Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden
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he was made by a per-feet Being and hence his better self must be perfect.
She told him not to go about the streets trying to sneak and to slink out of sight, not to regard himself as a criminal, haunted and hunted by the police and detectives, but to say to himself, “I am a man, a strong, magnificent man, made in the image of Perfection. I must be perfect. There is an indestructible, inviolable something within me which must ultimately dominate my life and bring me into harmony.”
The man faithfully followed the advice of his benefactress, and after a while he became so completely transformed that the hardened criminal lines, the sneaking fear lines in his face were replaced by signs of nobility. The uplifting suggestions constantly held in his mind outpictured themselves in his face and changed his expression to one of manhood.
All this was the result of appealing to the best in the man, calling out the qualities which had been buried all those years, which had had no chance to grow, which had been smothered by the overdevelopment of the brute faculties.
This pure, sweet woman called out of this man qualities which completely changed his life, and which a hundred years of punishment and cruelty and threatening and torture could never have developed.
Forget yourself. You will never do anything great until you do. Self-consciousness is a disease with many. No matter what they do, they can never get away from themselves. They become warped upon the subject of self-analysis, wondering how they look, how they appear, what others will think of them, how they can enhance their own interests. In other words, every thought and every effort seems to focus upon self; nothing radiates from them.
No one can grow while his thoughts are self-centered. The sympathies of the man who thinks only of himself are soon dried up. Self-consciousness acts as a paralysis to all expansion, strangles enlargement, kills aspiration, cripples executive ability. The mind which accomplishes things worth while looks out, not in; it is focused upon its object, not upon itself.
The immortal acts have been unconsciously performed. The greatest prayers have been the silent longings, the secret yearnings of the heart, not those which have been delivered facing a critical audience. The daily desire is the perpetual prayer, the prayer that is heard and answered.
The real test of a man’s success is his daily life. Does he really live? Is he alive in every part of his being, or have his best qualities shriveled and atrophied from disuse?
What matters it how much money one has if there is only a small part of the real man alive; if his sympathies have dried up from the lack of use or cultivation, if his appreciation of the beautiful and his love of the good have become paralyzed?
Is a man whose brain has developed one huge money gland for secreting dollars, while all his other faculties have died from disuse or neglect, a success? Have growth and the unfoldment of all the powers nothing to do with real success? Is living in a business rut for a quarter or a half century, grasping, elbowing one’s way, trampling upon others’ rights and opportunities, scheming to get something away from others, with indifference to their welfare, cherishing only one great, grasping motive—getting, getting, absorbing—is this real living? Is this character building?
Is a huge tree trunk with all but one of the branches lopped off, and that one developed into an enormous monstrosity because of its having absorbed all of the sap intended for the other branches, a tree? Have symmetry, balance, and beauty nothing to do with a perfect tree? Most of us are at best monstrosities, with one faculty enormously over-developed at the expense of all the others. How rare it is to find a fully poised man, one with perfectly balanced development of faculty and function!
The best legacy a man can leave his children is the memory and influence of a large, broad, finely developed mentality, a well disciplined, highly cultured mind, a sweet, beautiful character which has enriched everybody who came in contact with it, a refined personality, a magnanimous spirit.
To leave a clean record, an untarnished name, a name which commanded respect for honesty and integrity which were above suspicion; this is a legacy worth while, a wealth beyond the reach of fire or flood, disaster or accident on land or sea. This is a legacy allied to divinity.
To bring your children up to respect themselves, to love the right and hate the wrong, to be self-reliant, strong, vigorous and independent, to do their own thinking so they may become leaders instead of trailers—that is to leave them something worth while. They will have power in themselves to help themselves, not imitate or copy, but live their own lives and form their own creeds. They will not need to apologize or sneak or fawn, but stand erect, look the world in the face without wincing, and feel themselves equal to any environment and masters of the situation by virtue of their own power. Such a legacy will enrich them more than all the millions you could amass.
How many people in this country to-day are really ashamed of the father whose money they are spending! They are glad enough to get the money, but they do not like to say much about their fathers’ characters or how they acquired wealth.
Is it not unaccountable how men will struggle and strive in order to pile up money, to accumulate a vast fortune for their children, and so coin their own lives, their very lifeblood, into dollars which they leave to their children, often with nothing else—no name, no memory which can be revered? Is it not strange that fathers will contend and crowd so hard for that which is cheap and shallow and unsatisfying, and neglect the development of the more permanent, more desirable, more beautiful and lasting qualities?
These shrewd, long-headed men know very well that the chances are small that a son will develop the power of self-help and self-reliance when everybody is telling him that he is a fool to work, that his father is rich, that he should just pitch in and have a good time. These men know how small are the chances of developing that fiber which makes men, that stamina which makes character in the boy who has a fortune left him; yet many of them go blindly on, not seemingly caring anything about the development of their boys’ characters—or their own, intent on amassing fortunes which so often prove the ruin of the children who inherit them.
If one is too large to be measured by the dollar-mark, or to be enclosed in his estate; if the wealth of his personality has overflowed until all his neighbors feel richer for his life and example; if every foot of land in his community is worth more because he lives there, then the loss of his property can not materially shrink his inventory.
If you have learned to be rich without money; if you have, by the cultivation of your mental powers, gathered to yourself a treasure of indestructible wealth; if, like the bee, you have learned the secret of extracting honey from the thistle as well as from the rose, you will look upon your losses as mere incidents, not so very important to the larger and fuller life.
It gives a sense of immense satisfaction to think that there is something within us greater than the wealth we acquire or our material pursuits; that there is something about us better than our career, better than living-getting, money-getting, fame-getting; that there is something which will survive the fire, the flood, or the tornado which sweeps away our property, which will survive detraction, persecution, calumny; something that will outlast even the dissolution of the body itself. That is, nobility of character, the sweetness and light which have helped people, which have made the world a little better place to live in.
There is something within us which protests against having our most precious possessions at the mercy of accident or uncertainty. We have an innate assurance that, no matter what happens, nothing can possibly injure our real selves or destroy our greatest riches, our grandest possessions. There is a still voice within us which tells us that the true life is beyond the reach of anything that can harm it or rob it of one iota of its substance.
The feeling of serenity, the assurance of stability and of possessing 'that which no power can shake, gives a satisfaction beyond all words to express, imparting to life its true dignity and grandeur.
Do you not know that the whole creation thunders the Ten Commandments? The very atoms seem to have been dipped in a moral solution. There is ‘a moral tendency in the very nature of things. It looks out of the flowers, it shines from the stars. It grows in the forest, it waves in the grass, it laughs in the harvest. Each form of existence brings from the