CHAPTER-13 “Only!—But then the onlys Make up the mighty all.”“My rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well,” said Nicolas Poussin, the great French painter. When asked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famous artists he replied, “Because I have neglected […]

CHAPTER-12 “Make me as good a hammer as you know how,” said a carpenter to the blacksmith in a New York village before the first railroad was built; “six of us have come to work on the new church, and I’ve left mine at home.” “As good a one as I know how?” asked David

CHAPTER-11 “Oh, how I do appreciate a boy who is always on time!” says H. C. Bowen. “How quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find yourself intrusting him with weightier matters! The boy who has acquired a reputation for punctuality has made the first contribution to the capital that in

CHAPTER-10 “It puffed like a locomotive,” said a boy of the donkey engine; “it whistled like the steam-cars, but it didn’t go anywhere.”The world is full of donkey-engines, of people who can whistle and puff and pull, but they don’t go anywhere, they have no definite aim, no controlling purpose.The great secret of Napoleon’s power

CHAPTER-9 “The emotions,” says Whipple, “may all be included in the single word ‘enthusiasm,’ or that impulsive force which liberates the mental power from the ice of timidity as spring loosens the streams from the grasp of winter, and sends them forth in a rejoicing rush. The mind of youth, when impelled by this original

CHAPTER-8 “What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!” said one of two highwaymen who chanced to pass a gallows. “Tut, you blockhead,” replied the other, “gibbets are the making of us; for, if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman.” Just so with every art, trade, or

CHAPTER-7 “What avails all this sturdiness?” asked an oak tree which had grown solitary for two hundred years, bitterly handled by frosts and wrestled by winds. “Why am I to stand here useless? My roots are anchored in rifts of rocks; no herds can lie down under my shadow; I am far above singing birds,

CHAPTER-6 “We have but what we make, and every good Is locked by nature in a granite hand, Sheer labour must unclench.”“Oh, if I could thus put a dream on canvas!” exclaimed an enthusiastic young artist, pointing to a most beautiful painting. “Dream on canvas!” growled the master, “it is the ten thousand touches with

CHAPTER-5 “Do that which is assigned you,” says Emerson, “and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all

CHAPTER-4 “But I’m good for something,” pleaded a young man whom a merchant was about to discharge for his bluntness. “You are good for nothing as a salesman,” said his employer. “I am sure I can be useful,” said the youth. “How? Tell me how.” “I don’t know, sir, I don’t know.” “Nor do I,”

CHAPTER-3 “Fifty years ago,” said Hezekiah Conant, the millionaire manufacturer and philanthropist of Pawtucket, R. I., “I persuaded my father to let me leave my home in Dudley, Mass., and strike out for myself. So one morning in May, 1845, the old farm horse and wagon was hitched up, and, dressed in our Sunday clothes,

CHAPTER-2 “When I was a boy,” said General Grant, “my mother one morning found herself without butter for breakfast, and sent me to borrow some from a neighbour. Going into the house without knocking, I overheard a letter read from the son of a neighbour, who was then at West Point, stating that he had

CHAPTER-1 “I thank God I am a Baptist,” said a little, short Doctor of Divinity, as he mounted a step at a convention. “Louder! louder!” shouted a man in the audience; “we can’t hear.” “Get up higher,” said another. “I can’t,” replied the doctor, “to be a Baptist is as high as one can get.”But