Mental Training, 1896
The Kingship of Self-Control, 1899
The Majesty of Calmness, 1900
The Power of Truth, 1902
Self-Control, Its Kingship and Majesty, 1905, The Kingship of Self-Control and The Majesty of Calmness published as a single book.
The House of Governors, 1907
The Crown of Individuality, 1909
The Power of Purpose, 1910, subset of The Crown of Individuality.
Little Problems of Married Life, 1910
The Trusteeship of Life, 1921
The Vision of High Ideals, 1926. This books consists of the last three chapters from The Trusteeship of Life
“There are two great things that education should do for the individual—It should train his senses, and teach him to think. Education, as we know it to-day, does not truly do either; it gives the individual only a vast accumulation of facts, unclassified, undigested, and seen in no true relations. Like seeds kept in a box, they may be retained, but they do not grow.”
"There is a tonic strength, in the hour of sorrow and affliction, in escaping from the world and society and getting back to the simple duties and interests we have slighted and forgotten. Our world grows smaller, but it grows dearer and greater. Simple things have a new charm for us, and we suddenly realize that we have been renouncing all that is greatest and best, in our pursuit of some phantom."
"Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil---the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be."
"There are times when a man should be content with what he has but never with what he is"
“Truth is not a dress-suit, consecrated to special occasions, it is the strong, well-woven, durable homespun for daily living. Let us cultivate that sterling honor that holds our word so supreme, so sacred, that to forget it would seem a crime, to deny it would be impossible.”
“The only responsibility that a man cannot evade in this life is the one he thinks of least, his personal influence. Man’s conscious influence when he’s on dress parade, when he’s posing to impress those around him, is woefully small, but his unconscious influence, the silent, subtle radiation of his personality, the effect of his words and acts, the trifles he never considers, is tremendous. Every moment of life he’s changing to a degree the life of the whole world.
“Every man has an atmosphere which is affecting every other. So silent and unconsciously is this influence working that man may even forget that it exists. All the forces of nature, heat, light, electricity, and gravitation are silent and invisible. We never see them; we only know that they exist by seeing the effects they produce.
“In all nature, the wonders of the scene are dwarfed into insignificance when compared with the majesty and glory of the unseen. In a thousand ways, nature constantly seeks to lead man to a keener and deeper realization of the power and the wonder of the invisible. And into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or for evil, the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what a man really is, not what he pretends to be.
“Every man by his mere living is radiating sympathy or sorrow or morbidness or cynicism or happiness or hope or any of a hundred other qualities. Life is a state of constant radiation and absorption. To exist is to radiate. To exist is to be the recipient of radiations. There are men and women whose presence seems to radiate sunshine, cheer, and optimism. With them you feel calmed and rested and restored when you have stronger faith in humanity.
“There are others who focus, in an instant, all your latent distressed morbidness and rebellion against life. There are men who float down the stream of life like icebergs, cold, reserved, unapproachable, and self-contained. In their presence you involuntarily draw your wraps closer around you, as you wonder who left the door open. But there are other natures warm, helpful, genial, who are like the Gulf Stream following their own course, flowing undaunted and undismayed in the ocean of colder waters. Their presence brings warmth and life and the glow of sunshine, the joyous, stimulating breath of spring.
“There are men who are like malaria swamps, poisonous, depressing, and weakening by their very presence. They make heavy and oppressive and gloomy the atmosphere of their own homes. The sound of the children’s play is still; the ripples of laughter are frozen by their presence. There are other men who seem like the ocean, constantly embracing, stimulating, giving new drafts of tonic life and strength by their very presence.”
“A mere theory of life that remains but a theory, is about as useful to a man as a gilt-edged menu is to a starving sailor on a raft in mid-ocean.... No rule for higher living will help a man in the slightest until he reaches out and appropriates it for himself, until he makes it practical in his daily life, until that seed of theory in his mind blossoms into a thousand flowers of thought and word and act.”
“The man who is slipshod and thoughtless in his daily speech, whose vocabulary is a collection of anemic commonplaces, whose repetitions of phrases and extravagance of interjections act but as feeble disguises to his lack of ideas, will never be brilliant on an occasion when he longs to outshine the stars. Living at ones best is constant preparation for instant use.”
