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With the civilized person contentment is a myth. From the cradle to the grave they are forever longing and striving after something better, an indefinable something, some new object yet unattained.

William Matthews

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William Matthews
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More quotes by William Matthews

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One wellcultivated talent, deepened and enlarged, is worth 100 shallow faculties. The first law of success in this day, when so many things are clamoring for attention, is concentration-to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
William Matthews
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It is not, of course, the subject that is or isn't dull, but the quality of attention that we do or do not pay to it. Dull subjects are those we have failed.
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The petty cares, the minute anxieties, the infinite littles which go to make up the sum of human experience, like the invisible granules of powder, give the last and highest polish to a character.
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Strive for excellence in your calling, but as a subsidiary to this: Do not fail to enrich your whole capital as man. To be a giant, and not a dwarf in your profession, you must always be growing. The man that has ceased to go up intellectually has begun to go down.
William Matthews
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As frost, raised to its utmost intensity, produces the sensation of fire, so any good quality, overwrought and pushed to excess, turns into its own contrary.
William Matthews
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Be methodical if you would succeed in business, or in anything. Have a work for every moment, and mind the moment's work. Whatever your calling, master all its bearings and details, its principles, instruments and applications. Method is essential if you would get through your work easily and with economy of time.
William Matthews
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Unless a man has trained himself for his chance, the chance will only make him ridiculous.
William Matthews
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The fullest instruction, and the fullest enjoyment are never derived from books, till we have ventilated the ideas thus obtained in free and easy chat with others.
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There is a wide difference between general acquaintance and companionship. You may salute a man and exchange compliments with him daily, yet know nothing of his character, his inmost tastes arid feelings.
William Matthews
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There is one curious fact noticeable in regard to this thing called luck, which is, that while it is made responsible for any turn of affairs that we feel to be discreditable to us, it rarely has credit for an opposite state of things but, like most other faithful allies in victory, comes poorly off.
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The same disappointments in life will chasten and refine one man's spirit, embitter another's.
William Matthews
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The difficulties, hardships and trials of life, the obstacles... are positive blessings. They knit the muscles more firmly, and teach self-reliance.
William Matthews
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Talking, is a digestive process which is absolutely essential to the mental constitution of the man who devours many books.
William Matthews
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The smallest thing, well done, becomes artistic.
William Matthews
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The power of music that poetry lacks is the ability to persuade without argument.
William Matthews
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The easiest way for me to lose interests is to know too much of what I want to say before I begin.
William Matthews
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We all have two childhoods, the unhappy one and the happy one.
William Matthews
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The countenance may be rightly defined as the title page which heralds the contents of the human volume, but like other title pages, it sometimes puzzles, often misleads, and often says nothing to the purpose.
William Matthews
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Go to the desk. Stay at the desk. Thrive at the desk.
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God has so framed us as to make freedom of choice and action the very basis of all moral improvement, and all our faculties, mental and moral, resent and revolt against the idea of coercion.
William Matthews