Is there one you can talk to?
If so, you are fortunate. For one of the most important discoveries a man or woman makes, on the little trip from the cradle to the grave, is the intelligent, likable, appreciative, stimulative companion in talk.
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The true philosophy of laughter has never been written. All learned books on the subject I have read are merely discussions of the comic. But laughter has further reaches than that. We not only laugh at jokes and capers but our best laughing is from the sheer joy of life.
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Everything is twofold. There is the thing itself, and there is the picture of the thing which is in the mind. That mental picture is called an Idea.
When we have a task we want to accomplish, a condition we want to attain, or any purpose at all, we form a mind-concept of the thing desired. That is called an Ideal.
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Like almost everything else, self-confidence is a habit.
It is formed by persistently choosing to let the mind dwell upon our successes, and in turning our thoughts just as persistently away from our failures.
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Let us play some more in the library.
Here are some further traits of friendship, drawn from the proverbial wisdom of all ages and peoples.
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Let us play awhile in the library.
The subject of friendship has engaged the attention of thinkers in all ages. Many of their conclusions have come down to us in proverbs.
From these sentences of condensed wisdom we can catch many a shrewd hint.
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I had the most wonderful dream last night. I dreamt he came down the pipe and appeared surprisingly before us all, and his name was Mr. In. Queer name, wasn’t it? Sort of Japanesy. He did the most amazing things for us, made a great hit, the critics said. It was prize-fighting or piano-playing or speechifying or something; anyway we all thought he was remarkable, and, come to find out, he was the baby! — our baby, you know, that’s all!
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Of the making of books there is no end. Tons of them emerge daily from the laboring presses. What innumerable things they tell! Yet much more they leave untold.
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There is no way to get the values of the countryside so good as walking. If you have a horse he gets in between you and the glory of the landscape, and if you whiz along the road in an automobile you had as well, save for the fresh air, be at a moving-picture show. Only when you walk do you get that personal, minute, and intimate acquaintance with nature.
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When I am gone, that is the end of the world.
All its movements, of government, of wars, of business, of social redemption, of eugenics and women’s rights, of church, of art, of education, of finance, sport, romance, vengeance – the whole boiling kettle of human affairs will have disappeared, and “like an insubstantial fabric vanished leave not a wrack behind.”
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The horror of Russia was as necessary for the world’s education as the horror of Germany.
Mankind learns its lessons expensively, with infinite waste.
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Of the great soul there are two characteristics, irony and pity.
By irony I mean nothing hard or cruel, but only that gentle laughter which arises from the realization that most things make no matter. Most tempests are in a teapot, much of the world’s ado is about nothing, most frantic medicines are for diseases that would best cure themselves if let alone.
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“I live,” said a friend, “on the sunny side of the hill.”
Why not? Every hill has two sides. It may be a long way around to the other one, but it’s there. Move! Why live in the gloom?
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It is reported that the last words of Charles Frohman before he went down on the ill-starred “Lusitania” were: “Why should we fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure of life.”
It was a great heart said that, holding it-self a bit aloof from the game, not too entangled with earth’s interests. For the fine soul is always above his pleasures, above his pains.
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Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809. That year, 1809, the earth brought forth a litter of veritable lion whelps. It is the birth-year of two masters in music, Chopin and Mendelssohn; and four poets of the first rank, Edgar Allan Poe, Edward FitzGerald, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Alfred Tennyson. The same year comes Charles Darwin, whose influence upon every department of modern thought is perhaps greater than that of any other modern man, and William Ewart Gladstone, “the Grand Old Man” of England.
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If you’re looking about for something to do, something big, something that will bring you fame and money, find something that can’t be done and do it.
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All the poisons are not kept in chained bottles on drug-store shelves.
All the cases of strange illness and wasting are not due to subtle drops from India nor mysterious powders sold by old witches.
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Certain plants never grow except in certain soils, edelweiss in the Alps, bananas in the tropics, and cacti in the sands of the desert. Wherever you find the plant called Humility in the human garden you will always discover real wisdom in the brain-soil that produces it.
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From your chin down you are worth about a dollar and a half a day.
From the chin up you are worth — anything. There’s no limit.
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“If,” writes Sir Francis Younghusband, “we stand a two-foot rule on end and take it to represent the period which has elapsed since man first appeared, it will be only the top inch that will represent the distance of time since the dawn of civilization, and only the last eighth of an inch that will denote the period of European civilization.”
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Happiness is rarely visible to the multitude, says a shrewd observer; it lies hidden in odd corners and quiet places.
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Whatever you get you pay for, one way or another.
The cheapest plan is to pay cash.
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Whatever a man’s creed, there’s a good deal of him that does not believe it. Whatever a man’s crime, there was some of him that protested. Whatever a man’s goodness, it is flecked on the underside with ugly spots. Let us deal reverently with one another, and with awe; we are all so complex. It should not be so hard to believe in God, for man himself is scarcely less wonderful.
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Listen, young man! The cleverest man in the world is the man that tells the truth, and tells it all the time, not occasionally.
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One of the recent discoveries in the art of healing is the therapeutic value of suggestion. That is to say, the physician, by suggesting to the patient, particularly the patient suffering from nervous disorder, sane and helpful thoughts about himself, can work a cure better oftentimes than by the use of drugs.
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The campaign against Fear is the greatest movement of the race. Fear is not bred of ignorance. It is the child of half-knowledge. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” What we don’t know at all we are not afraid of; as a sheep is happy, ignorant of the slaughter-house.
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“Anybody might have heard it, but God’s whisper came to me,” says the poet.
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Always the pressure is on us.
Like a low ceiling, it makes us forever stoop, often crawl, sometimes grovel.
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The most significant step a mind takes is that wherein it realizes that it can control its own operation; when it learns that it can command those things in itself commonly considered automatic.
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There is a kind of bastard science which is very dangerous.
It gets a glimpse of the great law of “The Survival of the Fittest.” It explains so many things. And the apprentice mind in its enthusiasm imagines it explains everything.
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I like to repeat this magic formula over and over.
It is not provable. The deepest truths of life never are.
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I went to see my friend in the hospital. He had been there a month, with a bad foot. His only locomotion was being lifted from his chair to his bed and back.
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A young man writes me that he is afraid of thunderstorms, and asks if there is no way for him to overcome this weakness. “I am normal in every other respect,” he adds, “but notwithstanding my endeavors to fight off this nervousness I find it to be of no avail; it appears to be a sort of subconscious fear.”
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“But Leonardo,” says one writing upon the genius of the incomparable da Vinci, “will never work till the happy moment comes—that moment of bien-etre (feeling just fit) which to imaginative men is a moment of invention. On this moment he waits; other moments are but a preparation or after-taste of it.”
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Everything is disputable. I am willing to entertain arguments in support of any proposition whatsoever.
If you want to defend theft, mayhem, adultery, or murder, state your case, bring on your reasons; for in endeavoring to prove an indefensible thing you discover for yourself how foolish is your thesis.
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The ideal woman is lovable. She may not be beautiful of face, but she has charm.
She is attractive to men, not repellent.
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Reporters in the war-smitten countries of Europe tell us that one effect of the horrors of death, wounds, and heartbreak is that the men are turning back to the churches. Out of the obscene muck of materialistic force is springing a revaluation of the spirit in man.
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