William George Jordan Quotes

“A fad lives its life in a few weeks; a philosophy lives through generations and centuries; a principle, forever.”

“Conscience, as a mentor, the guide and compass of every act, leads ever to happiness. When the individual can stay alone with his or her conscience and get its approval, without knowing force or specious knowledge, then he or she begins to know what real happiness is.”

“Ingratitude is a crime more despicable than revenge, which is only returning evil for evil, while ingratitude returns evil for good.”

“Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom.”

“Gratitude is thankfulness expressed in action.”

“He who thinks all mankind is vile is a pessimist who mistakes his introspection for observation; he looks into his own heart and thinks he sees the world.”

“The man who has a certain religious belief and fears to discuss it, lest it may be proved wrong, is not loyal to his belief, he has but a coward's faithfulness to his prejudices. If he were a lover of truth, he would be willing at any moment to surrender his belief for a higher, better, and truer faith.”

“Courtship is the joyous, sunshine launching of the craft of hope; marriage is the long cruise across uncharted seas.”

“Jealousy stifles faith, which is the soul of love. It is emotional suicide. It is a peculiar form of fear which seeks constantly to discover what it does not want to find. Jealousy is the chloroform of confidence. It requires faith to keep faith, trust to retain trust, love to cherish love.”

“Plants grow most in the darkest hours preceding dawn; so do human souls. Nature always pays for a brave fight. Sometimes she pays in strengthened moral muscle, sometimes in deepened spiritual insight, sometimes in a broadening, mellowing, sweetening of the fibres of character,—but she always pays.”

“Those who wisely live within an income rarely have to face the problem of trying to live without one.”

“There are two great things that education should do for the individual—It should train his senses, and teach him to think. Education, as we know it to-day, does not truly do either; it gives the individual only a vast accumulation of facts, unclassified, undigested, and seen in no true relations. Like seeds kept in a box, they may be retained, but they do not grow.”

“When man fails he says, ‘I am as God made me;’ but when he succeeds, he proudly proclaims himself a ‘self-made man'.”

“Love, in the divine alchemy of life, transmutes all duties into privileges, all responsibilities into joys.”

“We know nothing of the trials, sorrows and temptations of those around us, of pillows wet with sobs, of the life-tragedy that may be hidden behind a smile, of the secret cares, struggles, and worries that shorten life and leave their mark in hair prematurely whitened, and a character changed and almost recreated in a few days. Let us not dare to add to the burden of another the pain of our judgment.”

“Worry is discounting possible future sorrows so that the individual may have present misery.”

“Worry is the most popular form of suicide. Worry impairs appetite, disturbs sleep, makes respiration irregular, spoils digestion, irritates disposition, warps character, weakens mind, stimulates disease, and saps bodily health. It is the real cause of death in thousands of instances where some other disease is named on the death certificate.”

“Education, in its highest sense, is conscious training of mind or body to act unconsciously. It is conscious formation of mental habits, not mere acquisition of information.”

“Every man has an atmosphere which is affecting every other.”

“Everything that is great in life is the product of slow growth; the newer, and greater, and higher, and nobler the work, the slower is its growth, the surer is its lasting success. Mushrooms attain their full power in a night; oaks require decades. A fad lives its life in a few weeks; a philosophy lives through generations and centuries.”

“Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is the warm glow of a heart at peace with itself.”

“Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil---the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.”

“Life is not something to be lived through: it is something to be lived up to. It is a privilege, not a penal servitude of so many decades on earth.”

“Nature is very un-American. Nature never hurries.”

“Self-confidence without self-reliance is as useless as a cooking recipe without food. Self-confidence sees the possibilities of the individual; self-reliance realizes them. Self-confidence sees the angel in the unhewn block of marble; self-reliance carves it out for oneself.”

“There are times when a man should be content with what he has but never with what he is.”

“Unhappiness is hunger to get; happiness is hunger to give.”

“Life is simply time given to man to learn how to live.”

“Man does not drift into goodness... the chance port of an aimless voyage. He must fight ever for his destination.”

“Life is not a competition with others. In its truest sense it is a rivalry with ourselves. We should each day seek to break the record of our yesterday. We should seek each day to live stronger, better, truer lives; each day to master some weakness of yesterday; each day to repair past follies; each day to surpass ourselves. And this is but progress.”