“…to be at home in all lands and all ages; to count Nature as a familiar acquaintance and Art an intimate friend; to gain a standard for the appreciation of other men’s work and the criticism of one’s own; to carry the keys of the world’s library in one’s pocket, and feel its resources behind one in whatever task he undertakes; to make hosts of friends among the men of one’s own age who are the leaders in all walks of life; to lose oneself in general enthusiasms and co-operate with others for common ends….”
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”
To find one’s work in the world and do it honorably, to keep one’s record clean so that nothing clandestine, furtive, surreptitious can ever leap out upon one from ambush and spoil one’s life, to be able, therefore, unafraid to look the world in the face, to live honorably also with one’s own soul because one keeps there no secret place like the bloody closet in Bluebeard’s palace where the dead things hang, to walk life’s journey unhaunted by the ghosts of people from whose ruin one has stolen pleasure, and so at last to be a gentleman, one, that is, who puts a little more into life than one takes out—gather up the significance of such character, forty years old, sixty years old, eighty years old—one may well celebrate the solid satisfactions of such a life.
A builder builded a temple,
He wrought it with grace and skill;
Pillars and groins and arches
All fashioned to work his will.
Men said, as they saw its beauty,
“It shall never know decay;
Great is thy skill, O builder!
Thy fame shall endure for aye.”
A mother builded a temple
With loving and infinite care,
Planning each arch with patience,
Laying each stone with prayer.
None praised her unceasing efforts,
None knew of her wondrous plan,
For the temple the mother builded
Was unseen by the eyes of man.
Gone is the builder’s temple,
Crumpled into the dust;
Low lies each stately pillar,
Food for consuming rust.
But the temple the mother builded
Will last while the ages roll,
For that beautiful unseen temple
Was a child’s immortal soul.
It’s the steady, constant driving
To the goal for which you’re striving,
Not the speed with which you travel
That will make the victory sure.
It’s the everlasting gaining,
Without whimper or complaining
At the burdens you are bearing,
Or the woes you must endure.
It’s the holding to a purpose
And the never giving in;
It’s the cutting down the distance
By the little that you win.
It’s the iron will to do it
And the steady sticking to it
So, whate’er your task, go to it
And life’s purpose you will win.
“To help the young soul, to add energy, inspire hope, and blow the coals into a useful flame; to redeem defeat by new thought and firm action, this, though not easy, is the work of divine men [and women].” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
and
“As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers.” -Nathaniel Hawthorne
