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“How
to Develop Self-Confidence
In Speech and Manner” eBook Online Version
What, then, shall a man read? First and supreme over all other books, the Bible. Here is history, biography, poetry, drama, and every form of literary art in its highest perfection. Where else will you find sublimity of thought embodied in such simplicity of language as this: "And God said let there be light, and there was light!" Dr. Hillis says: "Bead all other books, philosophy, poetry, history, fiction; but if you would refine the judgment, fertilize the reason, wing the imagination, attain unto the finest womanhood or the sturdiest manhood, read this Book, reverently and prayerfully, until its truths have dissolved like iron into the blood."
The student of public speaking will read Quintilian's "Institutes of Oratory, or the Education of an Orator," supplementing it with Cicero on "Oratory and Orators," and Cicero's "Orations." For self-culture he will read Plato's "Republic," and the "Dialogues" relating to Socrates. Demosthenes "On the Crown," the greatest world's oration by the greatest of all orators, should receive special attention. Shakespeare, Milton, Dante,
Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Longfellow will have a prominent place upon the wise man's book-shelf. To shape his mind to strong and logical thinking, he will studiously read Locke "On the Conduct of the Understanding," Berkeley's "Principles of Human Knowledge," Leibnitz's "Discourse on Metaphysics," Descartes' "Discourse on Method," and Lotze's " Microcosmus."
The student of self-confidence will read stories of heroism and self-sacrifice. Scott's novels, and Stevenson's stirring stories of the sea, will arouse in him a desire to play a noble part in the drama of life. He should read only those books that move his finest impulses, fire his blood, and equip him for better and larger service.
Many men are not sufficiently familiar with the great books of the world to choose for themselves. For their benefit the following suggestive list is offered:
Great Dramatists: Job, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Moliere, Goethe, Sheridan, Schiller.
Great Essayists: Montaigne, Addison, Lamb, De Quincey, Carlyle, Macaulay, Newman, Emerson, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold.
Great Philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, Lotze.
Great Scientists: Galileo, Herschel, Newton, Agassiz, La Place, Darwin, Tyndall, Helmholtz, Huxley.
Great Lawyers: Demosthenes, Cicero, Blackstone, Erskine, Marshall, Mackintosh, Clay, Webster, Prentiss, Jeremiah Black.
Great Teachers: Quintilian, Aquinas, Erasmus, Bacon, Locke, Herbart, Frobel, Spencer.
Great Logicians and Political Economists : Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Bentham, Malthus, Hegel, Whateley, Hamilton, Mill, Jevons.
Great Statesmen: Pericles, Cassar, Burke, Washington, Jefferson, Bonaparte, Disraeli, Lincoln, Gladstone, Bismarck.
Great Theologians: Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Hooker, Edwards, Schleiermacher, Bushnell.
Great Historians: Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Polybius, Plutarch, Tacitus, Gibbon, Macaulay, Carlyle, Grote, Bancroft, Mommsen.
The advantages of judicious reading are many. Not only is the mind stored with precious thoughts and the imagination filled with exquisite pictures, but unconsciously a free and melodious English style is acquired. There should be daily reading aloud. It is of distinct advantage to learn the author's words through the additional sense of hearing. It makes them more enduring, and the very act of expressing them aloud will often cause the reader very particularly to bring their meaning into full view. Reading aloud should be more widely cultivated than it is. There is a charm in the spoken word that is not found in the cold printed page. Speech invests a writer's words with new life and bids them live again. These great treasures, gathered up in the books of the world, mean much to men who know how to claim and use them. "In books," writes Carlyle, "is the soul of the whole past time--the articulate audible voice of the past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many engined they are precious, great; but what do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnon’s, and their Greece--all is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb, mournful wrecks and blocks; but the books--_i.e., _the thoughts--of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives--can be called up again into life! No magic Rome is stronger than a book--a thought, or collection of thoughts. All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been, it is lying as in a magic preservation in the pages of books. They are the chosen possession of men."
A source of inspiration to one who would cultivate self-confidence is that of mingling with self-confident men. We grow to be like those with whom we associate. Human society is the great leveler, taking man out of himself, and teaching him the power of sympathy and unselfishness. Man was not made to live alone, and it is only in some form of service to others that he attains unto the truest greatness.
Beecher called the study of man the highest of sciences, and his own marvelous wealth of illustrations and anecdotes was due largely to his habit of keeping close to the people. "I take great delight," said he, "if ever I get a chance, in riding on the top of an omnibus with the driver, and talking with him. What do I gain by that? Why, my sympathy goes out for these men, and I recognize in them an element of brotherhood--that great human element which lies underneath all culture, which is more universal and more important than all special attributes, which is the great generic bond of humanity between man and man. If ever I saw one of these men in my Church, I could preach to him, and hit him under the fifth rib with an illustration, much better than if I had not been acquainted with him."
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