Principles… and Personal Peace

As to people and principles and personal peace, we recall this quotation accredited to a significant source: “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure—try to please everybody.”
The fact is that people of principle cannot please all people—nor in fact can people without principle. And there is the further fact that people cannot abandon principles and live their lives in peace. “Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles,” said Emerson.
We all have to decide on what principles we will make our decisions, on what principles we will live our lives. Every person has to decide sooner or later, and the sooner he decides the simpler will be his decisions.
And to those who are yet young this reminder comes out of the experience of the past: “The principles now implanted in thy bosom will grow, and one day reach maturity; and in that maturity thou wilt find thy heaven or thy hell.”
Horace Mann said it in these sentences: “In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.”
“Expedients are for the hour; principles for the ages.”
And the whole question of right or wrong is involved in a choice between the two.
There must be standards that can be counted on—or there isn’t anything that anyone can count on. And the sooner in life we learn to live by principles, the sooner we shall have that peace of which Emerson spoke—the peace that comes with the triumph of principles, with the living of law, with the keeping of commandments, with the setting aside of a selfish and indulgent self.