Ready

“ Of course there would have to be "preparations". (If you have "to prepare" to be a hairdresser, it stands to reason you would have to ready yourself for this.) Confronting, facts you can die only once. ”

“ It is an imperfect and partial preparation in this respect, which so often renders the manner awkward and embarrassed, and the discourse obscure and perplexed.11 But when the preparation is faithful, the speaker feels at home; being under no anxiety respecting the ideas or the order of their succession, he has the more ready control of his person, his eye, and his hand, and the more fearlessly gives up his mind to its own action and casts himself upon the current. Uneasiness and constraint are the inevitable attendants of unfaithful preparation, and they are fatal to success. ”

“ You are ready, children, for everything that will have to be done. You have not come to your full maturity and power, of course; that stage will come only with time. It is best for you, however, that we leave you now. ”

“ But as for readiness and disposition, we are always ready, feel always ready for anything that is new. We are always ready, and at the first hint given, rush forward to establish benevolent institutions ”

“ The jester asked the nobleman if he were prepared for the journey which he was about to take. All journeys require preparation. No one thinks of taking a journey without making ready beforehand; we think the matter well over, find out what we shall need, and provide accordingly. ”

“ Readiness for the occasion brought him to fame and honor. To-morrow some jurist, merchant, statesman will die. The youth who is ready for the place, will find the mantle falling upon his shoulders. Success is readiness for occasions. ”

“ I will prepare for a fight, I will prepare for peace, and I will also prepare for everything that comes along; then I am ready for anything. Build? Yes, build, and make your homes as comfortable as you can. ”

“ "Be not impatient in delay,
But wait as one who understands;
When spirit rises and commands,
The gods are ready to obey.” ”

“ And besides, who can tell if I may not some day succeed thereby in bringing my ideas to light? So many unexpected things happen which upset all calculations. One must be prepared therefore, for every eventuality, and be ready to unfurl one's sail at the first capful of wind. ”

“ What will come to all of us before we all meet again no one can say, but this we all know, that we have, most of us, been living now for many years in expectation. We have been taught, by the goodness of God, to believe that we must be ready at any moment to obey His call, and that call may come, in the middle of our work, of our prayers, of our love for others, of our pursuit of our own ambitions, and that whenever it does come we must be ready to obey it. ”

“ Do not delay one moment after you are ready: you will lose all your resolution if you do. Let the first blow he the signal for all to engage, and, when engaged, do not do your work by halves, but make clean work with your enemies. ”

“ And now comes the moment for considering the passage to which you began by referring:—What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do, you must do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for what he may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next. ”

“ It may be that it is preparing for a greater and a nobler life, making the place ready for some greater one to come, who shall worthily and strongly wield the power that I am bound to wield too weakly, but yet, perhaps, strongly enough to make that preparation possible. ”

“ but you know if we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything, is ready, we shall never begin. ”

“ But in your ambition to attach that poor girl to the chariot-wheels of Progress'—his voice put the drag of ironic pomposity upon the phrase—'you quite ignore the fact that people fitter for such work, the men you look to enlist in the end, are ready waiting'—he pulled himself up in time for an anti-climax—'to give the thing a chance.'
'Men are ready! ”

“ You possess an extraordinary degree of perseverance, but have not a marked degree of prompt decision. After you have decided, you act energetically, and are more sure to finish what you commence, than you are ready to begin a new enterprise. ”

“ It is better to be ready before the time, and wait a while, than not to be ready when the time shall come, and be lost. We exhort you then with the Lord’s advice, “be like men waiting for their Lord, that when he cometh they may open to him immediately.” ”

“ Recognize that the initiative in gaining your chance should be in your own hands. Do not wait for any opportunity to come to you. "Go to it." Go prepared to control the situation you have planned to create, but be ready also to meet unexpected possibilities. ”

“ Or perhaps we think we can make ourselves ready by trying to be good—forgetting that the One who is Himself the Truth said, "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost," and that if the Lord is preparing a place, He wants a prepared people. ”

“ One never knows when these chances will come; they rush in on you unexpectedly and expect to find you ready. In the encounter the character built up in a lifetime is examined and reported on by the momentary result. ”

“ The moment we recognize that the self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action, the whole situation clears up. ”

“ Keen, subtle, capricious, satirical, sated with ideas, eager for novelty, yet with the eagerness of amused frivolity, not of the truth-seeker: critical by instinct, exquisitely sensitive to the ridiculous or the absurd, disputatious, ready to listen, yet impatient of all that was not wit, satisfied with everything in life except its shortness, and therefore hiding all references to this unwelcome fact under a veil of complacent euphemism—where could a more uncongenial soil be found for the seed of the Gospel? ”

“ The Ionians, on the other hand, were open as the sea, and had as many moods. They were eminently susceptible to beauty in all its forms, to the charm of change and to novelty. They were ever ready to put any belief or institution to the test of discussion, and were governed as much by ideas as by sentiments. Keenness of intellect, taste in all matters of literature and art, grace in expression, and measure in everything distinguished them above all Greeks. ”

“ Little, we fear, can be done to keep the remaining uprights standing. They will fall when their time comes and will lie where they fall like those that have already succumbed to their fate. It is better, perhaps, for the dignity of this venerable monument that it is in no serious danger of that restoration which is at work on so many later structures, more splendid as triumphs of art, but less stubborn in their strength. ”

“ “I have already explained to you that what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance. ”

