Authors: Brett McKay
The Art of Manliness - Manvotionals: Timeless Wisdom and Advice on Living the 7 Manly Virtues (23 page)
“Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their strength; of the former they believe greater things than they should; of the latter much less. Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to drink out of his own cistern, and eat his own sweetbread, and to learn and labor truly to get his own living, and carefully to save and expend the good things committed to his trust.” —Francis Bacon
F
ROM
T
HRIFT; OR
, How to Get on in the World
, 1881
By Samuel Smiles
As a guarantee of independence, the modest and plebeian quality of economy is at once ennobled and raised to the rank of one of the most meritorious of virtues. “Never treat money affairs with levity,” said Bulwer; “money is character.” Some of man’s best qualities depend upon the right use of money—such as his generosity, benevolence, justice, honesty, and forethought. Many of his worst qualities also originate in the bad use of money—such as greed, miserliness, injustice, extravagance, and improvidence.
People who spend all that they earn are ever hanging on the brink of destitution. They must necessarily be weak and impotent—the slaves of time and circumstance. They keep themselves poor. They lose self-respect as well as the respect of others. It is impossible that they can be free and independent. To be thriftless is enough to deprive one of all manly spirit and virtue.
But a man with something saved, no matter how little, is in a different position. The little capital he has stored up is always a source of power. He is no longer the sport of time and fate. He can boldly look the world in the face. He is, in a manner, his own master. He can dictate his own terms. He can neither be bought nor sold. He can look forward with cheerfulness to an old age of comfort and happiness.
F
ROM
“T
HE
S
PECTER OF
D
EBT
,” 1938
By J. Reuben Clark Jr.
It is the rule of our financial and economic life in all the world that interest is to be paid on borrowed money. May I say something about interest?
Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it never visits nor travels; it takes no pleasure; it is never laid off work nor discharged from employment; it never works on reduced hours … Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.
“I have ever held it as a maxim never to do that through another which it was possible for me to execute myself.” —Montesquieu
A
N
A
ESOP’S
Fable
Some larks had a nest in a field of grain. One evening the old larks coming home found the young ones in great terror. “We must leave our nest at once,” they cried. Then they related how they had heard the farmer say that he must get his neighbors to come the next day and help him reap his field. “Oh,” cried the old birds, “if that is all, we may rest quietly in our nest.’’
The next evening the young birds were found again in a state of terror. The farmer, it seems, was very angry because his neighbors had not come, and had said that he should get his relatives to come the next day to help him. The old birds took the news easily, and said there was nothing to fear yet.
The next evening the young birds were quite cheerful. “Have you heard nothing today?” asked the old ones. “Nothing important,” answered the young. “It is only that the farmer was angry because his relatives also failed him, and he said to his sons, ‘Since neither our relatives nor our neighbors will help us, we must take hold tomorrow and do it ourselves.’”
The old birds were excited this time. They said, “We must leave our nest tonight. When a man decides to do a thing for himself, and to do it at once, you may be pretty sure that it will be done.”
“For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men … has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom.” —Plato
F
ROM
S
OULS
-S
PUR
, 1914
By Richard Wightman
The suns of summer seared his skin;
The cold his blood congealed;
The forest giants blocked his way
The stubborn acres’ yield
He wrenched from them by dint of arm,
And grim old Solitude
Broke bread with him and shared his cot
Within the cabin rude.
The gray rocks gnarled his massive hands;
The north wind shook his frame;
The wolf of hunger bit him oft;
The world forgot his name;
But mid the lurch and crash of trees,
Within the clearing’s span
Where now the bursting wheat-heads dip,
The fates turned out—a man!
“There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield, as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others, who too apparently distrusts himself.” —Samuel Johnson
F
ROM
E
DITORIALS
F
ROM THE
H
EARST
N
ewspapers
, 1906
By Arthur Brisbane
We inflict a piece of advice upon our readers. It is intended especially for the young, who have still to get their growth, whose characters and possibilities are forming.
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
Full individual growth, special development, rounded mental operations—all these demand room, separation from others, solitude, self-examination and the self-reliance which solitude gives.
The finest tree stands off by itself in the open plain. Its branches spread wide. It is a complete tree, better than the cramped tree in the crowded forest.
The animal to be admired is not that which runs in herds, the gentle browsing deer or foolish sheep thinking only as a fraction of the flock, incapable of personal independent direction. It’s the lonely prowling lion or the big black leopard with the whole world for his private field that is worth looking at.
The man who grows up in a herd, deer-like, thinking with the herd, acting with the herd, rarely amounts to anything.
Do you want to succeed? Grow in solitude, work, develop in solitude, with books and thoughts and nature for friends. Then, if you want the crowd to see how fine you are, come back to it and boss it if it will let you.
Here is what Goethe says: “Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, doch ein Charakter in dem Strome der Welt.” (Talent is developed in solitude, character in the rush of the world.)
Don’t be a sheep or a deer. Don’t devote your hours to the company and conversation of those who know as little as you do. Don’t think hard only when you are trying to remember a popular song or to decide on the color of your winter overcoat or necktie.
Remember that you are an individual, not a grain of dust or a blade of grass. Don’t be a sheep; be a man. It has taken nature a hundred million years to produce you. Don’t make her sorry she took the time.
Get out in the park and walk and think. Get up in your hall bedroom, read, study, write what you think. Talk more to yourself and less to others. Avoid magazines, avoid excessive newspaper reading.
There is not a man of average ability but could make a striking career if he could but
will
to do the best that is in him.
Proofs of growth due to solitude are endless. Milton’s greatest work was done when blindness, old age and the death of the Puritan government forced him into completest seclusion. Beethoven did his best work in the solitude of deafness.
Bacon would never have been the great leader of scientific thought had not his trial and disgrace forced him from the company of a grand retinue and stupid court to the solitude of his own brain.
“Multum insola fuit anima mea.” (My spirit hath been much alone.) This he said often, and lucky it was for him. Loneliness of spirit made him.
Get a little of it for yourself.
Drop your club, your street corner, your gossipy boarding-house table. Drop your sheep life and try being a man.
It may improve you.
F
ROM
E
THICS FOR
Y
OUNG
P
EOPLE
, 1891
By Charles Carroll Everett
It is important to learn early to rely upon yourself; for little has been done in the world by those who are always looking out for some one to help them.
We must be on our guard not to confound self-reliance with self-conceit, yet the difference between the two cannot easily be defined in words.
The difference is something like that between bravery and foolhardiness.
The self-conceited person takes it for granted that he is superior to others.
Self-reliance is very different from this. The self-reliant person is often very modest. He does not say about anything that is to be done, “I am so strong and wise that I can do it.” He says, “I will try, and if patience and hard work will do it, it shall be done.”
One way in which a person may become self-reliant, is never to seek or accept help till he has fairly tried what can be done without it.
Some scholars, if they come to a problem that seems hard, run at once to the teacher, or an older friend, or perhaps even to another scholar, who is brighter or more self-reliant than themselves, in order to be told how to do it. Always try it yourself. Even if it is nothing more important than a conundrum, do not wish somebody to tell you the answer till you have fairly tried to conquer it.
It is a pleasant feeling that comes from having done a difficult thing one’s self, a feeling that those never have who are helped out of every hard place.
Did you ever think why it is that so many of the great men of our country are found among those who began life in hardship and poverty? Many of them grew up in what was, when they were young, the western frontier, where they had to work hard; where they had no schools, and few comforts and conveniences. They have come from these circumstances that seemed so discouraging, and have become presidents, judges, generals, or millionaires.