“There are times when a man should be content with what he has, but never with what he is.”
“Every man reigns a king over the kingdom ofself. He wears the crown of individuality that no hands but his can ever remove. He should not only reign, butrule. His individuality is his true self, his self victorious. His thoughts, his words, his acts, his feelings, his aims and his powers are his subjects. With gentle, firm strength he must command them or, they will finally take from the feeble fingers the reigns of government and rule in his stead. Man must first be true to himself or he will be false to all the world.”
“He who, from sheer lack of purpose, drifts through life, letting the golden years of his highest hopes glide empty back into the perspective of his past while he fills his ears with the lorelei song of procrastination is working overtime in accumulating remorse to darken his future. He is idly permitting the crown of his individuality to remain an irritating symbol of what might be rather than a joyous emblem of what is. This man is reigning, for reign he must, but he is notruling.”
“We should begin it today. Today is the only real day of life for us. Today is the tomb of yesterday, the cradle of tomorrow. All our past ends in today. All our future begins in today.”
“Life is simply time given to man to learn how to live. Mistakes are always part of learning. The real dignity of life consists in cultivating a fine attitude towards our own mistakes and those of others. It is the fine tolerance of a fine soul. Man becomes great, not through never making mistakes, but by profiting by those he does make by being satisfied with a single rendition of a mistake, not encoring it into a continuous performance by getting from it the honey of new, regenerating inspiration with no irritating sting of morbid regret by building better to-day because of his poor yesterday and by rising with renewed strength, finer purpose and freshened courage every time he falls.”
“Mistakes are the inevitable accompaniment of the greatest gift given to man, individual freedom of action. Let us be glad of the dignity of our privilege to make mistakes, glad of the wisdom that enables us to recognize them, glad of the power that permits us to turn their light as a glowing illumination along the pathway of our future. Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom. Without them there would be no individual growth, no progress, no conquest.
“The man who is calm does not selfishly isolate himself from the world, for he is intensely interested in all the concerns the welfare of humanity. His calmness is but a Holy of Holies into which he can retire from the world to get strength to live in the world. He realizes that the full glory of individuality, the crowning of his self-control is the majesty of calmness.”
“Calmness is the rarest quality in human life. It is the poise of a great nature, in harmony with itself and its ideals. It is the moral atmosphere of a life self-centered, self-reliant, and self-controlled. Calmness is singleness of purpose, absolute confidence, and conscious power, ready to be focused in an instant to meet any crises.”
“Calmness comes from within. It is the peace and restfulness of the depths of our nature. The fury of storm and of wind agitate only the surface of the sea they penetrate only two or three hundred feet below that is the calm, unruffled deep. To be ready for the great crises of life we must learn serenity in our daily living. Calmness is the crown of self-control.”
“Profuse expressions of gratitude do not cancel an indebtedness any more than a promissory note settles an account. It is a beginning, not a finality. Gratitude that is extravagant in words is usually economical in all other expression.”
“Much of the seeming ingratitude in life comes from our magnifying of our own acts, our minifying of the acts of others.”
“Ingratitude is a crime more despicable than revenge, which is only returning evil for evil, while ingratitude returns evil for good.”
“Constantly reminding a man of the favors he has received from you almost cancels the debt. The care of the statistics should be his privilege you are usurping his prerogative when you recall them.”
“Let us seek to reign nobly on the throne of our highest self for just a single day, filling every moment of every hour with our finest, unselfish best. Then there would come to us such a vision of the golden glory of the sunlit heights, such a glad, glowing tonic of the higher levels of life, that we could never dwell again in the darkened valley of ordinary living without feeling shut in, stifled, and hungry for the freer air and the broader outlook.”
“Unhappiness is the hunger to get happiness is the hunger to give.... If the individual should set out for a single day to give happiness, to make life happier, brighter and sweeter, not for himself but for others, he would find a wondrous revelation of what happiness really is.”
“True happiness must have the tinge of sorrow outlived, the sense of pain softened by the mellowing years, the chastening of loss that in the wondrous mystery of time transmutes our suffering into love and sympathy with others.”
“Happiness is the soul's joy in the possession of the intangible.”