“ It was already the England which we see to-day, a land of meadows, green, intersected by hedgerows, crowded with cattle, abounding in ships, a manufacturing, opulent land, with a people of beef-eating toilers, who enrich it while they enrich themselves. ”

“ Of all the legacies for which we have to thank Florence, none are so well known and so universally recognized as the treasures of art created by her sons, many of which yet remain within her walls, the marvel and delight of all who behold them. As the Florentines were ready to try experiments in politics, manufactures, and commerce, so also in all branches of the fine arts they tried experiments, left the old, beaten paths of their forefathers, and created something original, useful, and beautiful for themselves. ”

“ For those who direct big businesses the earnings of which are in silver and the expenses largely in gold, as well as for those who had already invested their fortunes in shares prior to the utter collapse of silver, the past few [238] years have been a period of crushing losses, while the future must be fraught with grave anxiety. ”

“ From hacking to racing is but a step. The man who has learnt to ride (or thinks he has) , being already a member of the race club, takes his steed for a quiet canter round the course. The old racer no sooner finds himself on the familiar track than he is off with the speed of flames, and our young friend, being powerless to check him, with his feet out of the stirrups and hanging on to the back of the saddle for dear life, is carried a mile or so before a sudden swerve at the exit rail deposits him on the turf. ”

“ He who knows about any people, or epoch, or special development of human nature, how it has come to be what it is and what it tends to, what causes have given it the character it has, and what its relation is to the general development of humanity, has attained to the philosophy of the history of that people, epoch, or development. ”

“ Thus, whether we look at the dignity of the subject matter, or at the nature of the mental exercise which it requires, or at the nature of the field over which the pursuit ranges, History, the knowledge of the adventures, the development, the changeful career, the varied growths, the ambitions, aspirations, and, if you like, the approximating destinies of mankind, claims a place second to none in the roll of Sciences. ”

“ In the midst of the rapid movements of that animated amusement, in one moment to be hurried into another world without one thought of preparation has something tremendously formidable in it; yet every one is liable to deaths equally sudden, and the suggestion ought to be universal: ‘Prepare to meet thy God.’ The misery is that thousands sitting in their chairs and with ample time for preparation are apt to think of any subject rather than this most important of all. ”

“ If we have believed in it, we stand prepared. If we have conceived our plan of action in purity of heart, we shall be guided to discern the means which may serve us. You will know speedily what it is that has prompted you to move. ”

“ Wait, wait, thou active soul,—even in thy most vigorous activity let thy work be one of waiting, and of great patience in thy fiercest toil. There will come a day of triumph, when the fresh wind will banish the heat, and fan the laurel on thy brow. ”

“ They had fought against circumstances at every step in their history, and had won their wealth, their knowledge, their high importance and influence in the world, by sheer hard work, tireless patience and indomitable will. ”

“ Accept leadership where you find it—give it, if you feel the impulse and the strength. Do not wait for some grand opportunity, and whilst you are waiting stiffen in the wrong shape. The great opportunity may not be for us, but for the generation whose path we now prepare: and we do our best towards such preparation, if we begin in a small and humble way the incorporation of our hopes and desires as for instance Wesley and the Oxford Methodists did. ”

“ I have given the future of you young people the most careful consideration, because it is for the future that you must now prepare. Youth is the time of preparation. It is the building time. As we sow in youth, so we reap in age—huh. ”

“ How can I dare to form a scheme, when I am aware that the chance of success must be so strong against me? But if you will tell me that there can be a gleam of hope, I will obey any commands that you can put upon me in any way that you may point out. ”

“ O my soul, prepare provision in abundance, prepare not little, while thou art yet alive, and while thy hand has yet strength, because the journey is too great for thee. And say not: ‘I shall prepare provision to-morrow’; for the day has declined, and thou knowest not what the next day may bring forth. Know likewise that yesterday shall never come back, and that whatever thou hast done therein is weighed, numbered, and counted. ”

“ Small and without beauty, dark of complexion, but with some grace, with elegance and above all carriage, Marie Louise of Parma was at once superstitious and passionate, ignorant, uneasy, with a very frivolous soul as a foundation, with obstinacy without firmness, with artifice without intelligence, with intrigue leading to no result, more covetousness than ambition, much emptiness of mind, still more of heart. ”

“ Why, if it impressed the Greek mind so deeply with the reality of the objects of faith, did it not also check the vain inquisitiveness and spirit of disputatiousness and sophistry, which filled Greek Church history with furious wranglings about the most hopeless problems? Why, if it could raise such admiration for unselfishness and heroic nobleness, has not this admiration borne more congenial fruit? Why, if heaven was felt to be so great and so near, was there in real life such coarse and mean worldliness? ”

“ Believe a southern man as he believes himself, and you must regard New England and the kindred States as the birthplace of impurity of mind among men and of unchastity in women—the home of free love, of Fourrierism, of infidelity, of abolitionism, of false teachings in political economy and in social life; a land saturated with the drippings of rotten philosophy, with the poisonous infections of a fanatic press; without honor or modesty; whose wisdom is paltry cunning, whose valor and manhood have been swallowed up in a corrupt, howling demagogy, and in the marts of a dishonest commerce. ”

“ Sir, he who sees these States, now revolving in harmony around a common centre, and expects to see them quit their places and fly off without convulsion, may look the next hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against each other in the realms of space, without causing the wreck of the universe. ”

“ Rouse ye, O, women; the laggard men will not act; they say, we ourselves may act! And so, like snowbreak from the mountains, for every staircase is a melted brook, it storms; tumultuous, wild-shrilling, towards the Hôtel-de-Ville. ”