The Prosperity & Wealth Bible. Kahlil Gibran
Читать онлайн книгу.
one could get a hearing if he wrote a whole library of malicious tales about Lincoln. His wonderful Face would contradict them all. To learn what manner of person a man is, study his Face. His Character is proclaimed there as Trumpet Tones. Pope said that the proper study of mankind was man. But the way to study a man is to study his Face. Be not so foolish as to try to “hop bail” on your own Face. You can’t. Better start associating more with it. It is your largest asset, for no man can take it from you. Realize now, then, that the most important job for you each day is to —
Make SOMETHING of your Face.
Responsibility
A great man by the name of Ansalus de Insulis — remember the name — once wrote these wonderful words: “Learn as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die to-morrow.”
Be Responsible, first, to Yourself.
Responsibility is one thing that all must face and that none can escape. It starts with the baby in the cradle. It never ends! For the Responsibility of a man goes on even after his work in the flesh is over. A man performs a great deed. It lives in printed pages and goes on in its influence as long as there is any life in the world at all.
Be Responsible, first, to Yourself.
Individual Responsibility! It’s the thing that makes the Man. Without it there is no Man. Bear in mind, you who must realize Responsibility to your Employer, or to your Friend, or to your Home, — your first Responsibility is to Yourself. And if you are weak and false to yourself — if you wabble in doing the things that mean your very life and Success — you are already a Failure.
Be Responsible, first, to Yourself.
Then FEEL your Responsibility. No one is useless who believes that some things depend upon him alone. You who read this little preachment, take it to heart. Be unafraid of at least attempting larger things. Convince your own self that you have worth and can prove it — and the tasks of big moment will take care of you and lift you into importance and affluence — the gifts of having the courage to take Responsibility and shoulder it. But, remember to —
Be Responsible, first, to Yourself.
Happiness
Happiness is Helpfulness bubbling over at the rim. Also, Happiness is getting in time with the music of the Band of The-Out-of-Doors. There is no unhappiness in Nature.
Lend a Hand. Make Happiness a Habit.
The people who are Happy are the people who are Successful — not in money, merely, but in Contentment, realized Aims and completed Effort. To win — be Happy. To be Happy — do something worthwhile.
Lend a Hand. Make Happiness a Habit.
The fastest growing concern is the one with the most Happy helpers. Happiness produces health. Health plows up the field of native ability and makes ready the soil for the Happy Harvest.
Lend a Hand. Make Happiness a Habit.
Happiness cannot be bought. Being rated as of all things about the most Precious — it is at the same time free. It is for all. But there must be mustered the effort to take it. And after you have it, if you would keep it — give it away.
Lend a Hand. Make Happiness a Habit.
For Happiness boiled down is nothing more nor less than being well content with your progress by seeking better things all the time, being glad that you are alive, thanking God that you have a chance, believing that you have some things that nobody else in all the world has, and just resolving that you are going to make this world a marvelous place to stay in for a while. It’s also having something that everyone else will want — and giving it to others.
Lend a hand. Make Happiness a Habit.
Service
To serve is to find Something to do — and then do it. It matters not what this Something is, so long as it serves a Useful end.
Honor your Job.
The biggest man or woman who ever lived, was in no way, after all, greater than a Servant — in some way or other. The world is a world of Servants. You are a Servant. The one you Serve is a Servant.
Honor your Job.
Proportionately every man is as great as the greatest if he Serves to his fullest Capacity. To do this is to Grow. And Growth only comes to the people of Capacity. You who do your best to-day will do better tomorrow. To Service there is no limit.
Honor your Job.
No occupation is so dignified as Service of some kind. Nothing brings greater rewards in Happiness and Power. He climbs highest who helps another up.
Honor your Job.
The truest fact in all this world is that the more you do for someone else, the more you boost your own game — the stronger your own individual influence and Character becomes. Suppose you try it out to-day and learn for yourself. Try it in your Home, at your Office, in your place of power or in the midst of the humblest circumstances. Be a real Servant. Serve. And be glad in doing it.
Honor your Job.
And by so doing become one of the factors in the stirring affairs of your time.
Imagination
Imagination is the greatest asset that the world’s Doers have ever had. Money, titles, estates — they are all cheap beside this marvelous gift. Imagination is the creator of them all in most instances.
Cultivate your Imagination.
You who read this — did you ever stop to consider that you would not be worth the free air you breathe were it not for the fact that you possess to some extent the power of Imagination?
Cultivate your Imagination.
People do the things they first see done with their Imagination. McAdoo with the eye of his mind saw rapid cars taking thousands of people daily under the Hudson river. Of course, people turned their heads and smiled at his dream. But McAdoo made real his dream in the Hudson tunnels. Marconi saw the messages of people thousands of miles away floating on the waves of the air and sounded off at a marvelous instrument. He was at once rated as crazy. But he went ahead and presented to an astonished world the unbelievable Wireless telegraph!
Cultivate your Imagination.
People call America the “land of Opportunity.” It is the land of Imagination. Hera the humblest rises to the greatest position of power. It’s the working of Imagination that contributes most. The obscure clerk sees himself President of the concern he serves. Then he advances step by step until he realizes his aim. His first step toward the President’s job was to see himself with his Imagination, occupying it.
Cultivate you Imagination.
The great Perthes once said “that a quick Imagination is the salt of earthly life, without which nature is but a skeleton; but the higher the gift the greater the responsibility.”
Cultivate your Imagination.
Cultivate it in little things. Then the little things will become big things. Then the big things will take their place among the undying things. History is but the story of the achievements of people who had Imagination.
Cultivate your Imagination.
Ghosts
There is nothing in Ghosts. But they do exist. Ghosts are nothing more nor less than the phantom Imaginations of sick, afraid Minds. They go by various names — Failure Ghosts, Idea Ghosts, Mistake Ghosts, Chance Gho6ts, Regret Ghosts — and Millions of others.
Face your Ghosts.
Walk