William George Jordan

“ The man who spends his time lamenting the fortune he once had, or the fame that has taken its winged flight into oblivion, frittering away his golden hours erecting new monuments in the cemetery of his past achievements and his former greatness, making what he was ever plead apology for what he is, lives in an air-castle. To the world and to the individual a single egg of new hope and determination, with its wondrous potency of new life, is greater than a thousand nests full of the eggs of dead dreams, or unrealized ambitions. ”

“ The scabbard is the temporal; the sword is the eternal. The scabbard is the body; the sword is the soul. The scabbard typifies the material side of life; the sword the true, the spiritual, the ideal.
The man who does not dare follow his own convictions, but who lives in terror of what society will say, falling prostrate before the golden calf of public opinion, is living an empty life of mere show. He is sacrificing his individuality, his divine right to live his life in harmony with his own high ideals, to a cowardly, toadying fear of the world. ”

“ Living in the future is living in an air-castle. To-morrow is the grave where the dreams of the dreamer, the toiler who toils not, are buried. The man who says he will lead a newer and better life to-morrow, who promises great things for the future, and yet does nothing in the present to make that future possible, is living in an air-castle. In his arrogance he is attempting to perform a miracle; he is seeking to turn water into wine, to have harvest without seed-time, to have an end without a beginning. ”

“ The search for truth is the angel of progress—in civilization and in morals. While it makes us bold and aggressive in our own life, it teaches us to be tender and sympathetic with others. Their life may represent a station we have passed in our progress, or one we must seek to reach. We can then congratulate ourselves without condemning them. All the truths of the world are not concentrated in our creed. All the sunshine of the world is not focused on our doorstep. We should ever speak the truth,—but only in love and kindness. Truth should ever extend the hand of love ”

“ If the greatest leaders of the world have had to wait for recognition, should we, whose best work may be but trifling in comparison with theirs, expect instant sympathy, appreciation, and coöperation, where we are merely growing toward our own attainment?
The world ever says to its leaders, by its attitude if not in words, "If you would lead us to higher realms of thought, to purer ideals of life, and flash before us, like the handwriting on the wall, all the possible glories of development, you must pay the price for it, not we." ”

“ Each generation bequeaths to its successor its wisdom and its folly, its wealth of knowledge and its debts of error and failure. The things that come too late thus mean only the delayed payments on old debts. They mean that the world is growing wiser, and better, truer, nobler, and more just. It is emerging from the dark shadows of error into the sunshine of truth and justice. They prove that Time is weaving a beauteous fabric from the warp and woof of humanity, made up of shreds and tangles of error and truth. ”

“ It is the mud that inferiority throws at success. Envy is the gangrene of unsatisfied ambition, it eats away purpose and kills energy. It is egotism gone to seed; it always finds the secret of its non-success in something outside itself.
Envy is the scabbard, but emulation is the sword. Emulation regards the success of another as an object lesson; it seeks in the triumph of another the why, the reason, the inspiration of method. It seeks to attain the same heights by the path it thus discovers, not to hurl down from his eminence him who points out the way of attainment. ”

“ Work for the interests and advancement of Truth is a necessary part of real companionship. If a man has a love of truth, if he searches to find it, and has faith in it, even when he cannot find it, will he not work to spread it? The strongest way for man to strengthen the power of truth in the world is to live it himself in every detail of thought, word, and deed—to make himself a sun of personal radiation of truth, and to let his silent influence speak for it and his direct acts glorify it so far as he can in his sphere of life and action. ”

“ Man should not be an automatic gas-machine, cleverly contrived to release a given quantity of illumination under the stimulus of a nickel. He should be like the great sun itself which ever radiates light, warmth, life and power, because it cannot help doing so, because these qualities fill the heart of the sun, and for it to have them means that it must give them constantly. Let the sunlight of our sympathy, tenderness, love, appreciation, influence and kindness ever go out from us as a glow to brighten and hearten others. ”

“ As we are each day indebted to thousands for the comforts, joys, consolations, and blessings40 of life, let us realize that it is only by kindness to all that we can begin to repay the debt to one, begin to make gratitude the atmosphere of all our living and a constant expression in outward acts, rather than in mere thoughts. Let us see the awful cowardice and the injustice of ingratitude, not to take it too seriously in others, not to condemn it too severely, but merely to banish it forever from our own lives, and to make every hour of our living the radiation of the sweetness of gratitude. ”

“ This is why contemporary reputation rarely indicates lasting fame. We are constantly mistaking fireflies of cleverness for stars of genius. But Time brings all things right. The fame, though, brings no joy, or encouragement, or inspiration to him who has passed beyond this world's lights and shadows; it has the sadness of the honors that come too late, a touch of the farcical mingled with its pathos. Tardy recognition is better than none at all, it is better, though late, than never ”

“ The man who votes the same ticket in politics, year after year, without caring for issues, men, or problems, merely voting in a certain way because he always has voted so, is sacrificing loyalty to truth to a weak, mistaken, stubborn attachment to a worn-out precedent. Such a man should stay in his cradle all his life—because he spent his early years there.
The search for Truth means that the individual must not merely follow truth as he sees it, but he must, so far as he can, search to see that he is right. ”

“ It is a hard lesson for youth to learn, but we must realize, as the old college professor said to his class of students, bowed with the consciousness of their wisdom: "No one of us is infallible, no, not even the youngest." Let us accept the little failings of those around us as we accept facts in nature, and make the best of them, as we accept the hard shells of nuts, the skin of fruits, the shadow that always accompanies light. These are not absolute faults, they are often but individual peculiarities. Intolerance sees the mote in its neighbor's eye as larger than the beam in its own. ”

