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“How
to Develop Self-Confidence
In Speech and Manner” eBook Online Version
Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect makes them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives forever amid ruins; the block of granite, which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the resolute.--Lewes.
What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals.--Shakespeare.
Courage consists not in hazarding without fear, but being resolutely minded in a just cause.--Plutarch.
Habit at first is but a silken thread, fine as the light-winged gossamers that sway In the warm sunbeams of a summer's day; a shallow streamlet, rippling o 'er its bed; a tiny sapling, ere its roots are spread; a yet unhardened thorn upon the spray; a lion's whelp that hath not scented prey; O little smiling child obedient led. Beware! That thread may bind thee as a chain that streamlet gather to a fatal sea; that sapling spread into a gnarled tree; that thorn, grown hard, may wound and give thee pain; that playful whelp his murderous fangs reveal; that child, a giant, crush thee 'neath his heel.--Anon.
We may not kindle when we will the fire that in the heart abides; the spirit bloweth, and is still, in mystery the soul abides; but tasks in hours of insight willed, in hours of gloom can be fulfilled.--Sir Edwin Arnold.
Every man has experienced how feelings which end in themselves and do not express themselves in action, leave the heart debilitated. We get feeble and sickly in character when we feel keenly, and can not do the thing we feel.--Robertson.
Be firm; one constant element of luck is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck. Stick to your aim: the mongrel's hold will slip, but only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip;
Small though he looks, the jaw that never yields drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields!--Holmes.
How much grows everywhere if we do but wait! Not a difficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even a deformity but, if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will grow dear to us.--Carlyle.
For every spirit as it is most pure, and hath in it the more of heavenly light, so it the fairer body doth procure to habit in, and it more fairly dight with cheerful grace and amiable sight; for of the soul the body form doth take; for soul is form, and doth the body make.
--Spenser.
We are not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread, and that is to be done strenuously; other work to do for our delight, and that is to be done heartily--neither is to be done by halves or shifts, but with a will, and what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all.--Buskin.
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