Honest work

“ We must ever remember that it is the intention only that disgraces; that all honest work is honorable; and if your occupation be not so high-sounding as you would like, still it is better to work faithfully at this until opportunity opens the door to something higher. ”

“ Hard, honest work—that’s the only thing. Not hoping or wishing or thinking miracles will happen to you. Work hard and keep yourself free. Don’t depend on circumstances or other people, and don’t blame them for your own shortcomings. Be your own man. ”

“ A firm grasp of facts, he maintained, was the first characteristic of an honest mind; the main element in all honest, intellectual work. His own special talent was the gift of insight, the power of looking into the heart of things, piercing to essential facts, discerning the real characters of men, their true measure of genuine, solid worth. Creeds, professions, opinions, circumstances, all these are the externals or clothes of men. It is necessary to look behind them and beyond them if we would reach the genuine human heart. ”

“ Intelligent, energetic and capable, sharp and clear-sighted, with a vein of humor, and pleasing manner, he welcomed all to his humble abode, whether believer or skeptic, with the same good natured, honest expressions of interest and assurance in the work, that he fully believed was given him to do by disembodied spirits, receiving, as he sometimes said all things as compliments, whether donations of money, provisions, or a profusion of wordy advice or ridicule. ”

“ But I do say that the restoration of sound money will revive that confidence which is necessary to set all the industrial forces of the country in motion again to give you remunerative employment; that it will protect you against that insidious robbery with which a currency of fluctuating value strips your earnings and savings of their purchasing power; that it will open to you a fair chance again in the struggle of life by securing to you an honest dollar as wages for honest work. That is what the restoration of sound money will accomplish for ourselves and our children. ”

“ Involuntarily there arises the question: how could honest, cultured people, who sincerely love their work and wish to do good,—for such I regard the majority of my opponents to be,—have arrived at such a strange condition and be in such deep error? ”

“ Cultivate love, loyalty and respect for work—especially your own work. 18. It is not enough to be honest and lazy. 19. Try to keep your mind clean—evil and success will not mix. 20. If responsibility confronts you, seize it. ”

“ The work may be done in a thousand different ways —with the brain or the hands, in the study, the field, or the workshop—if it is honest work, honestly done and well worth doing, that is all we have a right to ask. ”

“ The natural thing to do is to work—to recognize that prosperity and happiness can be obtained only through honest effort. ”

“ This is true; and a melancholy truth it is; since it is certain that whenever the people shall pertinaciously require honest servants, and take due pains to ascertain their honesty, true men will be forthcoming. Under God's providence, the work never waits for the workman. ”

“ An honest man's the noblest work of God. ”

“ The honest workingman does not want to live merely from hand to mouth. He desires to lay up something for a rainy day. He has a praiseworthy ambition to improve his condition, to achieve an honorable independence, to educate his children and to start them well in the race of life. ”

“ And now, in the face of these facts, which are as notorious as sunlight, and of these conclusions, which are as clear as mathematical demonstrations, can any man who depends for his living upon the remunerative employment of his labor, a workingman, who, by industry and prudent economy, endeavors to improve his own condition and that of his children, be so utterly blind to his own interests as to follow leaders insidiously advising him, if he has strength to work, to strip that labor of its honest earnings, and if he has a dollar saved, to cheat him of its value? Are you men of self-respect? ”

“ That, fellow-citizens, is the feast to which the advocates of inflation invite you so blandly. That is the revival of business, that is the wonderful development of prosperity which they promise you in such glowing colors. That is the drift of the policy which is to set our factories whirling, to make our farmers rich, to give our laborers abundance of work and unprecedented wages, to put bread into the mouths of the needy. ”

“ When the first effects of the great shock were over, when the lies and deceptions in the shape of rotten bank issues and fancy values had disappeared, when the self-acting contraction of currency and credit had done its work, business enterprise began once more to feel firm ground under its feet. Business men had less of that which called itself money, but they were sure that every dollar they did have not only called itself a dollar, but was a dollar and would remain a dollar. ”

“ But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, or at all in kindness, or do you think there is never any honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his book or his piece of art. ”

“ A panic, whatever the cause, manifests itself as an unreasoning fear and distrust, which prevents credit from doing its usual work, and creates an excessive demand for money; not only because the money is then needed by each individual who demands it, but because each is afraid if he does not get it then he will not be able to get it when he does need it. It means a hoarding of money, a great rise in its value, or, as generally expressed, a great fall in prices. All this is enhanced by the knowledge of the limited amount of money ”

“ What shall I say of honesty and integrity? where the lowest, basest arts, are practised for gain; where all is intrigue and circumvention—where the maxim prevails, 'all is fair in trade'—where each regards the other as lawful game—where one can gain only by the loss of the other—where, in a word, rascality is fair-play, and villainy systematic;—where, fellow-citizens, let me ask you, where, in such a community, is there room for honesty? Can the heart fail, in such circumstances, to become deadened to every feeling of humanity—steeled against every kindly, generous, and ennobling impulse? ”

“ While these percentages may not show accurately, on the whole, the relative work done by money and by forms of credit, they do show the enormous extent to which credit takes the place of money, and the greatly increased demand for money that arises, when, from lack of confidence or other causes, the extent of the credit is lessened. Unless the volume of money immediately adapts itself to such demand, the value of money must inevitably increase, or the demand be lessened by a checking of all business transactions, and a partial paralysis of the industries of the country. ”

