Character and Conduct Part 6

"Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time."

HORACE MANN.

"Punctuality is the politeness of kings."

LOUIS XIV.

Business-like Habits

FEBRUARY 5

"It is very important to cultivate business-like habits. An eminent friend of mine a.s.sured me not long ago that when he thought over the many cases he had known of men, even of good ability and high character, who had been unsuccessful in life, by far the most frequent cause of failure was that they were dilatory, unpunctual, unable to work cordially with others, obstinate in small things, and, in fact, what we call unbusiness-like."

LORD AVEBURY.

"A 'bustling' man is, to a man of business, what a monkey is to a man.

He is the shadow of despatch, or, rather, the echo thereof; for he maketh noise enough for an alarm. The quickness of a true man of business he imitateth, imitateth excellently well, but neither his silence nor his method; and it is to be noted that he is ever most vehement about matters of no significance. He is always in such headlong haste to overtake the next minute, that he loses half the minute in hand; and yet is full of indignation and impatience at other people's slowness, and wasteth more time in reiterating his love of despatch than would suffice for doing a great deal of business. He never giveth you his quiet attention with a mind centred on what you are saying, but hears you with a restless eye, and a perpetual s.h.i.+fting posture, and is so eager to show his quickness that he interrupteth you a dozen times, misunderstands you as often, and ends by making you and himself lose twice as much time as was necessary."

H. ROGERS.

Time and Method

FEBRUARY 6

"The thrift of time will repay in after life with usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning."

GLADSTONE.

"One of the striking characteristics of successful persons is their faculty of readily determining the relative importance of different things. There are many things which it is desirable to do, a few are essential, and there is no more useful quality of the human mind than that which enables its possessor at once to distinguish which the few essential things are. Life is so short and time so fleeting that much which one would wish to do must fain be omitted. He is fortunate who perceives at a glance what it will do, and what it will not do, to omit.

This invaluable faculty, if not possessed in a remarkable degree naturally, is susceptible of cultivation to a considerable extent. Let any one adopt the practice of reflecting, every morning, what must necessarily be done during the day, and then begin by doing the most important things first, leaving the others to take their chance of being done or left undone. In this way attention first to the things of first importance soon acquires the almost irresistible force of habit, and becomes a rule of life. There is no rule more indispensable to success."

Concentration

FEBRUARY 7

"The marked differences of working power among men are due chiefly to differences in the power of concentration. A retentive and accurate memory is conditioned upon close attention. If one gives entire attention to what is pa.s.sing before him, he is not likely to forget it, or to confuse persons or incidents. The book which one reads with eyes which are continually lifted from the page may furnish entertainment for the moment, but cannot enrich the reader, because it cannot become part of his knowledge. Attention is the simplest form of concentration, and its value ill.u.s.trates the supreme importance of that focussing of all the powers upon the thing in hand which may be called the sustained attention of the whole nature.

"Here, as everywhere in the field of man's life, there enters that element of sacrifice without which no real achievement is possible. To secure a great end, one must be willing to pay a great price. The exact adjustment of achievement to sacrifice makes us aware, at every step, of the invisible spiritual order with which all men are in every kind of endeavour. If the highest skill could be secured without long and painful effort, it would be wasted through ignorance of its value, or misused through lack of education; but a man rarely attains great skill without undergoing a discipline of self-denial and work which gives him steadiness, restraint, and a certain kind of character. The giving up of pleasures which are wholesome, the turning aside from fields which are inviting, the steady refusal of invitations and claims which one would be glad to accept or recognise, invest the power of concentration with moral quality, and throw a searching light on the nature of genuine success.

"To do one thing well, a man must be willing to hold all other interests and activities subordinate; to attain the largest freedom, a man must first bear the cross of self-denial."

Concentration

FEBRUARY 8

"Strive constantly to concentrate yourself; never dissipate your powers; incessant activity, of whatever kind, leads finally to bankruptcy."

GOETHE.

"All impatience disturbs the circulation, scatters force, makes concentration difficult if not impossible."

C. B. NEWCOMB.

"They have great powers, and they waste them pitifully, for they have not the greatest power,--the power to rule the use of their powers."

F. W. ROBERTSON.

"Concentration is the secret of strength."

EMERSON.

Readiness

FEBRUARY 9

"To know how to be ready--a great thing--a precious gift,--and one that implies calculation, grasp and decision. To be always ready, a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business, and his life. To know how to be ready, is to know how to start.

"It is astonis.h.i.+ng how all of us are generally c.u.mbered up with the thousand and one hindrances and duties which are not such, but which nevertheless wind us about with their spider threads and fetter the movement of our wings. It is the lack of order which makes us slaves; the confusion of to-day discounts the freedom of to-morrow.

"Confusion is the enemy of all comfort, and confusion is born of procrastination. To know how to be ready we must be able to finish.

Nothing is done but what is finished. The things which we leave dragging behind us will start up again later on before us and hara.s.s our path.

Let each day take thought for what concerns it, liquidate its own affairs and respect the day which is to follow, and then we shall be always ready. To know how to be ready, is at bottom to know how to die."

_Amiel's Journal._

Order

FEBRUARY 10

"What comfort, what strength, what economy there is in _order_--material order, intellectual order, moral order. To know where one is going and what one wishes--this is order; to keep one's word and one's engagements--again order; to have everything ready under one's hand, to be able to dispose of all one's forces, and to have all one's means of whatever kind under command--still order; to discipline one's habits, one's efforts, one's wishes; to organise one's life, to distribute one's time, to take the measure of one's duties and make one's rights respected; to employ one's capital and resources, one's talent and one's chances profitably;--all this belongs to and is included in the word _order_. Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over oneself; order is power. aesthetic and moral beauty consist, the first in a true conception of order, and the second in submission to it, and in the realisation of it, by, in, and around oneself. Order is man's greatest need and his true well-being."

_Amiel's Journal._

"The commissioning of the Twelve imposed no particular form of rule; but it taught the lesson that organisation and order and the distribution of duty were essential in things spiritual as well as in things temporal, and that it was well for the children of light to be as 'wise in their generation' as the children of the world."

_Pastor Pastorum_, HENRY LATHAM.