Pushing to the Front

Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul within us, but it is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls the...

Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes wherever he goes; he has not the trouble of earning or owning them; they solicit him...

Years ago a relief lifeboat at New London sprung a leak, and while being repaired a hammer was found in the bottom that had been left there by the builders thirteen years before...

To stand with a smile upon your face against a stake from which you cannot get away--that, no doubt, is heroic. But the true glory is resignation to the inevitable. To stand unc...

"Can I afford to go to college?" asks many an American youth who has hardly a dollar to his name and who knows that a college course means years of sacrifice and struggle.

"Oh! oh! ah!" exclaimed Franklin; "what have I done to merit these cruel sufferings?" "Many things," replied the Gout; "you have eaten and drunk too freely, and too much indulge...

Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement--these are th...

Purity is a broad word with a deep meaning. It denotes far more than superficial cleanness. It goes below the surface of guarded speech and polite manners to the very heart of b...

"Colonel Crockett makes room for himself!" exclaimed a backwoods congressman in answer to the exclamation of the White House usher to "Make room for Colonel Crockett!" This rema...

We are so accustomed to the sight and smell of tobacco that we entirely overlook the fact that the tobacco of commerce in all its forms is the product of a poisonous weed. It is...

The quality which you put into your work will determine the quality of your life. The habit of insisting upon the best of which you are capable, of always demanding of yourself...

"Only a thought, but the work it wrought Could never by tongue or pen be taught, But it ran through a life like a thread of gold, And the life bore fruit a hundredfold."

"Tumbling around in a library" was the phrase Oliver Wendell Holmes used in describing in part his felicities in boyhood. One of the most important things that wise students get...

When Charles W. Eliot was president of Harvard, he said, "I recognize but one mental acquisition as an essential part of the education of a lady or gentleman, namely, an accurat...

A woman writes me: "You would laugh if you knew the time I have had in getting the dollar which I enclose for your inspiring magazine. I would get a pound less of butter, a bar...

When the barbarians overran Greece, desecrated her temples, and destroyed her beautiful works of art, even their savageness was somewhat tamed by the sense of beauty which preva...

"Many and many a time since," said Harriet Martineau, referring to her father's failure in business, "have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on in th...

If I were a cobbler, it would be my pride The best of all cobblers to be; If I were a tinker, no tinker beside Should mend an old kettle like me. OLD SONG.

The iron will of one stout heart shall make a thousand quail: A feeble dwarf, dauntlessly resolved, will turn the tide of battle, And rally to a nobler strife the giants that ha...

No man struggles perpetually and victoriously against his own character; and one of the first principles of success in life is so to regulate our career as rather to turn our ph...

"The pit rose at me!" exclaimed Edmund Kean in a wild tumult of emotion, as he rushed home to his trembling wife. "Mary, you shall ride in your carriage yet, and Charles shall g...

"My mother was the making of me," said Thomas Edison, recently. "She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt that I had some one to live for; some one I must not disappoint."

The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man mak...

Why do the few succeed and the many fail? Some failures are relative and not absolute; a partial success is achieved; a success that goes limping along through life; but the goa...

All great men have been noted for their power of concentration which makes them oblivious of everything outside their aim. Victor Hugo wrote his "Notre Dame" during the revoluti...

What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.--H. P. LIDDON.

A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know; and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his...

If you take an inventory of yourself at the very outset of your career you will find that you think you are going to find happiness in things or in conditions. Most people think...

Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five-barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who...

There is something about one's personality which eludes the photographer, which the painter can not reproduce, which the sculptor can not chisel. This subtle something which eve...

It does not matter whether you want to be a public speaker or not, everybody should have such complete control of himself, should be so self-centered and self-posed that he can...

He who wishes to fulfil his mission must be a man of one idea, that is, of one great overmastering purpose, over shadowing all his aims, and guiding and controlling his entire l...

"Why," asked Mirabeau, "should we call ourselves men, unless it be to succeed in everything everywhere?" Nothing else will so nerve you to accomplish great things as to believe...

In the philosophy of thrift, the unit measure of prosperity is always the smallest of coins current. Thrift is measured not by the pound but by the penny, not by the dollar but...

Never before was the opportunity of the educated man so great as to-day. Never before was there such a demand for the trained man, _the man who can do a thing superbly well_. At...

