SUCCESS
6128 Divine Success
Dr. Paul Rees said, “If you want a picture of success as heaven measures it, of greatness as God views it, don’t look for the blaring of the bands on Broadway; listen, rather, for the tinkle of water splashing into a basin, while God incarnate, in a humility that makes angels hold their breaths, sponges the grime from the feet of His undeserving disciples.”
—Bible Expositor
6129 This Is Success
To be able to carry money without spending it; to be able to bear an injustice without retaliating; to be able to keep on the job until it is finished; to be able to do one’s duty even when one is not watched; to be able to accept criticism without letting it whip you.
—The Uplift
6130 What Is Success?
Success is speaking words of praise
In cheering other people’s ways,
In doing just the best you can
With every task and every plan.
It’s silence when your speech would hurt,
Politeness when your neighbor’s curt.
It’s deafness when the scandal flows,
And sympathy with others’ woes.
It’s loyalty when duty calls;
It’s courage when disaster falls,
It’s patience when the hours are long;
It’s found in laughter and in song.
It’s in the silent time of prayer,
In happiness and in despair.
In all of life and nothing less,
We find the thing we call success.
—Anonymous
6131 Winner Versus Loser
1. A winner says, “Let’s find out”; a loser says, “Nobody knows.”
2. When a winner makes a mistake, he says, “I was wrong.” When a loser makes a mistake, he says, “It wasn’t my fault.”
3. A winner goes through a problem; a loser goes around it, and never gets past it.
4. A winner makes commitments; a loser makes promises.
5. A winner says, “I’m good, but not as good as I ought to be.” A loser says, “I’m not as bad as a lot of other people are.”
6. A winner tries to learn from those who are superior to him. A loser tries to tear down those who are superior to him.
7. A winner says, “There ought to be a better way to do it.” A loser says, “That’s the way it’s always been done here.”
—Mile-Hi Evangelist
6132 Success And Suffering
Success and suffering are vitally and organically linked. If you succeed without suffering, it is because someone else has suffered before you; if you suffer without succeeding, it is that someone else may succeed after you.
—Edward Tudson
6133 Success And Defeat
It’s the defeat more than anything else that hurts you! Defeat is always the hardest thing for you to stand, even in trifles. But don’t you know that we have to be defeated in order to succeed? Most of us spend half our lives fighting for things that would only destroy us if we got them. A man who has never been defeated is usually a man who has been ruined.
—J. L. Allen
6134 Go Down, To Go Up
When I was in London I had the thrilling experience of climbing up the 637 steps into the magnificent dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. About nine-tenths of the way up, just at the base of the dome, there is an exit that brings one outside onto a promenade with a marvelous view of the city. If a person is to climb to the apex of the dome of which the great, golden cross is erected, he has to go back inside through a small door on which there is a sign containing these words: “Go down, to go up.”
—Sunday School Times
6135 Poor Judgment Started It
The successful man was asked the secret of his accomplishments, His reply was: “Good judgment!”
“Where did you learn good judgment?” he was asked.
“From experience.”
“And from where did you gain your experience?”
“From poor judgment.”
6136 The Unpromising Robertson
Dr. J. B. Hawthorne was a noted orator sought by scores of churches and tens of thousands of hearers. Once he went to help a southern church in a two-week evangelistic campaign. The end of the meetings found only a little, unpromising lad saved. Dr. Hawthorne was a bit chagrined.
But that boy became the noted A. T. Robertson, the greatest American Greek scholar of the 20th century.
6137 Edgar Allan Poe
There was a young man who was ill and unhappy most of his short life—heart trouble at seventeen, inherited physical weaknesses, an orphan before he was three and taken in by strangers, kicked out of school, suffered from poverty, and had no fame until after his pitiful death at the young age of forty. Yet, in the short space of about twenty years, he gave the world articles, essays, brilliant criticisms. His poetry is widely read. He wrote short stories and detective stories, and one of his poems is on exhibit at the world-famous Huntington Library, at San Marino, California, and is worth $50,000. This poor, young invalid was a great literary genius, Edgar Allan Poe.
6138 Life Of Mozart
Few individuals have been more naturally favored than Johann Chrysostomus Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At age five he wrote an advanced concerto for the harpsichord. At seven he was performing the most difficult compositions of Bach and Handel. At twelve he composed his first opera.
Yet this “best pianist and greatest composer of his time—perhaps of all history”—died in poverty and obscurity at age thirty-five. His widow was ill and seemed indifferent as to his burial. A few friends went as far as the church but were deterred by the storm from going to the grave. By the time anyone bothered to inquire of it, the location of the grave was impossible to discover. Mozart’s unmarked grave has been lost ever since.
Thus, though Mozart’s name and his music live on, his personal fortunes were hardly to be envied.
—Stanley C. Baldwin
6139 Life Of Hugo
Victor Hugo came into disfavor with Napoleon III. And, as a consequence, Hugo was exiled for nineteen long years. But when those fateful years were over, and Victor Hugo died, famous were the funeral obsequies. The largest funeral of France was that of Victor Hugo. All the great institutions were represented. There were huge floral floats following detachments of soldiers. Ten thousand soldiers were needed to control the millions who gathered to watch the procession in the year 1883.
6140 Life Of Redon
After lengthy and bitter family litigation, Peyrelebade, the motherlode of all Redon’s Gothic fantasies, was lost to him in 1897. His finances reached an all-time low; he had to write his mother to look to his richer brothers for aid because he could not spare her a sou. Ironically, a Redon flower painting was sold at Sotheby’s in London for $172,800—more than the artist earned in his lifetime.
