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“How
to Develop Self-Confidence
In Speech and Manner” eBook Online Version
--Sydney Smith.
All one's life is a music if one touches the notes rightly and in time--but there must be no hurry.--Ruskin.
The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one, may hope to achieve it before life is done; but he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows a harvest of barren regrets.--George Meredith.
Character is more than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think. Goodness outshines genius, as the sun makes the electric light cast a shadow.--Emerson.
Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.--Anon.
Fail, yet rejoice, because no less the failure that makes thy distress may teach another full success.
It may be that in some great need thy life's poor fragments are decreed to help build up a lofty deed.
Thy heart should throb in vast content, thus knowing that it was meant as chord in one great instrument;
That even the discord in thy soul may make completer music roll from out the great harmonious whole.--A. A. Proctor.
Resolve, resolve! and to be men aspire, exert that noblest privilege, alone here to mankind indulged; control desire; let God-like reason, from her sovereign throne, speak the commanding word: "I will," and it is done.--Thompson.
Let your courage be as keen, but, at the same time, as polished, as your sword.--Sheridan.
O friends, be men, and let your hearts be strong, and let no warrior in the heat of fight do what may bring him shame in others' eyes; for more of those who shrink from shame are safe than fall in battle, while with those who flee is neither glory nor reprieve from death.--Homer.
True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.--La Bochefoucauld.
All languages and literatures are full of general observations on life, both as to what it is, and how to conduct one's self in it; observations which everybody knows, which everybody repeats, or hears with acquiescence, which are received as truisms, yet of which most people first truly learn the meaning, when experience, generally of a painful kind, has made it a reality to them. How often, when smarting under some unforeseen misfortune or disappointment, does a person call to mind some proverb or common saying, familiar to him all his life, the meaning of which, if he had ever before felt it as he does now, would have saved him from the calamity.--John Stuart Mill.
Self-consciousness is one of the greatest hindrances to the best manner. Do not imagine that every one is looking at you. Do not try to be some one else, but be simply and naturally yourself; second, do not be in a hurry. "Whoever," says Lord Chesterfield, "is in a hurry shows that the thing that he is about is too big for him." To be courteous does not take much time, but it takes a little. He who would be courteous must not be in such haste that he can not be sympathetic, nor so absorbed that he can not be considerate of others.
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