is sitting, not always
that. But then, during these three hours, I have given my whole
attention to what I was about."

"The things that are crowded out of a life are the test of that life.
Not what we would like, but what we long for and strive for with all our
might we attain."

"One great cause of failure of young men in business," says Carnegie,
"is lack of concentration. They are prone to seek outside investments.
The cause of many a surprising failure lies in so doing. Every dollar of
capital and credit, every business-thought, should be concentrated upon
the one business upon which a man has embarked. He should never scatter
his shot. It is a poor business which will not yield better returns for
increased capital than any outside investment. No man or set of men or
corporation can manage a business-man's capital as well as he can manage
it himself. The rule, 'Do not put all your eggs in one basket,' does not
apply to a man's life-work. Put all your eggs in one basket and then
watch that basket, is the true doctrine--the most valuable rule of all."

"A man must not only desire to be right," said Beecher, "he must _be_
right. You may say, 'I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion
crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and
I hope Providence will direct the ball.' Providence won't. You must do
it; and if you do not, you are a dead man."

The ruling idea of Milton's life and the key to his mental history is
his resolve to produce a great poem. Not that the aspiration in itself
is singular, for it is probably shared in by every poet in his turn. As
every clever schoolboy is destined by himself or his friends to become
Lord-Chancellor, and every private in the French army carries in his
haversack the baton of a marshal, so it is a necessary ingredient of the
dream of Parnassus that it should embody itself in a form of surpassing
brilliance. What distinguishes Milton from the crowd of youthful
literary aspirants, _audax juventa_, is his constancy of resolve. He not
only nourished through manhood the dream of youth, keeping under the
importunate instincts which carry off most ambitions in middle life into
the pursuit of place, profit, honor--the thorns which spring up and
smother the wheat--but carried out his dream in its integrity in old
age. He formed himself for this achievement and no other. Study at home,
travel abroad, the arena of political controversy, the public service,
t