace-making.” ”

“ Watch it day by day, as a pearl of great price; for it will be worth to you in days to come more than the best pearl hid in the sea. A kind voice is joy, like a lark’s song, to a hearth at home. It is a light that sings as well as shines. ”

“ It is a good and safe rule to sojourn in every place, as if you meant to spend your life there, never omitting an opportunity of doing a kindness, or speaking a true word, or making a friend.
—Ruskin.
Landor’s definition of a great man: He who can call together the most select company when it pleases him.
We go apart to get still; that new life, new inspiration, new power of thought, new supplies from the Fountainhead, may flow in. ”

“ To be wise we must first learn to be happy: for those who can finally issue forth from self by the portal of happiness, know infinitely wider freedom than those who pass through the gate of sadness.
—Maurice Materlinck.
When we humor our weaknesses they force themselves continually upon our attention, like spoiled children. When we assert our mastery of ourselves and compel its recognition, we stand secure in our sovereign rights. ”

“ I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant to all the gods, to demonstrate to all men that there is a good will and intelligence at the heart of things, and ever higher and yet higher leadings.
—Emerson.
Be noble, and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;
Then shalt thou see it gleam in many eyes,
Then will pure light about thy way be shed. —Lowell.
[Pg 48]
Few causes age the body faster than wilful indolence and monotony of mind—the mind, that very principle of physical youthfulness. ”

“ If he carries a happy heart all day?”
A man is specially and divinely fortunate, not when his conditions are easy, but when they evoke the very best that is in him; when they provoke him to nobleness, and sting him to strength, when they clear his vision, kindle his enthusiasm and inspire his will. ”

“ To hold one’s self in readiness for opportunity, to keep the serene, confident, hopeful, and joyful energy of mind, is to magnetize it, and draw privileges and power toward one. The concern is not whether opportunity will present itself, but as to whether we will be ready for the opportunity. ”

“ I believe if we could only see beforehand what it is that our Heavenly Father means us to be, the soul beauty and perfection and glory, the glorious and lovely spiritual body that this soul is to dwell in through all eternity, if we could have a glimpse of this, we should not grudge all the trouble and pains he is taking with us now to bring us up to that ideal which is his thought of us. ”

“ The world is such stuff as ideas are made of. Thought possesses all things. But the world is not unreal. It extends infinitely beyond our private consciousness, because it is the world of a universal mind. ”

“ Lift up yourselves to the great meaning of the day, and dare to think of your humanity as something so divinely precious that it is worthy of being an offering to God. Count it a privilege to make that offering as complete as possible, keeping nothing back, and then go out to the pleasures and duties of your life, having been born anew into His divinity, as He was born into our humanity on Christmas Day. ”

“ Can we transmit to our children a better heritage of brain and soul than our fathers left to us? Has the race through us gained some little in the direction of the law of love? If we have done our part in this struggle our lives have not been in vain. ”

“ Johnson.
[Pg 131]
“Happiness does not depend on money or leisure, or society, or even on health; it depends on our relation to those we love.”
Life without endeavor is like entering a jewel-mine and coming out with empty hands. ”

“ Reading is indeed to the mind as food is to the body—the material of which its fibre is made. It is surprising to note the difference in the quality of mental thought which even one-half hour’s good reading each day will make. ”

“ There is a class of people who are comparatively valueless to the world because of a certain morbidness which they are pleased to call sensitiveness. In reality it is nothing of the sort. It is self-love—a refined variety of it, to be sure, but none the less is it the result of a selfishly subjective state, in which they look in and not out, and down and not up, and fail to lend a hand—not from any real unwillingness, but because they are looking in, and do not see the opportunity. ”

“ Let us do our duty in our shop or our kitchen, the market, the street, the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in the front rank of some great battle, and we knew that victory for mankind depended on our bravery, strength, and skill. ”

“ The blessedness of life depends more upon its interests than upon its comforts.
—George Macdonald.
No man finds himself until he has created a world for his own soul; a world apart from care and weakness and the confusion of strife, in which the faiths that inspire him, and the ideals that lead him are the great and lasting verities.
—Hamilton W. Mabie.
Endeavor to be patient in bearing the defects and infirmities of others, of what sort soever they be; for thou thyself also hast many failings which must be borne with by others. ”

“ What I am thinking and doing day by day is resistlessly shaping my future—a future in which there is no expiation except through my own better conduct. No one can save me. No one can live my life for me. ”

“ To find its meaning is my meat and drink. —Robert Browning.
The test of friendship is its fidelity when every charm of fortune and environment has been swept away, and the bare, undraped character alone remains; if love still holds steadfast, and the joy of companionship still survives, in such an hour, the fellowship becomes a beautiful prophecy of immortality.
—Hamilton Wright Mabie.
We lose vigor through thinking continually the same set of thoughts. New thought is new life. ”

“ Phillips Brooks.
“Watch the thought you hold for the neighbor who is yet living in the consciousness of truth as you understand it. As you are taught of the Spirit, so will he be taught in the way best adapted to him.” ”

“ Lowell.
“It is better to endure all the frowns and anger of the greatest on earth, than to have an uneasy conscience within our breast. O, let the bird in the soul be always kept singing whatsoever one may suffer.” ”