“ Man cannot raise himself to higher things by what he would like to accomplish, but only by what he endeavors to accomplish. To be of value, ambition must ever be made manifest in zeal, in determination, in energy consecrated to an ideal. If it be thus reinforced, thus combined, the thin airy castle melts into nothingness, and the individual stands on a new strong foundation of solid rock, whereon, day by day and stone by stone, he can rear a mighty material structure of life-work to last through time and eternity. The air-castle ever represents the work of an architect without a builder ”

“ You will know that all will come right in the end, that it must come, that error must flee before the great white light of truth, as darkness slinks away into nothingness in the presence of the sunburst. Then, with Truth as your guide, your companion, your ally, and inspiration, you tingle with the consciousness of your kinship with the Infinite and all the petty trials, sorrows and sufferings of life fade away like temporary, harmless visions seen in a dream. ”

“ Lying is one of the oldest vices in the world—it made its début in the first recorded conversation in history, in a famous interview in the garden of Eden. Lying is the sacrifice of honor to create a wrong impression. It is masquerading4 in misfit virtues. Truth can stand alone, for it needs no chaperone or escort. Lies are cowardly, fearsome things that must travel in battalions. They are like a lot of drunken men, one vainly seeking to support another. Lying is the partner and accomplice of all the other vices. It is the cancer of moral degeneracy in an individual life. ”

“ There are thorns in character that reveal an internal inharmony, that can be controlled only from within; there are also prickles, which are merely peculiarities of temperament, that the eye of tolerance may overlook and the finger of charity can gently remove.
The tenderness of tolerance will illuminate and glorify the world,—as moonlight makes all things beautiful,—if we only permit it. Measuring a man by his weakness alone is unjust. This little frailty may be but a small mortgage on a large estate, and it is narrow and petty to judge by the mortgage on a character. ”

“ The world does not see our ideal as we see it, does not feel the glow of inspiration that makes our blood tingle, our eye brighten, and our soul seem flooded with a wondrous light. It sees naught but the rough block of marble before us and the great mass of chips and fragments of seemingly fruitless effort at our feet, but it does not see the angel of achievement slowly emerging from its stone prison, from nothingness into being, under the tireless strokes of our chisel. ”

“ Constantly telling a child not to lie is giving life and intensity to "the lie." The true method is to quicken the moral muscles from the positive side, urge the child to be honest, to be faithful, to be loyal, to be fearless to the truth. Tell him ever of the nobility of courage to speak the true, to live the right, to hold fast to principles of honor in every trifle—then he need never fear to face any of life's crises. ”

“ No good act performed in the world ever dies. Science tells us that no atom of matter can ever be destroyed, that no force once started ever ends; it merely passes through a multiplicity of ever-changing phases. Every good deed done to others is a great force that starts an unending pulsation through time and eternity. We may not know it, we may never hear a word of gratitude or of recognition, but it will all come back to us in some form as naturally, as perfectly, as inevitably, as echo answers to sound. ”

“ The reformer in morals, in education, in religion, in sociology, in invention, in philosophy, in any line of aspiration, is ever a pioneer. His privilege is to blaze the path for others, to mark at his peril a road that others may follow in safety. He must not expect that the way will be graded and asphalted for him. He must realize that he must face injustice, ingratitude, opposition, misunderstanding, the cruel criticism of contemporaries and often, hardest of all, the wondering reproach of those who love him best. ”

“ The way of the reformer is hard, very hard. The world knows little of it, for it is rare that the reformer reveals the scars of conflict, the pangs of hope deferred, the mighty waves of despair that wash over a great purpose. Sometimes men of sincere aim and unselfish high ambition, weary and worn with the struggle, have permitted the world to hear an uncontrolled sob of hopelessness or a word of momentary bitterness at the seeming emptiness of all effort. ”

“ Time is a mighty stream that comes each day with unending flow. To think of this water of past time with such regret that it shuts our eyes to the mighty river of the present is sheer folly. Let us make the best we can of to-day in the best preparation for to-morrow; then even the things that come too late will be new revelations of wisdom to use in the present now before us, and in the future we are forming. ”

“ Truth, with time as its ally, always wins in the end. The knowledge of the inappreciation, the coldness, and the indifference of the world, should never make you pessimistic. They should inspire you with that large, broad optimism that sees that all the opposition of the world can never keep back the triumph of truth, that your work is so great that the petty jealousies, misrepresentations, and hardships caused by those around you, dwindle into nothingness. ”

“ The man who believes that all humanity is united in conspiracy against him, who feels that his life is the hardest in all the world, and lets the cares, sorrows and trials that come to us all, eclipse the glorious sun of his happiness, darkening his eyes to his privileges and his blessings, is living in an air-castle. ”

“ Ingratitude, the most popular sin of humanity, is forgetfulness of the heart. It is the revelation of the emptiness of pretended loyalty. The individual who possesses it finds it the shortest cut to all the other vices.
Ingratitude is a crime more despicable than revenge, which is only returning evil for evil, while ingratitude returns evil for good. People who are ungrateful rarely forgive you if you do them a good turn. ”

“ She is decorating the scabbard with a crest and heraldic designs, and with ornaments of pure gold set with jewels. She feels that this will be enough for life, and that she does not need love,—real love, that has made this world a paradise, despite all the other people present. She does not realize that there is but one real reason, but one justification for marriage, and that is,—love; all the other motives are not reasons, they are only excuses. ”

“ The individual has no right that runs counter to the right of any one else. There are no solo parts in the eternal music of life. Each must pour out his life in duo with every other. Every moment must be one of choice, of good or of evil. Which will the individual choose? His life will be his answer. Let him dedicate his life to making the world around him brighter, sweeter and better, and by his conquest of preventable pain and sorrow he will day by day get fuller revelation of the glory of the possibilities of individual living, and come nearer and nearer to the realization of his ideals. ”