6141 Life Of Lincoln
“I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so.”
Abraham Lincoln’s life is the best example of his own words. Consider the chronology of his career:
1831 – Failed in business
1832 – Defeated for legislature
1833 – Again failed in business
1834 – Elected to legislature
1835 – Sweetheart died
1836 – Had nervous breakdown
1838 – Defeated for speaker
1840 – Defeated for elector
1843 – Defeated for Congress
1846 – Elected to Congress
1848 – Defeated for Congress
1855 – Defeated for Senate
1856 – Defeated for Vice-President
1858 – Defeated for Senate
1860 – ELECTED PRESIDENT
6142 Ladder Still There
On Lincoln’s birthday an interesting cartoon appeared in a newspaper. It showed a small log cabin at the base of a mountain, and the White House at the top of the mountain. A ladder connected the two buildings. At the bottom of the cartoon were these words: “The ladder is still there!” To climb that ladder, however, means sweat and toil
6143 Wanamaker’s Innovation
Here is the great innovation in storekeeping which John Wanamaker introduced: You could buy anything in the store and take it home; after you got it home if you did not like it, or the folks did not, or for any other reason you did not want it, you could take it back and your money would be returned without any question, argument, or hemming and hawing! Honesty had at last gotten into store-trading. Who could be “stuck” or overcharged when each article had marked upon it an invisible ink, as it were, “If you don’t think I’m your money’s worth, take me back.”
Of course, Mr. Wanamaker was imposed upon terribly. Women bought dresses, wore them to parties, and took them back the next day. Others furnished their houses and table for a function, then back with the glassware and china. But crowds filled the store and it grew and grew, and when Mr. Wanamaker died, his estate was said to be some $40,000,000 or more. Honesty is the best policy.
—Storekeeper
6144 The $11,000 Lemon
In 1908, the New York Giants paid the then-fantastic price of $11,000 for a kid pitcher in the bushes at Indianapolis. His name was Richard Marquard, and because he was a tall, wry-necked southpaw, he was nicknamed “Rube.” He tried so hard to live up to his fancy press notices that he went to pieces, and for two seasons was referred to scathingly as the “$11,000 lemon.” In 1911, however, “Rube” Marquard hit his stride, and in 1912 hung up his record of nineteen consecutive wins.
6145 Little Einstein’s Failures
A boy was so slow to learn to talk that his parents thought him abnormal and his teachers called him a “misfit.” His classmates avoided him and seldom invited him to play with them. He failed his first college entrance exam at a college in Zurich, Switzerland. A year later he tried again. In time he became world-famous as a scientist. His name: Albert Einstein.
6146 Attack At Daybreak
At the close of the first day of the battle of Shiloh, a day of severe Union reverses, Gen. Grant was met by his much discouraged chief-of-staff, McPherson, who said: “Things look bad, General. We have lost half our artillery and a third of the infantry. Our line is broken, and we are pushed back nearly to the river.” Grant made no reply, and McPherson asked impatiently what he intended to do. “Do? Why, reform the lines and attack at daybreak. Won’t they be surprised?”
Surprised they were, and routed before nine o’clock. Every man that succeeds meets just such crises, and must avert disaster with a prompt reforming of lines and early attack.
6147 Wife’s Approval Of “Luck”
I wonder if every admirer of Bret Harte knows how serious were the obstacle in the way of the success of his first and really most famous story, “The Luck of Roaring Camp”. The lady proofreader on the Overland Monthly, of which Harte was editor, raised her voice against the admission of the story into the pages of the magazine, while the publisher himself had grave doubts as to the wisdom of allowing the story to appear in his publication.
But at last he decided to have his wife read the story in manuscript, and she was delighted with it, so much so, that Mr. Carmany at once decided to allow the “Luck” to appear in the Overland. And so it was published, and its advent made not only the Overland famous, but its young editor a reputation as the Dickens of America.
—G. N. Lawson
6148 Secrets From The Famous
The world-renowned ROTHSCHILDS describe their success to the following rules: “Be an off-hand man: make a bargain at once. Never have anything to do with an unlucky man or plan. Be cautious and bold.” JOHN JACOB ASTOR, when requested to furnish incidents of his life, replied, “My actions must make my life.” STEPHEN GIRARD’S fundamental maxim was, “Take care of the cents: the dollars will take care of themselves.” AMOS LAWRENCE said, when asked for advice, “Young man, base all your actions upon a principle of right; preserve your integrity of character; and, in doing this never reckon the cost.” A. T. STEWART, the merchant-prince of New York, says, “No abilities, however splendid, can command success without intense labor and persevering application.” NICHOLAS LONGWORTH, the Cincinnati millionnaire, says, “I have always had these two things before me: Do what you undertake thoroughly. Be faithful in all accepted trusts.”
—Foster
6149 Epigram On Success
• If you want a place in the sun, you have to expect some blisters.
—Rotator
• The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well.
—John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
• Success is getting what you want out of life without violating the rights of others.
• One of the most important lessons of life is that success must continually be won and is never finally achieved.
—Charles Evans Hughes
• Success is not permanent. The name is also true of failure.
—Dell Crossword Puzzles
• The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.
• The conditions of success are always easy—we have to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe awhile.
—School Musician
• Secret of success is to be like a duck—smooth and unruffled on top, but paddling furiously underneath.
• The world expects result. Don’t tell others about the labor pains. Show them the baby.
—Arnold Glascow
• The world is not interested in the storms you encountered, but did you bring in the ship?
• I would rather fail in the cause that someday will triumph than triumph in a cause that someday will fail.
—Woodrow Wilson
• The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.