Advice to a Young Man

Young men (and women) come to me for advice about their writing problems and their love affairs. I try to be generous and kindhearted about my advice."

Good Advice sometimes comes too late.

We do not Find the deep truths of life: they find us.

On the Art of Writing

Writing Plain English is hard work.

No one ever learned literature from a textbook.

I have never taken a course in writing. I learned to write naturally and on my own.

I did not succeed by accident; I succeeded by patient hard work.

Verbal Dexterity does not make a good book.

Too many authors are more concerned with the style of their writing than with the characters they are writing about.

There are too many writers whose styles are often marred by verbosity and self-importance.

Few Great Authors have a brilliant command of language.

The indispensable characteristic of a good writer is a style marked by lucidity.

A Good Writer is wise in his choice of subjects, and exhaustive in his accumulation of materials.

The first thing a good writer does is overcome his self-conscious writing.

A Good Writer must have an irrepressible confidence in himself and in his ideas.

Writing must be a labor of love or it is not writing.

Good Writers know how to excavate significant facts from masses of information.

The toughest thing for a writer is to maintain the vigor and fertility of his imagination.

A Good Writer is a conscientious craftsman who goes to infinite trouble and great risk in a search for his material.

I will wage warfare against any writer whose work appears to me careless.

Most Writers fail simply because they lack the indispensable qualifications of the genuine writer. They are intensely prejudiced. Their horizon, in spite of their education, is a narrow one.

There can be no great literature in America until her writers have learned to trust her implicitly and love her devotedly.

Writers nowadays spend too much energy on the subsidiary activities of talking and making money, which leaves them too little time for serious writing.

Today the country is flooded with cheap, trashy fiction, the general tendency of which is not only not educational, but is positively destructive. The desire to read this stuff is as demoralizing as the narcotics habit.

The Novel is a kind of battlefield on which a writer fights his eternal struggle between good and evil.

A Novelist must possess the art of (continued on page 225)Advice to a Young Man (continued from page 153) stimulating expectation.

Lusty, Robust, full-blooded novels, crowded with the vitality of incident and detail are hardest to write.

The Deepest Appeal is not made to logic but to imagination, not to intellect but to heart.

Writing a Play is easier than writing a novel. It is the easiest literary medium there is, but there may be weeks and months of thinking it out beforehand.

Modern Poets are doomed to wander in a barren region, amid those millions who care nothing for true poetry.

I wish I could forever silence those materialistic people who contend that writers have no mission among men.

The best books are simple, direct and nonintellectual.

A creative person can never be happy earning his living in the business world while trying to create in his private world.

On Critics and Criticism

The human mind has many bad habits. Among the most pernicious habits of the mind, worry, pessimism, dishonesty, selfishness, and the spirit of unjust thinking, take the lead. Of these, habitual criticism is perhaps the most destructive, contagious, and least restrained of any.

The Chronic Critic is a self-appointed court, judge, jury, verdict, jail, and electric chair all in one. He is a crystallized faultfinder among his brothers, an anarchist in the realm of individual rights. He feels he is raised up to manage personally his fellows, and his text of procedure is, "The end justifies the means." He tears down where he should upbuild, inspires doubt and self-distrust where courage and hope should rule victorious.

Eloquent Critics are sometimes the poorest judges.

A fool can criticize anything and everybody, but a man must be wise in experience to approve intelligently and understand.

The faults of no American author have been so paraded before the public as those of mine.

Some of the profoundest literary critics of the century have assailed me. But I seem to be impregnable.

I have what seems out of place in a critic, a kindly heart.

On Love and Women

Love is the greatest adventure in people's lives.

The heart is the noblest part of human nature. And the affections are the noblest ingredient in human nature.

Once while hearing a young lady highly praised for her beauty, I asked: What kind of beauty do you mean? Merely that of the body, or also that of the mind? Many a pretty girl is like a flower which is admired for its beautiful appearance, but despised for its unpleasant odor. It is far better to acquire beauty than to be born with it.

No wise person will marry for beauty mainly. It may exercise a powerful attraction in the first place, but it is found to be of comparatively little consequence afterward. To marry a handsome figure without character, fine features unbeautified by sentiment or good nature, is the most deplorable of mistakes. As even the finest landscape, seen daily, becomes monotonous, so does the most beautiful face, unless a beautiful nature shines through it. The beauty of today becomes commonplace tomorrow. Whereas goodness, displayed through the most ordinary features, is perennially lovely. This kind of beauty improves with age, and time ripens rather than destroys it.

A man should never be too precisely analytical of a woman.

Women are sensitive instruments through which men blow their emotions.

Silence is often the best ornament of a woman.

On Education

I consider ignorance the primary enemy of mankind.

The human mind is not only self-destructive but naturally stupid. Self-ignorance is its normal condition.

