However mean your life is,meet it and live it ;do not shun it and call it hard names.It is not so bad as you are.It looks poorest when you are richest.The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.Love your life,poor as it is.You may perhaps hav...
Letter to a Young Friend by Benjamin Franklin My dear friend I know of no Medicine fit to diminish the violent natural inclination you mention; and if I did, I think I should not communicate it to you. Marriage is the proper Remedy. It is the most na...
You must study to be frank with the world:frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do, on every occasion. If a friend asks a favor, you should grant it, if it is reasonable; if not, tell him plainly why you cannot. You...
I tell you I must go! I retorted, roused to something like passion. Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?--a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my d...
When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful,even inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone,my heart melts with compassion; when I see th...
The most loved place, for me, in this country has in fact been many places.It has changed throughout the years, as I and my circumstances have changed.I have not really lost any of the best places from the past, though. I may no longer inhabit them,...
Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised...
To Americans, industriousness, thrift and ambition are possitive values.We encourage our children to be competitive, to get ahead, to make money, to acquire possassion. In games and in business alike, the aim is to win the game, the trorphy, the cont...
The doer of Deeds It is not the critic who counts,not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arens,whose face is marred by dust and sweat...
Great Expectations As the night was fast falling,and as the moon,being past the full,would not rise early,we held a little council:a short one,for clearly our course was to lie by at the first lonely tavern we could find.So,they plied their oars once...
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of light,it was the season of darkness; it was the spring of...
The chess-board is the world:the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we...
