John
Passmore
Edwards
1823-1911
A FEW FOOTPRINTS
The Autobiography of John Passmore Edwards
What some sages say
| In promoting institutional activities I only practised what many of the wisest men of different ages and nations taught. Listen to what some of these sages say! Lord Bacon says: "Seek not proud riches, but. such as thou mayest get justly, distribute cheerfully and leave contentedly." Goethe says: "Do not wait for extraordinary opportunities for good actions, but make use of common situations. Hold fast by the present. Every situation-nay, every moment-is of infinite value, as it is representative of eternity." Socrates says: "Employ your time in improving yourselves by other men's writings, so that you may easily get what others laboured hard to obtain; prefer knowledge to wealth, for the one is transitory and the other is perpetual." |
| Addison says: "What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul. The saint, the philosopher, and the hero, the wise, the good, and great man, may often be hid in the plebeian which a proper education might have disinterred and brought to light." Ernest Renan says: "There is nothing lost; that which makes for the good of the most unknown of virtuous men counts more in the eternal balance than the most insolent triumphs of error and evil." Pascal says: "Not only are individuals making advance in the arts, sciences, and morality, but all mankind are making continual progress in proportion as the universe grows older, so that the human race may be considered as one man who never ceases to live and learn." |
| Emerson says: "If you tell me there is always life worth living, that what man has done man can do, and that man is provided with a key to nature, I am invigorated, put into genial working temper, and full of goodwill and gratitude to the cause of causes." Seneca says: "He that does good to another man does good to himself, not only in the consequence, but in the act of doing it, for the consciousness of well-doing is its own reward." |
| John Bright says: "Every working man in England is now a ruler of men and a joint ruler of many nations." Aristotle says: "Education's noblest end and aim is to make useful and good citizens, to secure happiness from worthy lives, to lead to the perfection of man's social nature, and to encourage deeds which dignify and adorn a country." |
| James Martineau says: "What we do for the special benefit of ourselves perishes with us, but what we disinterestedly do for {he benefit of others exists for ever." Thomas Carlyle says: "This universe has its laws. If we walk according to the law and the Law-maker, He will befriend us. If not, not." |
| Wordsworth says |
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Thou hast
Powers that will work for Thee: air, earth, and sky; There is not a breathing of the common wind That will forget Thee. Thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind. |
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