We would preface these thoughts with a quotation from Carlyle: “men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.” This suggests of course, the willingness to use as fully...
To quote again from Carlyle: “Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.” In this day and season of many pressures, we frequently feel we ought to do more than we...
What can one say for a season where so much is intermixed? There is thoughtfulness for others, but a thoughtfulness preoccupied with much bustling and busyness. Nor could one deny that sentiment is...
“The town clock is striking midnight. The cold of the night wind is urging its way in at the door and window-crevice; the fire has sunk almost to the third bar of the grate. Still my dream...
We are, all of us, a reflection of what we do with time, of what we want⎯or at least what we want enough to be willing to work for. This, said William Penn⎯”this is . . . said, that it might...
Because human judgement is so variable, and because human problems are so complex, organized effort has to come somewhat within definable categories, within certain procedures. All this, in a...
To the ever recurring question of judging others, of the power to appraise the motives, the actions, the intent of other people, we sometimes hear applied the phrase “other things being...
Let us turn a moment or two to what is called red tape⎯by which we mean, essentially, getting lost in procedures, procedures which may be altogether arbitrary, which may be quite apart from...
“How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams With its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of Beginnings, Story without End, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!” Longfellow...
“Whatever poet, orator, or sage May say of it, old age is still old age. It is the waning, not the crescent moon; The dusk of evening, not the blaze of noon: It is no strength, but weakness;...
Among the most wasteful of all the wastes of the world is the waste of time, of thought, of human effort and energy, of talents and creative gifts and productive powers. The world needs more of most...
When we talk of the attitudes and opportunities of age, we are talking also to youth⎯for the years move swiftly from the younger to the later years of life⎯and it is, as Cicero said: “the...
Three kinds of courage are required in all the shifting scenes⎯in all the trial and error, in all the learning and living of life: the courage to start, the courage to stop, and the courage to...
Two essentials for a good and effective life are flexibility and firmness⎯flexibility in some things and an adamant and absolute immovability in others. Frequently we hear it said that times have...
These are days when men are earnestly searching for answers, and superficial answers will not satisfy for it is more than a matter of temporal or surface considerations. It all comes down to a...
From Dostoevsky comes the poignant comment of a young man who knew he had little left of mortal life. “It’s natural to believe,” he says, “that everyone else thinks too...
In facing a fatal illness, one of Dostoevsky’s characters has some searching things to say about health: “Oh, now I don’t care, now I’ve no time to be angry, but . . . how I...
Some two centuries ago, Jean Baptiste Massillon wrote on The Curse of a Malignant Tongue and asked some questions concerning innocence of intent: “What matters it to the brother whom you stab...
“What is the cruel pleasure which carries sorrow and bitterness to the heart of your brother? . . . Whence comes it that your sarcasms are always pointed to . . . recalling his faults . . . ?...
It was said of a well-known person of the past, “Her vanity was too fundamental for her to profit by the stern lessons of experience. She could not face the fact that she was wrong, so she was...