"Friends and comrades," said Pizarro, as he turned toward the south, after tracing with his sword upon the sand a line from east to west, "on that side are toil, hunger, nakedne...

It is a beautiful provision in the mental and moral arrangement of our nature, that that which is performed as a duty may by frequent repetition, become a habit; and the habit o...

"Arletta's pretty feet, glistening in the brook, made her the mother of William the Conqueror," says Palgrave's "History of Normandy and England." "Had she not thus fascinated D...

When plate-glass windows first came into use, Rogers, the poet, took a severe cold by sitting with his back to what he supposed was an open window in a dining-room but which was...

Thousands of people have found themselves through the reading of some book, which has opened the door within them and given them the first glimpse of their possibilities. I know...

The heaviest charged words in our language are those briefest ones, "yes" and "no." One stands for the surrender of the will, the other for denial; one stands for gratification,...

If you made a botch of last year, if you feel that it was a failure, that you floundered and blundered and did a lot of foolish things; if you were gullible, made imprudent inve...

The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine. . . . Everything is good which ta...

The Napoleonic wars so drained the flower of French manhood that even to-day the physical stature of the average Frenchman is nearly half an inch below what it was at the beginn...

The plea that this or that man has no time for culture will vanish as soon as we desire culture so much that we begin to examine seriously into our present use of time.--MATTHEW...

There is hardly a poet, artist, philosopher, or man of science mentioned in the history of the human intellect, whose genius was not opposed by parents, guardians, or teachers....

There are two chief factors in good appearance; cleanliness of body and comeliness of attire. Usually these go together, neatness of attire indicating a sanitary care of the per...

Note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit of five hundred millions of miles back to the solstice at the appointed moment without the loss of one second,--no...

To each man's life there comes a time supreme; One day, one night, one morning, or one noon, One freighted hour, one moment opportune, One rift through which sublime fulfillment...

Believe me when I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle a...

"I have here three teams that I want to get over to Staten Island," said a boy of twelve one day in 1806 to the innkeeper at South Amboy, N. J. "If you will put us across, I'll...

Let others plead for pensions; I can be rich without money, by endeavoring to be superior to everything poor. I would have my services to my country unstained by any interested...

Why is it that, in spite of the ravages of time, the reputation of Lincoln grows larger and his character means more to the world every year? It is because he kept his record cl...

If only a few well chosen, it is better to avail yourself of choices others have already made--old books, the standard works tested by many generations of readers. If only a few...

No one can become prosperous while he really expects or half expects to remain poor. We tend to get what we expect, and to expect nothing is to get nothing.

The most encouraging truth that can be impressed upon the mind of youth is this: "What man has done man may do." Men of great achievements are not to be set on pedestals and rev...

John Wanamaker was once asked to invest in an expedition to recover from the Spanish Main doubloons which for half a century had lain at the bottom of the sea in sunken frigates.

Henry Ward Beecher was not so foolish as to think that he could get on without systematic study, and a thorough-going knowledge of the world of books. "When I first went to Broo...

Shut off your mental steam when you quit work. Lock up your business when you lock up your office or factory at night. Don't drag it into your home to mar your evening or to dis...

"Never give up; for the wisest is boldest, Knowing that Providence mingles the cup; And of all maxims, the best, as the oldest, Is the stern watchword of 'Never give up!'"

This monster dogs us from the cradle to the grave. There is no occasion so sacred but it is there. Unbidden it comes to the wedding and the funeral alike. It is at every recepti...

"The world is no longer clay, but rather iron in the hands of its workers," says Emerson, "and men have got to hammer out a place for themselves by steady and rugged blows."

All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want a man! Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This man,--it is you, it is I, it is each one of us!...

"How's the boy gittin' on, Davis?" asked Farmer John Field, as he watched his son, Marshall, waiting upon a customer. "Well, John, you and I are old friends," replied Deacon Dav...

Timid, shy people are morbidly self-conscious; they think too much about themselves. Their thoughts are always turned inward; they are always analyzing, dissecting themselves, w...

Not long ago I visited a home where such exceptionally good breeding prevailed and such fine manners were practised by all the members of the family, that it made a great impres...

Life is an arrow--therefore you must know What mark to aim at, how to use the bow-- Then draw it to the head and let it go. HENRY VAN DYKE.