Henry S. Haskins (1875 – 1957)
Stockbroker and man of letters.
The darkness around us might somewhat light up if we would first practice using the light we have on the place we are.
Stand aloof from your own opinions; they seek to lure you with an illusive certainty.
There are many branches of learning, but only the one solid tree-trunk of wisdom.
We should train our desires to show the way to our dreams.
The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn.
The man who feels that he must be hopeful and cheerful to get along ignores the careers of some pretty successful misanthropes.
Where you find imagination tracing the outlines and reason filling in the details, there you have a man.
Symbols have a trick of stealing the show away from the thing they stand for.
By an unfailing coincidence, the man who wrongs us is a villain, and the man who does us a kindness is a saint.
Make a party over your negative thoughts, assuring them that they are the safest, the most cautious, company you have ever kept. At first they will swallow your flattery, but then suddenly, stricken with shame, and knowing themselves for the impostors they are, out and off they will go.
Compliments have lost their lure by the time a man does not have to fish for them.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are but tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Proud souls in the true sense are never humbled by adversity.
We are no more alike under the skin than we are on top of it.
He who longs for the far-away proves thereby that he has corrupted the near-at-hand.
Avoid membership in a body of persons pledged to only one side of anything.
Some live lies who won’t tell them; some tell lies who won’t live them.
There never is any diminution of the vast majority, indifferent to what they are, whence they came, and whither they go, who rush from business to pastime, and from pastime back to business, leaving no vacancy into which the unknown might slip a little experimental greatness.
When you start to indulge yourself, remember it is what they do with invalids and children.
... memories that never ride anything but sound waves.