The Optimistic LifeT. Y. Crowell, 1907 - 257 pages |
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ability achievement ambition Andrew Carnegie artist beauty become better character Charles Kingsley cheerful develop dollars drudgery Edward Everett Hale Elizabeth Barrett Browning employees energy entanglements everything expression eyes face faculties failure feel force fortune fretting friends genius George Peabody girl give habit hand happiness heart HENRY WARD BEECHER honesty honor hope human ideal keep labor lack let go live look lose manhood Mark Twain matter ment mental mind moods nature ness never obstacles Oliver Wendell Holmes one's Phillips Brooks physical position possible qualities RALPH WALDO EMERSON says selfish serene Sir John Lubbock slipshod smile soul spirit Stradivarius success sunshine sweet tell temper things thought thousand tion to-day true truth trying uncon vigorous waste weakness whole woman women words worry writers wrong thinking young youth
Popular passages
Page 47 - sleep and feed? — a beast, no more: Sure He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To rust in us unused.” When we see a boy or girl seizing every spare moment and every half holiday for
Page 102 - that, he Who casts to write a living line must sweat, (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same, (And himself with it) that he thinks to frame; Or, for the laurel he may gain a scorn, — For a good poet's made, as well as born.
Page 115 - A second man I honor, and still more highly; him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the Bread of Life. If the poor and humble toil that we may have food must not the high and glorious toil for him in return that
Page 52 - is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson which ought to be learned, and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson he learns thoroughly.” Conformity to order, courage, and decision of character, and
Page 50 - which gives to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable.” To make the most possible of one's self — discovering, developing his own powers, learning to use them to promote his own ends and the good of mankind — is the true purpose of man's education. It is the unfolding of
Page 105 - lies in this: when I have a subject in hand I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make the people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit of labor and thought.
Page 116 - have food must not the high and glorious toil for him in return that we have light, have guidance, freedom, immortality? These two in all their degrees I honor; all else is chaff and dust.
Page 115 - is sacred; in all true work, were it but true hand labor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven.” “Work is worship! He that understands this well understands the prophecy of the whole future;
Page 108 - heart allied to a vivid and powerful imagination that makes your Shakespeare: it is the poet's unceasing toil that “makes” him; his genius appears in his “work.” “What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labor.
Page 109 - We have certain work to do for our bread, and that is to be done strenuously; other work to do for our delight, and that is to be done heartily; neither is to be done by halves or shifts, but with a will; and what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all.