The linnet is singing the wild wood through; The fawn's bounding footsteps skim over the dew. The butterfly flits round the blossoming tree, And the cowslip and bluebell are bent by the bee; All the creatures that dwell in the forest are gay, And why should not I be as merry as they? --MITFORD Do the duty which lies nearest thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer. --CARLYLE Live truly, and thy life shall be A great and noble creed. I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty. --HOOPER Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending.--LONGFELLOW Opinions shape ideals, and it is ideals that inspire conduct.--JOHN MORLEY You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself into one.--FROUDE Not once or twice in our fair island story The path of duty was the way to glory. --TENNYSON Know thy work and do it, and work at it like a Hercules. One monster there is in the world--an idle man.--CARLYLE Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.--EMERSON In every common hour of life, In every flame that glows, In every breath of being rife With aspiration or of strife Man feels more than he knows. --W. W. CAMPBELL Never to the bow that bends Comes the arrow that it sends; Never comes the chance that passed: That one moment was its last. Oh, fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know ere long, Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong. --H. W. LONGFELLOW Sow an act, and reap a tendency; sow a tendency, and reap a habit; sow a habit, and reap a character; sow a character, and reap a destiny.--THACKERAY The gifts that we have, heaven lends for right using, and not for ignoring, and not for abusing. It is not what he has, nor even what he does, which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.--_Journal_--AMIEL My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure. --TENNYSON