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13. People learn how to speak, but the principal science is how and when to keep silent.
14. When you speak, your words should be better than silence. Arabic proverb.
15. The man of many words cannot avoid sin. If a word be worth a coin, silence is worth two.
If silence is meet for the wise, how much more so for the foolish. Talmud.
VII.
The Value of Restraint in Words
1. The less you say, the more work will you accomplish.
2. Wean yourself from judging others, and you will feel in your soul an increased capacity for love, you will realize a growth in life and blessedness.
3. Mohammed and Ali met once a man who thinking that Ali had injured him commenced to abuse him. For a time Ali bore this abuse patiently and in silence, but finally he could not restrain himself and gave abuse for abuse. Then Mohammed left them. When Ali rejoined Mohammed, he reproached him: "Why did you leave me alone to bear the insults of this insolent fellow?" "When this man abused you," replied Mohammed, "and you bore it in silence I saw ten angels around you and the angels reproved him. But when you began to pay him back in abuse, the angels left you, and I also walked away."
Mohammedan tradition.
4. To conceal the defect? of others and to mention
THE PATHWAY OF LIFE
that which is good in them, is a sign of love and the best means to draw to yourself the love of your neighbor.
Pious Thoughts.
S. The blessedness of the life of people is their love one for another. And an unkind word may violate love.
THOUGHT
1
L*^
THOUGHT
Even as a man can restrain himself from committing an act, if he realizes that it is evil, so can a man restrain himself from a thought which attracts him if he acknowledges it to be evil. This restraint in thought is the chief source of the strength of man, because all acts have their inception in thoughts.
I.
The Purpose of Thought
1. You can not deliver yourself from sins, errors and superstitions by a physical effort. Deliverence is possible only through an effort of thought. Only by thought can you teach yourself to be unselfish, humble and truthful. Only when a man strives in his thoughts after self-abnegation, humility and truthfulness, will he have strength to fight with sin, errors and superstitions in his deeds.
2. Though thought did not reveal to us the necessity of love—^thought could not reveal this—thought plays an important part in pointing out that which obstructs love. This very effort of thought against that which obstructs love, this very effort of thought, I repeat, is more significant, needful and precious than all other things.
3. If man did not think, he could not comprehend why he lives. And if he did not comprehend why he lives, he could not know what is good and what is evil. Therefore nothing is more precious to man than right thinking.
4. People speak of moral and religious teaching and of science as though they were two distinct guides of man. In reality, however, there is only one guide—conscience, that is the consciousness of the voice of God who dwells in us. This voice decides beyond doubt for each man what
he ought and what he ought not to do. And this voice may be sumnwned at all times from within by any man through an effort of thought.
5. If a man did not know that he could see with his eyes and for that reason refrained from opening them, he would be very pitiable indeed. Even so, nay even more is to be pitied he who does not reahze that the power to think was granted him for the purpose of calmly bearing all misfortunes. If a man is sensible, he can easily bear misfor* tunes; first because his reason tells him that all misfortunes pass away and frequently are transformed into blessings, and seccmd because with a rational man all misfortunes redound to his benefit. Yet people instead of fadng misfortunes boldly endeavor to avert them.
Is it not better to rejoice that God has given us power not to grieve over what occurs independent of our will, and to thank him that he has put our soul under subjection only to that which is in our own power, namely to our rea-90IL For he did not put our soul under subjection to our parents, nor to our brothers, nor to wealth, nor to our body, nor to death. In His mercy he put it under subjection only to that which depends on us—to our thoughts.
And we must observe these thoughts and their purity with all our strength. Epictetus.
6. When we recognize a new thought and find that it is true, it seems to us as thou^ we had known it for a lot^ time and merely remember what we already knew. All truth is already implanted in the soul of every man. Only do not choke it with falsehood, and sooner or later it will reveal itself to you.
7. It may frequently happen that a thou^t visits you which seems both true and strange and you dare not trust it. But after a while, having carefully thought over the
matter, you will see that the thought which had seemed passing strange is the simplest kind of truth, so that the moment you recognize you can never cease believing it.
8. All great truths before passing into the consciousness of man niust inevitably go through three phases; the first: "This is so absurd, it is not worth considering"; second: "This is against all morals and religion"; third: "This is so obvious it is not worth talking about."
9. When you live together with others do not forget the things which you have learned in solitude. And in solitude consider those things which you learned from companionship with others.
10. We can attain wisdom by three ways: first, by way of experience, this is the most difficult way; second, by way of imitation, this is the easiest way; and third by way of meditation, and this is the noblest way. Confucius.
U. The Life of Man и Petermined by His Thoughts
1. The fate of man, whatever it be, depends solely upon his manner of understanding bis life through his thoughts.
2. All great changes in the life of the individual and of the human race have their inception and completion in thought. A change of feelings and actions requires first of all a preceding change of thought.
3. In order to transform an evil life into a good life, it is needful first of all to try and understand why the life became so evil, and what must be done in order to make it good. Therefore in order to make life better, it is necessary first to think and then to act.
4. It would be wett if wisdom could be poured out of one man who has much into another who has little, even as
water is poured from one vessel into another until there is an equal quantity in both. But in order to be able to receive wisdcHn from another a man must first think for himself.
5. All that is truly needful to man must be obtained with laborious and constant toil. Thus do we acquire crafts and all sorts of knowledge, and even thus is acquired that which is the most needful thing in life, the art of living a good life.
In order to learn how to live right, you must first teach yourself how to think right.
6. The transition of our life from one stage to another is determined not by visible acts which we commit by our wilclass="underline" marriage, removal to another place of residence, change of profession, but by the thoughts which come to us as we walk, or in the dead of night, or as we eat, particularly by such thoughts as embrace the whole of our past, saying: "You acted wrongly, you ought to have acted differently." And all of our following acts, like slaves, serve these thou^its and obey their will, Thoreau.
7. Our habits of thought lend their peculiar hue to all things with which we come in contact. If these thoughts are false they will render false the most exalted truths. Our habits of thought form something far more substantial for us than the house we dwell in. We carry them about with us even as the snail carries the shell in which it lives.
Lucy Mallory.