How to Succeed, Rosetta Dunigan [interesting books to read in english txt] 📗

One may fail in his other aims; the many accidents of life may bring to naught his most patient endeavors after worldly fame or success; but he who strives for dignity of character will not fail of reward if he but diligently seek the same by earnest resolve and patient labor.

Is there not in this a lesson of patience for many who are almost weary of striving for better things? If success does not crown their ambitious efforts, will they not be sustained by the smile of an approving conscience? Strong in this, they can wait with patience till, in the fullness of time, their reward cometh.

Young ladies and gentlemen, an appeal to you.

The desire to be thought well of, to desire to be great in goodness, is in itself a noble quality of the mind, and is often termed ambition. If it is our ambition to gain distinction, we will rob the weak and flatter the strong, and become the fawning slave of those who are able to foist us above our betters and deck us with the titles and honors of the great without any regard to our own merit of respectability. But if we are ambitious to do good, without any regard for the fame we may win or the praise we may command, our course will be honorable and our acts and deeds most worthy and good. When we have done with the world the prints of our worthy ambition we will still remain in the minds of those who come after us to enjoy and reap the benefits, for which they will revive our memory and retain our names in the lists of those whose labors have aided in enlightening the world and exalting the general interest of mankind.

Much of the advancement of the world can be traced of the efforts of those who were moved by ambition to become famous. Ambition is like fire. It is an excellent servant, but a poor master. As long as it is held strictly to integrity and honor, and to conform to the requirements of justice, there is but little danger of a man’s having too much of it.

[11] Ambition is an excessive quality and, as such, is apt to lead us to the most extraordinary results. But if our ambition leads us to excel or seek to excel in that which is good, the currents it may induce us to support will be of great good. But if it is stimulated by pride, envy or vanity, we will confine our support principally to the counter currents of life, and thus leave behind us misery and destruction.

The happiness promised by ambition dissolves in sorrow just as we are about to grasp it. It makes the same mistake concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means of happiness, but she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.

It is generally known that he who expects much will be often disappointed; yet disappointment seldom cures us of expectations. But one of the saddest thoughts that come to us in life is the thought that in this bright, beautiful and joy-giving world of ours there are many shadowed lives. There is but one way in which we can succeed, when we admit that happiness is but a state of the mind, and that success is the faithful performance of known duties, then shall we acquire both. Though we may wander the wide world over and gather wealth and fame, they will be found impotent to confer happiness, and life to us will seem full of disappointments; but it is because we failed to seek for life in that spirit of quiet content which conducts it. It never happened to any man since the making of this world nor ever will, to have all things according to his desires. If you risk nothing, of course you lose nothing. Let him who is enlisted for the war expect to meet the foe. It is with life’s troubles as with the risks of the battlefield—there is always less danger to the party who stands firm than to the one who gives way. To give way to disappointments is to invite defeat. To bravely cast about for means to resist them is to put them to flight, and out of temporary misfortune by the foundation of a more glorious success, by sending disappointments to the winds; taking life as it is and with a strong will, make life as near what it should be as possible.

The most pure lives sometimes are those who are met with the most disappointments. With some it is the wreck of a great ambition. Yes, he has built his ship and launched it on the sea of life loaded with the richest jewels of his strength and manhood. And behold, it comes back to him beaten and battered by the fury gale. We may add some rays of sunshine [12] to our path if we earnestly try to dispel the clouds of discontent that may arise in our bosom, and by doing so enjoy fully the bountiful blessings that God our creator has given to his humblest creatures.

Memory is the cord binding all the natural gifts and excellences together, and though it is not wisdom in itself, still it is the primary fundamental power without which there could be no other intellectual operations. The memory of good actions is the starlight of the soul. Yes, it tempers prosperity by recalling past distress, by bringing up the thoughts of past joys. It controls youth and delights old age. Without memory life would be a blank. The mind must be made to think as to remember and to remember principles and outlines. We think of faces, and they return to us as plainly as when their presence gladdened our eyes. When sorrow and trial, care and temptation surrounded us how often do we gain courage and renewed strength by thinking of the past. The course of none has been along so beaten a road that they remember not fondly some resting places in their journey—some turns in their path in which lovely prospects broke in upon them. How much is spoken which deserves no remembrance, and which does not serve as a simple link in one’s existence not calling forth one result for others’ need or thrilling one chord with nobler impulses. The gift of memory is diversified to different people, some having a taste of history, some for literature and others delight in politics, and so on through all the different phases of existence. Memory has been compared to a storehouse. How much important then that we renew the mind to healthful actions instead of feeding it on poisons until it will produce nothing but poisonous thoughts.