Henry S. Haskins (1875 – 1957)
Stockbroker and man of letters.
Ugly facts are a challenge to beautify them.
Be a sincere effort never so misguided, to laugh at it is a breach of faith with decency.
When a man’s success becomes commonplace to him, it is his success no longer.
Who can set us straight in our labyrinth from the mazes of his own?
The rare individual who has learned to govern himself is too fed up with the labor of it to want to govern anybody else.
A distant destination austerely reached rarely compensates for a loved starting-point forever lost.
Not a little of our condemnation of the acts of others is spillage from our own condemnation of our own acts.
If we exiled our sins, our virtues would get lonely without their old sparring partners.
A soul which is truly in earnest is not above disabling the body to discourage dangerous competition.
When study becomes labor, we had better change the subject-matter as quickly as possible.
Many of our intentions die after we have put their harness on.
Expletives serve opinions well which are not sure enough of themselves to risk expression in restrained language.
We demand about everything of ourselves but discrimination in what we demand.
Our portion of life is the whole thing for us.
Normal is the wrong name often used for average.
The highest grades of humanity have passed through the millstones more than once.
Having climbed to a height, it is easier to slip from it than to stay there after the zest of striving is removed.
The art of a pedant is to divert his pupils from noticing the smallness of his puddle, and to make them attribute his apparent size to his being a really big toad.
It is not so much tutoring that the minds needs, but clearer recognition and better use of what it already knows.
Discontent follows ambition like a shadow.