“ I can look back over my life and see just where my honesty began to waver, just when I first compromised with my own conscience and persuaded myself that something was fair and honest when I knew it was not. ”

“ That your good conduct is our wealth,
Your stainless name, our pride.
Be firm and honest, kind and true,
In sunshine, or in blast,
And make your duty, your delight,
Where'er your lot is cast. ”

“ Under no circumstances would anybody receive money from the government as a gift. The merchant will have to sell merchandise for it; the farmer will have to raise crops and stock for it; the manufacturer will have produce goods for it; the laboring man will have to work for it and earn it as wages. For a dollar in greenbacks or in fiat money, as long as it is worth anything, he will have to work just as hard as for a dollar in gold. To-day the greenback dollar or a national bank note he receives in the shape of wages is, in point of value of purchasing power, as good as a dollar in gold. ”

“ People commonly use the terms money and currency indiscriminately for both coin and paper money, since they perform identically the same work where both are used together, and the paper is convertible into coin at any time. ”

“ If you have lived all your years following your own sense of honor, if you have tried, in everything you do, to be fair and just, how can it be, when the years have passed, that suddenly all the results of honest dealing should be swept away? ”

“ Simple truth, simplicity, honesty, uprightness, justice, mercy, love, kindness, do good to all and evil to none, how easy it is to live by such principles! A thousand times easier than to practice deception! 14:76.
Honesty in Labor—I have tried to suppress dishonesty in individuals, and have tried thereby to make them honest. If I hire a carpenter and pay him three dollars a day, and he is three days in making a six-panel door that a good workman can make in one, or even a door and a half, I do not want to pay him three dollars a day for that labor. ”

“ The disproportion between your wages and the cost of living has become so great that at last the employer must agree to pay you more. But will your wages he raised to the full amount of the rise of prices? — Never, — and why not? Because the employer will plead again the same uncertainty as to prices at which the products of your labor can be sold when they reach the market. He will have the same ability to get other men in your places, if you quit work, and thus the disproportion between your wages and the cost of living continues, and with it the loss you suffer. ”

“ We can pretty much agree on the simple essential truths which are proven. That is, being honest, truthful, kind, lovable, sympathetic, cheerful, doing good, helping one another and doing things worth while. ”

“ Field, “of any opinion of mine, or any wish on the part of the young men for wealth, distinction or praise, we know that to be honest is best. There is nothing better, and we also know that nothing can be more helpful than this when combined with other essential qualities.” ”

“ But to follow the best policy is a very different thing from being honest; the love of justice and the love of personal profit or pleasure are quite different. But is honesty the best policy? Policy is means to achieve a special end. If the end you seek be the common object of desire,—if it be material pleasure in your period of passion, or material profit in your period of ambition,—if you seek for money, for ease, honour, power over men, and their approbation,—then honesty is not the best policy ”

“ And, whenever anybody tries to make you believe that you can increase your earnings by introducing a dollar which loses its value over night, or that you can improve your condition by stirring up bitterness and strife between those elements of society which must harmoniously work together for the common benefit, repel him as your worst enemy. ”

“ Even before the cost of living comes down, while you are still compelled to pay exorbitant prices for your necessaries, you are some day informed by your employer, who sniffs the coming storm from afar, if he is a prudent man, that the market threatens to be weak, and that work must be reduced or stopped altogether. Now the crash comes. If you are fortunate enough not to be thrown out of employment, you will have to be contented with lower wages. ”

“ What is it, may I ask, entices you to remain in the position you occupy—that of being an honest man, credited with constant generous actions, kindly to your inferiors, and what not? Why should you be moral at all? Why should you not, if it pleased you, go into any depths of dissipation and debauchery? There is nothing to restrain you. ”

“ To detect its imperfections was no easy task; to lay the foundations of virtue in utility, and to limit, by that scale, the operation of general principles; to see that the value of sincerity, like that of every other mode of action, consisted in its tendency to good, and that, therefore the obligation to speak truth was not paramount or intrinsical: that my duty is modelled on a knowledge and foresight of the conduct of others ”

“ It is as much as any moralist ventures to assert, that, other circumstances being given, honesty is the best policy, and that with parity of advantages an honest person has a better chance than a rogue. ”

“ The problem that confronts him is the fact that has always been very evident in every age, that honesty is not by any means always the best policy, if by that you mean that it pays you best. I am putting it in homely language. It is a big question. Do the world's good things go predominantly to the good men? or do they go to the clever and unscrupulous men? In the professions is it your honest, truthful man, of modest merit, that succeeds best, or your humbug, impostor, flatterer, self-advertiser? ”

“ What nobler business is there, for man or nation? And who should lead in it if not ourselves? First, though, let us approach the work in true humility, confessing our own faults and shortcomings. Guard us, heaven, against the triple sin of pride, arrogance, and self-conceit. ”

“ This led to a question as to whether all our knowledge here is given to us from his plane, and he went on: “Not all. We help develop what you are willing to work for, if you are really sincere in wanting it. Sincerity is the crowning virtue.” ”

“ It is very easy for us to be honest. Our own interest, our self-love, the aid which circumstances give us, the advantageous emulation with which the social struggle inspires us, our conception of duty,--all help to clear the way for us ”

“ For this kind of reformatory spirit might at last reform Congress into an insane asylum, the public service, the machinery of the Government into the elements of a penitentiary and the party into a terror to all honest and civilized men.
But there is another excuse which at first sight appears more respectable. It is said the times are hard; business is languishing; our industries are depressed; thousands of laborers are without work; the poor are growing poorer ”