The Value of Character Training
A boy has been likened to a hundredweight of good iron, which, in its ordinary form, may not be worth more than a dollar; but when carbonised into steel it is worth twice as much; when made into inch screws, a hundred dollars; if drawn into fine wire, five hundred dollars; if changed into fine needles, a thousand dollars; if into small fish-hooks, twenty-five hundred dollars; if into small watch-screws, three hundred thousand dollars; if into finest hair springs, one million and five hundred thousand dollars. The higher the development, the more hammering, beating, rolling, pounding, and polishing, the more valuable the iron becomes.
—O. S. Marden.
Thou Canst Not Then Be False to Any Man
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion’d thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
—William Shakespeare.
One who is false to his home is unsafe in every relation in life.
Alternate Reading: Philippians 1: 8-11.