Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard
than anybody expects of you . . .
Never excuse yourself to yourself. Never pity yourself.
Be a hard master to yourself, but lenient to everybody else.HENRY WARD BEECHER,
in an 1878 letter to his son Herbert
In the letter, written as Herbert was leaving home for the first time to take a job, a concerned Beecher also implored his son to work on a problem that had become worrisome:
I beseech you to correct one fault—severe speech of others;
never speak evil of any man, no matter what the facts may be.
Never forget that Life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived
if you take it bravely, gallantly, as a splendid Adventure,
in which you are setting out into an unknown country,
to face many a danger, to meet many a joy,
to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.ANNIE BESANT, quoted in a 1924 article
in The Theosophist
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom.
One helps you make a living and the other helps you make a life.SANDRA CAREY
If you don’t like it, stop doing it.
Never continue in a job you don’t enjoy.JOHNNY CARSON
Carson offered this advice in a 1976 commencement address at Norfolk High School in Nebraska. Carson, who had graduated from the school in 1943, was thrilled to be invited back to his home town to speak to graduates. His proud parents were in attendance, as was one of his former teachers, Miss Jenny Walker, who had said to him when he was a high school senior, “You have a fine sense of humor and I think you will go far in the entertainment world.” After the speech, Carson took questions from the audience. When asked what he was proudest of, he said, “Giving a commencement address like this has made me as proud as anything I’ve ever done.” As the Q&A session ended and Carson prepared to leave, he was so moved by the prolonged applause, he added one final thought, a lovely expansion on his earlier advice about working only in a job that is enjoyable:If you’re happy in what you’re doing, you’ll like yourself. And if you like yourself, you’ll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined. I thank you all very much.
Never do reluctantly that which you must do inevitably.HARLON B. CARTER
Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, in Don Quixote (1605)
Never forget the difference between things of importance and trifles;
yet remember that trifles have also their value.SUSAN FENIMORE COOPER, in Elinor Wyllys (1846)
Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit.
Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever,
even if your whole world seems upset.ST. FRANCES DE SALES
Never apologize for showing feeling.
When you do so, you apologize for truth.BENJAMIN DISRAELI, from a character in Contarini Fleming (1832)
Never place loyalty to institutions and things
above loyalty to yourself.DR. WAYNE DYER, in Pulling Your Own Strings (1978)
Never work just for money or for power.MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN
This was one of twenty-five life lessons that Edelman laid out in The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours (1992). About money and power, she explained, “They won’t save your soul or build a decent family or help you sleep at night.” Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, also offered this lesson: “Never give up. Never think life is not worth living. I don’t care how hard it gets.”
Keep true; never be ashamed of doing right;
decide on what you think is right, and stick to it.GEORGE ELIOT, quoted in The Sabbath Reporter (1911)
Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion,
against injustice and lying and greed.WILLIAM FAULKNER
Faulkner said this in a 1951 commencement address to graduating seniors at University High School in Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner’s daughter Jill, a member of the senior class, had personally asked her father—a recent Nobel Prize winner—to deliver the speech. He added: “If you will do this, not as a class or classes, but as individuals, men and women, you will change the earth.”
Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is.MILLICENT FENWICK
She added: “How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.” Fenwick was a fashion model, author, and Vogue magazine editor before becoming involved in politics via the civil rights movement. Blessed with striking good looks, exceptional intelligence, and a keen wit, she rose rapidly in the ranks of the Republican Party. She was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1974—at age sixty-four—and quickly became a media darling, famous for her pipe-smoking habit and memorable quips (in a 1981 60 Minutes interview, she said, “When the door of a smoke-filled room is closed, there’s hardly ever a woman inside”). During her four congressional terms she was one of the country’s most colorful politicians. She lives on in history as the model for the character of Lacey Davenport in Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic strip.
Never be bullied into silence.
Never allow yourself to be made a victim.
Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.HARVEY FIERSTEIN
Never reach out your hand unless you’re willing to extend an arm.ELIZABETH FULLER
Fuller was a seventeenth-century educator who founded a famous Free School for English girls and boys. Almost three centuries later, Jesse Jackson offered a similar thought: “Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up.” And on the same theme, Pope John XXIII said: “Never hesitate to hold out your hand; never hesitate to accept the outstretched hand of another.”
Never forget that you are one of a kind.
Never forget that if there weren’t any need for you
in all your uniqueness to be on this earth,
you wouldn’t be here in the first place.
And never forget, no matter how overwhelming
life’s challenges and problems seem to be,
that one person can make a difference in the world.
In fact, it is always because of one person
that all the changes that matter in the world come about.
So be that one person.R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER
Never accept an evil that you can change.ANDRÉ GIDE, in The Fruits of the Earth (1897)
Gide’s book had a major influence on the thinking of French intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. It also contained another powerful admonition: “Never cease to be convinced that life might be better—your own and others.”
Never “for the sake of peace and quiet,”
deny your own experience or convictions.DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD, in Markings (1963)
Hammarskjöld was a respected Swedish economist and diplomat when he was named as his country’s first delegate to the UN in 1949. Elected secretary-general in 1953, he was reelected for a second term in 1957. He was on a peacekeeping mission to Northern Rhodesia in 1961 when he died in an airplane crash. Shortly after his death, he was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1963, his private journal—with a foreword by W. H. Auden—was published in Sweden, and a year later it was published in English under the title Markings. A compilation of philosophical reflections, the book was hailed by the New York Times as “Perhaps the greatest testament of personal devotion published in this century.” The book also contained these other words to live by: