The Best Rules for Health, Happiness and Success.
Reading edition
THEY ARE WORTH THE ATTENTION AND THOUGHT OF ALL READERS.
1. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have earned it.
4. Never buy what you don't want because it is cheap.
5. Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We seldom repent of eating too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain the evils have cost us that have never happened.
9. Take things always by the smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred.
11. Watch the small things.
12. Laziness is a vice—fight it.
13. Do your honest best—it pays.
14. Without self-respect you cannot gain respect.
15. Trickery's triumph is fleeting.
16. Remember that opportunity waits only on worth.
17. Cultivate love, loyalty and respect for work—especially your own work.
18. It is not enough to be honest and lazy.
19. Try to keep your mind clean—evil and success will not mix.
20. If responsibility confronts you, seize it. Do not throw it aside—responsibility represents opportunity.
Some of these sayings will strike you as very old and lacking in novelty. But, old as these rules are, human beings have not yet learned to follow them. And they won't learn for many a long year.
We shall not moralize about them all today, only one or two we want to emphasize.
"Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly."
If you work willingly, if you make yourself realize that willing effort is easy, AND THE ONLY KIND THAT MAKES YOU GROW AND SUCCEED, you will solve one of your big working problems.
Did you ever see a small boy walking ahead of a band, with the music playing?
And did you ever see the same small boy walking half the distance to get a newspaper for his father? Walking with the band rests him; it doesn't tire him at all, BECAUSE HE DOES IT WILLINGLY. And the other kind of walking takes the very heart out of him and makes him almost too tired to eat his dinner.
It is exactly that way with all the work we do in this world. When you do things willingly, with the heart and the nerves and the brain acting with one another cheerfully, work is easy AND SUCCESS FOLLOWS.
A willing FOOL may lag behind an unwilling man of intelligence. But even a willing fool is happier in the end than an unwilling one, and, all things being even, the employe working WILLINGLY will cease being an employe and have others working for him sooner than the other man.
PRIDE COSTS MORE THAN HUNGER, THIRST AND COLD.
This applies to all kinds of foolish vanity. It applies to the young man who never does anything, BECAUSE HE IS TOO PROUD TO DO WHAT HE HAS THE CHANCE TO DO.
It applies to men and women who squander on dress and show the money that they need for more serious purposes.
It applies to those that in old age have no money saved up, BECAUSE PRIDE SPENT THEIR MONEY AS FAST AS THEY GOT IT.
The pride that keeps men honest, the pride that makes men truthful, never kept a man back or hurt him.
The bad kind of pride is the pride which can be described as "the coward's pride." Men are foolishly and cowardly proud BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF WHAT OTHER MEN WILL THINK. Money that they cannot afford they spend helping other men to drink too much, BECAUSE THEY ARE ASHAMED TO BE THOUGHT STINGY OR MEAN.
Men squander in keeping up appearances money that should be saved for another day, for a good business opportunity, because they are too cowardly to be guided by their own judgment, and ignore what others may THINK about them.
Self-respect is one thing; foolish pride, vanity, moral cowardice, are very different. Get rid of them.
All the advice from these 20 rules is good advice. The man who can keep his temper while he thinks—whether he count ten or a million—is a lucky man.
A man in a rage is a man whose BRAIN IS NO LONGER WORKING. And the man whose brain isn't working is at the mercy of the man whose brain IS working.
Worry about the FUTURE troubles is a curse with many men. It prevents their working well TODAY.
Overeating, and especially eating at the wrong time, is a great evil in this country. If men would learn to eat heartily only when their day's work is done, WHEN THEIR MINDS MUST NO LONGER BE CONCENTRATED, THEY WILL SAVE THEIR STOMACHS AND ACCOMPLISH TWICE THE AMOUNT OF WORK IN THEIR LIVES.
Read these rules over, and moralize on them for yourselves and for your children.