The Notes (23 page)

J
ust think how happy you’d be if you lost everything you have right now & then got it back.

Swiss Author Henri Frederic Amiel

T
ruth is violated by falsehood but it is outraged by silence.

Henry Marshall

O
ut of the ghetto comes an Al Smith, Eddie Cantor, Sam Levinson, Joe Louis, Babe Ruth & a mil. others. They just couldn’t understand that they didn’t have a chance. They just couldn’t be stopped from using disadvantages as advantages. They knew intuitively what Confucius had said, ‘that defeat was not getting knocked down—but in not getting up.’

Robert Browning

G
row old with me—the best is yet to be—the last of life for which the first was made.

Chinese Proverb

T
he beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right name.

Goethe

I
f everybody swept his own doorstep the whole world would be clean.

Mao

I
t is better for a woman to marry a man who loves her than to marry a man she loves.

Thomas Jefferson

H
ARMONY in the married state is the very 1st object to be aimed at. Happiness by the domestic fireside is the 1st boon of heaven.

S
tate a moral case to a plowman and a Professor. The farmer will decide it as well & often better because he has not been led astray by any artificial rules.

Letter to Grandson Warning Against Disputes with Students:

Keep aloof from them as you would from an infected subject of yellow fever or pestilence. Consider yourself when with them as among the patients of bedlam needing medical care more than normal counsel. Be a listener only, keeping within yourself the habit of silence especially on politics No good can ever result from any attempts to set one of these fiery zealots to rights either on fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe & the opinions on which they will act. Get by them as you would by an angry bull. It is not a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.

Patrick Henry (Precepts Instilled In Him By His Uncle)

T
o be true & first in all my dealings. To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart. To keep my hands from picking & stealing. Not to covet other men’s goods but to learn & labor truly to get my own living & to do my duty in that station of life unto which it shall please God to call me.

Adam Smith, “The Wealth Of Nations”

T
he statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capital would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person but to no council or Sen. whatever and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly & presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Sydney Harris