Where and Whyfore

MR. VALLIANT-FOR-TRUTH CROSSES THE RIVER

      After this, it was noised abroad the Mr. Valiant-for-truth was taken with a summons, by the same Post as the other, and had this for a Token that the Summons was true, That his Pitcher was broken at the fountain. When he understood it, he called for his Friends, and told them of it. Then he said, I am going to my Fathers, and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the Trouble I have been to arrive where I am. My Sword, I give to him that shall succeed me in my Pilgrimage, and my Courage and Skill, to him that can get it. My Marks and Scars I carry with me, to be a Witness for me, that I have fought his Battles who now will be my Rewarder. When the day that he must go hence, was come, many accompanied him to the River side, into which, as he went, he said, Death, where is thy Sting? And as he went down deeper, he said, Grave, where is thy Victory? So he passed over, and the Trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

— John Bunyan, from Pilgrim’s Progress, in A Treasury of the Familiar, Ralph L. Woods, p. 534.

      General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed but has been well-high appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man — the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds unless, by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in his goodness performs a miracle and sends him an Angel of Light for as assistant.

 ……

     My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away as well as when he is at home. And the man who when given a letter to Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off” nor has to go on strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town, and village — in every office, shop, store, and factory. The world cries out for such; he is needed and needed badly — the man who can “Carry a message to Garcia.”

— Elbert Hubbard, from A Message to Garcia, in Ibid., p. 537/p. 540.

      When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

— Mark Twain, in Ibid., p. 589.

                                  IF—

 If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise; 

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;

If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a tap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools; 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings — nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty-seconds’ worth of distance run —

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!

— Rudyard Kipling, in Ibid., pp. 656-657.

     A man has two reasons for doing anything — a good reason and the real reason.

— J. P. Morgan, in Ibid., p. 660.