Words to live by, other anecdotes

Local columnist

link Wendel Sloan

My book-of-the-month summary for March is “Words to Live By.” Edited by William Nichols, the 1947 work contains essays of wisdom by the famous and obscure.

Here are excerpts:

• “The quickest way to correct the other fellow’s attitude is to correct your own.”— King Vidor

• “Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.”— Oliver Wendell Holmes

• “Mature people are made out of bad times.”— Hyman Judah Schachte

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• “Life is no straight and easy corridor along which we travel free and unhampered, but a maze of passages through which we must seek our way.” — A. J. Cronin

• “Most of the world’s work is done by people who aren’t feeling very well.” — Frederick Allen

• “Great rewards await men and women who can change the pattern of their thinking to meet new conditions or challenges.” — Smiley Blanton

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• “I have never discovered a genius who spoke of talent or inspiration — only brutal work.” — Wilfred Funk

• “Do good and disappear.” — Kathryn Hulme

• “We must seek to understand those ignorant of what we know, yet wise in their own ways.” — Donald Peattie

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• “What the world demands of us is more important than what we feel entitled to demand of it.” — Bruce Catton

• “The hopeless misfit can be transformed into a hopeful and helpful person by the simplest display of interest and belief in them.” — Maxwell Maltz

• “Behind every stranger’s eyes there is a life as mysterious and complicated as your own.” — Clifton Fadiman

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• “The deepest need of humans is to leave the prison of their aloneness.” — Erich Fromm

• “If we find nothing of interest where we are, we will find nothing of interest where we wish to go.” — Edwin Teale

• “I shall be true — for there are those who trust me.” — Chinese Proverb

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• “Bernard Berenson, over ninety, wanted to stand on a street corner begging idle passersby for the hours and minutes they were wasting.” — Lincoln Schuster

• “I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life — it goes on.” — Robert Frost

• “Please walk in my shoes before tongue-lashing my soul.” — Chef Juandel

Contact Wendel Sloan at [email protected]