around it.

There is no tonic like that which comes from doing things worth while.
There is no happiness like that which comes from doing our level best
every day, everywhere; no satisfaction like that which comes from
stamping superiority, putting our royal trade-mark upon everything
which goes through our hands.

Recently a rich young man was asked why he did not work. "I do not
have to," he said. "Do not have to" has ruined more young men than
almost anything else. The fact is, Nature never made any provision for
the idle man. Vigorous activity is the law of life; it is the saving
grace, the only thing that can keep a human being from retrograding.
Activity along the line of one's highest ambition is the normal state
of man, and he who tries to evade it pays the penalty in deterioration
of faculty, in paralysis of efficiency. Do not flatter yourself that
you can be really happy unless you are useful. Happiness and
usefulness were born twins. To separate them is fatal.

It is as impossible for a human being to be happy who is habitually
idle as it is for a fine chronometer to be normal when not running.
The highest happiness is the feeling of wellbeing which comes to one
who is actively employed doing what he was made to do, carrying out the
great life-purpose patterned in his individual bent. The practical
fulfilling of the life-purpose is to man what the actual running and
keeping time are to the watch. Without action both are meaningless.

Man was made to do things. Nothing else can take the place of
achievement in his life. Real happiness without achievement of some
worthy aim is unthinkable. One of the greatest satisfactions in this
world is the feeling of enlargement, of growth, of stretching upward
and onward. No pleasure can surpass that which comes from the
consciousness of feeling one's horizon of ignorance being pushed
farther and farther away--of making headway in the world--of not only
getting on, but also of getting up.

Happiness is incompatible with stagnation. A man must feel his
expanding power lifting, tugging away at a lofty purpose, or he will
miss the joy of living.

The discords, the bickerings, the divorces, the breaking up of rich
homes, and the resorting to all sorts of silly devices by many rich
people in their pursuit of happiness, prove that it does not dwell with
them, that happiness does not abide with low ideals, with selfishness,
idleness, and discord. It is a fri