Time and Change

If life is a ferment, as we are told it is, how long it took this yeast to leaven the whole loaf! Man is evidently the end of the series, he is the top of the biological tree. His specialization upon physical lines seems to have ended far back in geologic time; his future specialization and development is evidently to be upon mental and spiritual lines. 

The Freedom of Life - Annie Payson Call

If self-consciousness makes us blush, the more we are troubled the more it increases, until the blushing may become so unbearable that we are tempted to keep away from people altogether; and thus life, so far as human fellowship goes, would become more and more limited. But, when such a limitation is allowed to remain within us, and we make no effort of our own to find its root and to exterminate it, it warps us through and through. If self-consciousness excites us to talk, and we talk on and on to no end, simply allowing the selfish suffering to goad us, the habit weakens our brains so that in time they lose the power of strong consecutive thought and helpful brevity. 

Some Fruits of Solitude - William Penn 

The World is certainly a great and stately Volume of natural Things; and may be not improperly styled the Hieroglyphicks of a better: But, alas! how very few Leaves of it do we seriously turn over! This ought to be the Subject of the Education of our Youth, who, at Twenty, when they should be fit for Business, know little or nothing of it. 

The Courage of the Commonplace - Mary Raymond Shipley Andrews

It came to him in a vague, comforting way that probably the best game a man could play with his life would be to use it as a tool to do work with; to keep it at its brightest, cleanest, most efficient for the sake of the work. This boy, of no phenomenal sort, had one marked quality—when he had made a decision he acted on it. Tonight through the soreness of a bitter disappointment he put his finger on the highest note of his character and resolved. All unknown to himself it was a crisis.

Poise: How to Attain It - D. Starke new

The point of departure for the cultivation of poise, like that of everything else in fact, must be a well-ordered system of hygiene, far removed from excess, and insisting only upon the points we have already indicated.