The worst fool in the world is the man who will admit nothing that he cannot see or feel or taste, who has no place for imagination or vision or faith.

The secret of life, even from a physical basis, is to learn the laws of the world and submit to them willingly and cheerfully. To make the best of them is the way to make the most of them.

Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, results in practical wisdom. Indeed, goodness in a measure implies wisdom -- the highest wisdom.

Man is capable of various kinds of education. He is possessed of physical, social, religious, intellectual, and moral capabilities. Each requires education. The education of all makes him complete; the education of part only leaves him deficient.

The educated man is the man who can do something, and the quality of his work marks the degree of his education.

The best investment a young man can make is in good books, the study of which broadens the mind, and the facts of which equip him the better for his life calling. But books are not valuable only because of the available information they give -- when they do not instruct, they elevate and refine.

A good book is often the best urn of a life, enshrining the best thoughts of which that life was capable. For the world of a man's life is, for the most part, the world of his thoughts. The best books are treasuries of good words and golden thoughts, which, remembered and cherished, become our companions and comforters.

Contact with others is requisite to enable a man to know himself. It is only by mixing freely in the world that one can form a proper estimate of his own capacity.

There is no company so bad out of which a man may not learn something to make himself better.

I regard the home as the most influential school of civilization.

Home is the first and most important school of character. It is there that every civilized being receives his best moral training, or his worst.

Law itself is but the reflex of homes. The tiniest bits of opinion sown into the minds of children in private life afterward go forth into the world, and become its public opinion. Nations are gathered out of nurseries, and they who hold the leading strings of children may even exercise a greater power than those who wield the reins of government.

The materials of wisdom are often before our face, while our foolish eyes look away to the ends of the earth.

To know and love nature is a simpler and higher thing than to know the geology of the rocks and the chemistry of the trees.

On Achieving Success

We cannot travel every path. Success must be won along one line. We must make our business the one life purpose to which every other must be subordinate.

I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly; if it be wrong, leave it undone.

The men of history were not perpetually looking into the mirror to make sure of their own size. Absorbed in their work they did it. They did it so well that the wondering world saw them to be great, and labeled them accordingly.

To live with a high ideal is a successful life. It is not what one does, but what one tries to do, that makes a man strong.

"Eternal vigilance," it has been said, "is the price of liberty." With equal truth it may be said, "Unceasing effort is the price of success." If we do not work with our might, others will; and they will outstrip us in the race, and pluck the prize from our grasp.

Success grows less and less dependent on luck and chance.

Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures.

The great and indispensable help to success is character. Character is crystallized habit, the result of training and conviction. Every character is influenced by heredity, environment and education. But these apart, if every man were not to a great extent the architect of his own character, he would be a fatalist, an irresponsible creature of circumstances.

Instead of saying that man is a creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks, until the architect can make them something else.

Earnestness, seriousness and conviction -- those are the great instruments of persuasion.

The secret of wisdom, power and knowledge is humility. The secret of influence is simplicity.

The true way to gain much is never to desire to gain too much.

Wise men don't care for what they can't have.

I like the story of Alexander the Great, when upon his deathbed, commanded that when he was carried forth to his grave his hands should not be wrapped, as was usual, in cloths, but should be left outside the coffin, that all men might see them, and might see that they were empty.

On Happiness

I have never been basically pessimistic, although I have appeared so to some readers.

I have taken life so seriously as to be disposed to optimism.

Pessimism is a waste of force -- the penalty of one who doesn't know how to live.

Happiness is in action, and every power is intended for action.

It is a good policy to strike while the iron is hot. It is better still to make the iron hot by striking.

I have always found that it's more painful to do nothing than something.

Of all the virtues, cheerfulness and enthusiasm are the most profitable.

Enthusiasm flourishes more often in adversity than it does in prosperity.

Contentment grows out of an inward superiority to our surroundings.

A good rule to live by: one day at a time.

We fall into the mistake of supposing that to look forward must mean to look anxiously forward. It is just as easy to look forward with hope as with sadness.

Since few large pleasures are lent us on a long lease, we ought to cultivate a large undergrowth of small pleasures.

The source of nearly all the evil and unhappiness of this world is selfishness. We know it; but we still keep on being selfish.

We are shallow Judges of the happiness or misery of others, if we estimate it by any marks that distinguish them from ourselves.

Fame without happiness is but a sorry joke at best.

The unhappy are always wrong.

On Living With Honor

It is desirable to have a good reputation. The good opinion of our associates and acquaintances is not to be despised. But every man should see to it that the reputation is deserved, otherwise his life is false, and sooner or later he will stand discovered before the world.

There is often a great distinction between character and reputation. Reputation is what the world believes us for the time; character is what we truly are. Reputation and character may be in harmony, but they frequently are as opposite as light and darkness. Many a scoundrel has had a reputation for nobility, and men of the noblest characters have had reputations that relegated them to the ranks of the depraved.

