FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51  
52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   >>   >|  
put selfishness from you. It is not even the method of business profit. After all, we are living for happiness, are we not? Very well. Try to make some one else happy, and experience a felicity more delicate and exalted than you ever imagined in your fondest dreams of joy. By all means practise unselfishness. "Get the habit," as our Americanism has it. Live for somebody or something besides yourself. Really none of us amount to enough to live for ourselves alone. Oh, no! that game is not worth the candle, believe me. Finally and especially, reverence age. Be deferential to maturity. This is the one thing in which we Americans are yet deficient. The man who has lived a single decade longer than you, deserves your consideration and respect. Be in no haste to displace your seniors. Time will do that all too quickly. The finest characteristic of the Oriental is his profound regard for all age. Follow the Asiatic in this one thing only. Heed venerable counsels; defer to maturity's wisdoms. There is something majestic about advancing years. Be to all men and women older than yourself what you would like other young men to be to your father and mother. Be a man; that's the sum of it all--be a man. Be all that we Americans mean by those three words. II THE OLD HOME Do we not pay so much attention to mere material success that we exclude from mind and heart other things more precious? I am anxious that every young American should win in all the conflicts of life--win in college, win in business, etc.; but I am even more anxious that through all of his triumphs he should grow ever broader, sweeter, and more kindly. After all, we are human beings. We do not want to become mere machines of success, do we? That is carrying our mechanical age a little too far. We want to keep that within us which makes our victory worth having after we have won it. What matters your mountains of wealth, or your network of political power, or those secrets which in your laboratory you have wrung from Nature--what matters all and everything that the world calls "success," if the human quality has been dried up in you? Those are fine things that St. Paul says about a man not amounting to anything, no matter how talented and powerful he may be, if he have not charity: "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have n
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51  
52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

success

 

maturity

 

mountains

 

Americans

 

anxious

 

things

 
matters
 

business

 

American

 
charity

powerful

 

conflicts

 

college

 

talented

 
triumphs
 

remove

 
attention
 

matter

 

understand

 

prophecy


mysteries
 

material

 

knowledge

 

exclude

 

precious

 
sweeter
 

victory

 

quality

 

secrets

 

Nature


laboratory

 

political

 

wealth

 

network

 

machines

 
amounting
 

beings

 
broader
 

kindly

 

carrying


mechanical

 
counsels
 

Really

 

Americanism

 

practise

 

unselfishness

 
amount
 

Finally

 
candle
 
happiness