you can control yourself, and I'll say you're an educated man;
and, without this, all other education is good for next to nothing."

The wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical and
furious spirit. At one time, having vented all the reproaches upon
Socrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door.
His calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more;
and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vessel
upon his head, at which he only laughed and said that "so much thunder
must needs produce a shower." Alcibiades his friend, talking with him
about his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such an
everlasting scold in the same house with him. He replied, "I have so
accustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than the
noise of carriages in the street."

How many men have in their chain of character one weak link. They may
be weak in the link of truthfulness, politeness, trustworthiness,
temper, chastity, temperance, courage, industry, or may have some other
weakness which wrecks their success and thwarts a life's endeavor. He
who would succeed must hold all his faculties under perfect control;
they must be disciplined, drilled, until they obey the will.

Think of a young man just starting out in life to conquer the world
being at the mercy of his own appetites and passions! He cannot stand
up and look the world in the face when he is the slave of what should
be his own servants. He cannot lead who is led. There is nothing
which gives certainty and direction to the life of a man who is not his
own master. If he has mastered all but one appetite, passion, or
weakness, he is still a slave; it is the weakest point that measures
the strength of character.

Seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "we
should every night call ourselves to account. What infirmity have I
mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what
virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our
vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the
shrift." If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control
your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master.

Five words cost Zacharias forty weeks' silence. There is many a man
whose tongue might govern multitudes if he could only govern his
tongue. Anger, like too much wine, hides us fro