A man's real character will always be more visible in his home than anywhere else. And his practical wisdom will be better exhibited by the manner in which he rules there than even in the larger affairs of business or public life. His whole mind may be in his business; but if he would be happy, his whole heart must be in his home. It is there that his genuine qualities display themselves. It is there that he shows his truthfulness, his love, his sympathy, his consideration for others, his uprightness, his manliness -- in a word, his character.

The best equipment a young man can have for the battle of life is a conscience, common sense and good health.

There is no friend so good as a good conscience. There is no enemy so dangerous as a bad conscience. It makes us either kings or slaves.

Conscience is a clock which in one man strikes aloud and gives warning; in another the hand points silently to the figure, but doesn't strike.

What we call common sense is, for the most part, the result of common experience wisely improved. Nor is great ability necessary to acquire it so much as patience, accuracy and watchfulness.

Good health is quite as much dependent on mental as on physical habits. Worry, sensitiveness and temper have hastened many an otherwise splendid man to his grave.

It is as unhealthy and demoralizing to live in the company and atmosphere of one's unhealthy, morbid, selfish thoughts, as to live in the presence of depraved people.

The untiring search for personal pleasure is selfishness in action. Self-exaggeration, egotism, pride, self-righteousness, self-justification and mock modesty are but branches of the tree of selfishness, whose roots run in all directions, crossing, recrossing and intertwining one another in the clay soil of personal self. Jealousy is the most insane phase of human selfishness. It is born of a selfish fear of loss or of being personally displaced by something or somebody.

Anger is a short madness. There is in it envy and scorn, fear and sorrow, pride and prejudice, rashness and inconsideration, rejoicing in evil, and a desire to inflict it.

Ambition destroys the pleasures of the present in ardent aspirations after an imaginative future.

Contempt is an innocent revenge. Violence is the fullest expression of it.

Anxiety is the poison of human life. It is the parent of many miseries.

Avarice isolates men from the universe and shuts the soul up in its own dark self.

A Strong temper is not necessarily a bad temper. But the stronger the temper, the greater is the need of self-discipline and self-control.

We are rich as we give; we live in proportion to the unselfishness of our love, and we become poor in the ratio that we indulge habits of self-centered interest and personal gain.

A right act strikes a chord that extends through the whole universe.

One who loves right cannot be indifferent to wrong, or wrongdoing. If he feels warmly, he will speak warmly, out of the fullness of his heart. We have to be on our guard against impatient scorn. The best people are apt to have their impatient side, and often the very temper which makes men earnest, makes them also intolerant. Of all mental gifts, the rarest is intellectual patience; and the last lesson of culture is to believe in difficulties which are invisible to ourselves.

The only ultimate obligation upon any man is that of honest and earnest seeking for the truth.

On Prejudice

Prejudice is a despotic, ignorant, mental slaveholder. It prejudges and pronounces sentences without evidence, judge or jury. We ought to run away from it, for it is a false witness, stupid, dishonest and shortsighted. It separates friends, impedes human progress, befriends bad institutions, obstructs good causes, perpetuates the enslavement of body and mind, and wars against the best interests of mankind.

On Death

The shadow leaves no track behind it. And of the greatest persons of the world, when they are once dead, then there remains no more than if they had never lived.

What is it to die? Is it to drop the body of this death, and to put on an immortality? To pass from darkness to everlasting sunlight? To cease dreaming, and begin a waking existence? Is it to go home to God?

It was a saying of Milton that, "Who best can suffer, best can do." The work of many of the greatest men, inspired by duty, has been done amidst suffering and trial and difficulty. They have struggled against the tide and reached the shore exhausted, only to grasp the sand and expire. They have done their duty and been content to die. But death has no power over such men; their hallowed memories still survive to soothe us.

On faith and the future

Courage is only another name for faith.

We walk by faith oftener than by sight. The major part of daily living is made up of things in action, subdividing itself into what is termed confidence, conviction, trust, optimism, hope and courage. The first movement in mental action is invariably one of faith.

The vitality of faith is unique, and its power beyond human estimate.

As a weak leg grows stronger by exercise, so will your faith be strengthened by the very effort you make in stretching it out toward things unseen.

We are just in the dawn of new things. We can only imagine the revelations that succeeding generations and ages are to enjoy. As the knowledge of our time surpasses that of all preceding times, so will the knowledge of the future ages surpass that of our own.

We are living in the morning of an epoch, and in the fog of the early dawn men walk confused and see strange sights; but the fog will melt under the rays of the very sun which has created it, and the world of truth will be seen to be solid and lovely again.

All the glory of life, all the romance of living, all the deep and true joys of the world, all the splendor and the mystery are within our reach.