A colonel in the United States Army told me the other day something like this: The most valuable officer, the one who has the greatest responsibility, is the sergeant. The true ser...
My father is a doctor who has practised medicine for sixty-five years, and is still practising. I am a doctor myself. I am fifty years old; my father is eighty-five. We live in the...
By exercise of its faculties the spirit grows, just as a muscle grows strong thru continued use. Expression is necessary. Life is expression, and repression is stagnation--death. Y...
While this seems true in the main, I am not sure it will hold in every case. Please think it out for yourself, and if I happen to be wrong, why, put me straight. The proposition is...
The very first item in the creed of common sense is _Obedience_. Perform your work with a whole heart. Revolt may be sometimes necessary, but the man who tries to mix revolt and ob...
There is known to me a prominent business house that by the very force of its directness and worth has incurred the enmity of many rivals. In fact, there is a very general conspira...
Words sometimes become tainted and fall into bad repute, and are discarded. Until the day of Elizabeth Fry, on the official records in England appeared the word "mad-house." Then i...
Every successful concern is the result of a One-Man Power. Coöperation, technically, is an iridescent dream--things coöperate because the man makes them. He cements them by his wil...
The world bestows its big prizes, both in money and honors, for but one thing. And that is Initiative. What is Initiative? I'll tell you: It is doing the right thing without being...
Success is in the blood. There are men whom fate can never keep down--they march forward in a jaunty manner, and take by divine right the best of everything that the earth affords....
An excellent and gentle man of my acquaintance has said, "When fifty-one per cent of the voters believe in coöperation as opposed to competition, the Ideal Commonwealth will cease...
As the subject is somewhat complex, I will have to explain it to you. The first point is that there is not so very much difference in the intelligence of people after all. The grea...
Socrates was once asked by a pupil, this question: "What kind of people shall we be when we reach Elysium?" And the answer was this: "We shall be the same kind of people that we we...
Did it ever strike you that it is a most absurd and semi-barbaric thing to set one day apart as "holy?" If you are a writer and a beautiful thought comes to you, you never hesitate...
No woman is worthy to be a wife who on the day of her marriage is not lost absolutely and entirely in an atmosphere of love and perfect trust; the supreme sacredness of the relatio...
England's most famous dramatist, George Bernard Shaw, has placed in the pillory of letters what he is pleased to call "The Disagreeable Girl." And he has done it by a dry-plate, qu...
When I was a farmer lad I noticed that whenever we bought a new cow, and turned her into the pasture with the herd, there was a general inclination on the part of the rest to make...
Four hundred and twenty-five years before the birth of the Nazarene, Socrates said, "The gods are on high Olympus, but you and I are here." And for this--and a few other similar ob...
Maybe I am all wrong about it, yet I cannot help believing that the spirit of man will live again in a better world than ours. Fenelon says: "Justice demands another life to make g...
All adown the ages society has made the mistake of nailing its Saviors to the cross between thieves. That is to say, society has recognized in the Savior a very dangerous quality--...
These truths I hold to be self-evident: That man was made to be happy; that happiness is only attainable through useful effort; that the very best way to help ourselves is to help...
The best way to learn to write is to write. Herbert Spencer never studied grammar until he had learned to write. He took his grammar at sixty, which is a good age for one to begin...
Abraham Lincoln's letter to Hooker! If all the letters, messages and speeches of Lincoln were destroyed, except that one letter to Hooker, we still would have an excellent index to...
To give a man something for nothing tends to make the individual dissatisfied with himself. Your enemies are the ones you have helped. And when an individual is dissatisfied with h...
Traveling to and fro over the land and up and down in it are men who manage street-fairs. Let it be known that a street-fair or Mardi Gras is never a spontaneous expression of the...
The question is often asked, "What becomes of all the Valedictorians and all the Class-Day Poets?" I can give information as to two parties for whom this inquiry is made--the Valed...
Renan has said that truth is always rejected when it comes to a man for the first time, its evolution being as follows: First, we say the thing is rank heresy, and contrary to the...
Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise seem to be the three ingredients that are most needed in forming the Gentle Man. I place these elements according to their value. No man is great who...
The supreme prayer of my heart is not to be learned, rich, famous, powerful, or "good," but simply to be radiant. I desire to radiate health, cheerfulness, calm courage and good wi...