If at first you don’t succeed,

Try, try again.

Be kind and be gentle

To those who are old,

For dearer is kindness

And better than gold.

Sing, pretty birds, and build your nests,

The fields are green, the skies are clear;

Sing, pretty birds, and build your nests,

The world is glad to have you here.

If a task is once begun,

Never leave it till it’s done;

Be the labor great or small,

Do it well or not at all.

Whatever way the wind doth blow,

Some heart is glad to have it so,

So blow it east, or blow it west,

The wind that blows—that wind is best.

Dare to do right! dare to be true!

For you have a work no other can do;

Do it so bravely, so kindly, so well,

Angels will hasten the story to tell.

To do to others as I would

That they should do to me

Will make me honest, kind and good,

As children ought to be.

God make my life a little light,

Within the world to glow:

A little flame that burneth bright

Wherever I may go.

“Help one another,” the snowflakes said,

As they cuddled down in their fleecy bed,

“One of us here would not be felt,

One of us here would quickly melt;

But I’ll help you and you help me,

And then what a splendid drift there’ll be.”

By-and-by is a very bad boy,

Shun him at once and forever;

For they who travel with By-and-by

Soon come to the house of Never.

Politeness is to do and say

The kindest things in the kindest way.

And isn't it, my boy or girl,

The wisest, bravest plan,

Whatever comes, or doesn't come,

To do the best you can?

Beautiful hands are those that do

Work that is earnest, brave and true

Moment by moment, the long day through.

Kind hearts are gardens,

Kind thoughts are roots,

Kind words are blossoms,

Kind deeds are fruits;

Love is the sweet sunshine

That warms into life,

For only in darkness

Grow hatred and strife.

Be good, dear child, and let who will be clever;

Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long;

And so make life, death, and that vast forever

One grand, sweet song.

—Kingsley.

Whene’er a task is set for you

Don’t idly sit and view it,—

Nor be content to wish it done;

Begin at once and do it.

This world is not so bad a world

As some would like to make it;

Though whether good or whether bad,

Depends on how we take it.

—M. W. Beck.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

—Longfellow.

If wisdom’s ways you’d wisely seek,

Five things observe with care,—

Of whom you speak, to whom you speak,

And how, and when, and where.

Cowards are cruel, but the brave

Love mercy, and delight to save.

—Gay.

’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view

And clothes the mountain with its azure hue.

—Campbell.

Give fools their gold and knaves their power,

Let fortune’s bubble rise and fall;

Who sows a field, or trains a flower,

Or plants a tree is more than all.

—Whittier.

Our to-days and yesterdays

Are the blocks with which we build.

—Longfellow.

Errors, like straws upon the surface flow;

He who would seek for pearls must dive below.

—Dryden.

The cross, if rightly borne, shall be

No burden, but support to thee.

—Whittier.

Oh, deem it not an idle thing

A pleasant word to speak;

The face you wear, the thoughts you bring,

A heart may heal or break.

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,—

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.

One by one thy duties wait thee,

Let thy whole strength go to each;

Let no future dreams elate thee,—

Learn thou first what these can teach.

Count that day lost whose low descending sun

Views from thy hand no worthy action done.

—Robart.

Honor and shame from no condition rise;

Act well your part; there all the honor lies.

—Pope.

The heights by great men reached and kept,

Were not attained by sudden flight;

But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night.

—Longfellow.

All that’s great and good is done

Just by patient trying.

—Phoebe Cary.

No star is lost we ever once have seen:

We always may be what we might have been.

—Adelaide Proctor.

Too much of joy is sorrowful,

So cares must needs abound,

The vine that bears too many flowers

Will trail upon the ground.

—Alice Cary.

Cloud and sun together make the year;

Without some storms no rainbow could appear.

—Alice Cary.

The noblest service comes from nameless hands,

And the best servant does his work unseen.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes.

He who seeks to pluck the stars

Will lose the jewels at his feet.

—Phoebe Cary.

For he who is honest is noble,

Whatever his fortunes or birth.

—Alice Cary.

There’s never a leaf or a blade too mean

To be some happy creature’s palace.

—James Russell Lowell.

No endeavor is in vain.

Its reward is in the doing;

And the rapture of pursuing

Is the prize the vanquished gain.

—Longfellow.

Press on! if once and twice thy feet

Slip back and stumble, harder try.

—Benjamin.

Dare to do right; dare to be true;

The failings of others can never save you;

Stand by your conscience, your honor, your faith—

Stand like a hero, and battle till death!

He prayeth best who loveth best

All things, both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

—Coleridge.

Hours are golden links, God’s token,

Reaching heaven, but one by one

Take them; lest the chain be broken

Ere the pilgrimage be done.

—A. A. Proctor.

There is a lesson in each flower,

A story in each stream and bower;

On every herb on which we tread,

Are written words which, rightly read,

Will lead us from earth’s fragrant sod

To hope and holiness and God.

Oh, many a shaft at random sent,

Finds mark the archer little meant!

And many a word at random spoken,

May soothe, or wound, a heart that’s broken.

—Scott.

To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

—Shakespeare.

Be noble! and the nobleness that lies

In other men, sleeping but never dead,

Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.

—Lowell.

He fails not who makes truth his cause,

Nor bends to win the crowd’s applause,

He fails not—he who stakes his all

Upon the right and dares to fall.

—Richard Watson Gilder.

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,—act in the living Present!

Heart within and God o’erhead!

—Longfellow.

Tell me not in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

—Longfellow.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen—

The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

—Whittier.

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again;

The eternal years of God are hers;

But error, wounded, writhes with pain,

And dies among his worshippers.

—Bryant.

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies;—

Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower,—but if I could understand

What you are, root and all—and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

—Tennyson.

Without a sign his sword the brave man draws,

And asks no omen but his country’s cause.

—Pope.

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

—Shakespeare.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take up arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing, end them?

—Shakespeare.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

—Gray.

He that by the plough would thrive,

Himself must either hold or drive.

Vessels large may venture more,

But little boats should keep near shore.

What is a butterfly? at best

He’s but a caterpillar drest;

The gaudy fop’s his picture just.