“If we have made an error, done a wrong, been unjust to another or to ourselves, or, like the Pharisee, passed by some opportunity for good, we should have the courage to face our mistake squarely, to call it boldly by its right name, to acknowledge it frankly and to put in no flimsy alibis of excuse to protect an anemic self-esteem.”
“Education, in its highest sense, is conscious training of mind or body to act unconsciously. It is conscious formation of mental habits, not mere acquisition of information.”
“Man forgets that he is the only animal that dines the others merely feed. Why does he abrogate his right to dine and go to the end of the line with the mere feeders”
“The supreme courage of life is the courage of the soul. It is living, day by day, sincerely, steadfastly, serenely,despite all opinions, all obstacles, all opposition. It means the wine of inspiration from the crushed grapes of our sorrows. This courage makes the simplest life, great it makes the greatest lifesublime. It means the royal dignity of fine individual living.”
“The man who says he will lead a newer and better life tomorrow, who promises great things for the future, and yet does nothing in the present to make that future possible, is living in an air-castle.”
“Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil-the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.”
Truth can stand alone, for it needs no chaperone or escort. Lies are cowardly, fearsome things that must travel in battalions. They are like a lot of drunken men, one vainly seeking to support another. —The Power of Truth
A lie may live for a time, truth for all time. A lie never lives by its own vitality; it merely continues to exist because it simulates truth. When it is unmasked, it dies. —The Power of Truth
Gossip … has caused infinitely more sorrow in life than murder. It is drunkenness of the tongue; it is assassination of reputations. It runs the cowardly gamut from mere ignorant, impertinent intrusion into the lives of others to malicious slander ... He who listens to this crime of respectability without protest is as evil as he who speaks. One strong, manly voice of protest, of appeal to justice, of calling halt in the name of charity—could fumigate a room from gossip as a clear, sharp winter wind kills a pestilence. —The Crown of Individuality
Content makes the world more comfortable for the individual, but it is the death-knell of progress. Man should be content with each step of progress merely as a station, discontented with it as a destination; contented with it as a step; discontented with it as a finality. There are times when a man should be content with what he has, but never with what he is. —The Majesty of Calmness
Little problems of Married life :
Courtship is the joyous, sunshine launching of the craft of hope; marriage is the long cruise across uncharted seas.
The husband can find no help in the counsel of his wife in an emergency if he has stifled her power of individual thinking, or permitted it to become dulled and deadened through disuse.
There are more people on this great, big, rolling earth hungering for sweetness, tenderness, and words of gentle appreciation, genial confidence and generous affection than are starving for bread.
It is true that “perfect love casteth out fear”; it is equally true that perfect fear finally casteth out love.
If the spirit of compromise be ever on the part of the husband only or the wife only, it is unjust. It then means absolute selfishness on the part of one, stimulated and intensified by the unselfishness of the other. It makes a Dead Sea of love wherein the waters of affection flow without issuance— constant assessments with no dividends.
Those who wisely live within an income rarely have to face the problem of trying to live without one.
Plants grow most in the darkest hours preceding dawn; so do human souls. Nature always pays for a brave fight. Sometimes she pays in strengthened moral muscle, sometimes in deepened spiritual insight, sometimes in a broadening, mellowing, sweetening of the fibres of character,—but she always pays.
If there is a little sand in the sugar of home happiness, it really seems better to concentrate on the sweetness that remains than to carry around samples of the grit in envelopes of conversational confidence.
Jealousy stifles faith, which is the soul of love. It is emotional suicide. It is a peculiar form of fear which seeks constantly to discover what it does not want to find. Jealousy is the chloroform of confidence. It requires faith to keep faith, trust to retain trust, love to cherish love.
We may sometimes be privileged to help others to live their lives; it is arrogant assumption for us to attempt to live their lives for them.
Love rarely dies a sudden death. It is usually ailing a long time before its decease. Little ills that could readily be cured in their early stages are permitted to run into more serious conditions; complications set in and love, with its vitality exhausted through long suffering, finally dies.
The opening words of the world’s greatest book are “In the beginning,” and they are the most important words of married life; they open its chapters of greatest joy and keenest sorrows. All its problems are most easily mastered “in the beginning”
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