Some Parkhurst Epigrams

Nobody ever drifta up-stream. Running water uever stops till it gets to the bottom, unless somotliinjr dams it. Likewise i drifting boat never stops tï 11 it reaches the sea, unless it founders, runs aground or drops anchor. AVe are all loaded with responsiveness and harnessed up with gravitations. Everything is maguetic neeclle, and everything else magnetic pole endlessly plucking at that needie. Life without this arrangement would be death, hut life with it is all the time on the edge of disaster 'and oontinually getting over the edge. There are a great many meaningless men in the comnnmity, and what that means ia that while they have the intelligence tojunderatand an idea, and the lieart to feel it, vet the idea never gets so closeto them as to have its reality tremendously experienced by them. We do not win our strength and stability by mastering ideas, hut by being mastered by them, held in their grip. One of the most expensive and disastrous mistakes a young man ever makes is in supposing that a decisión, a resolution, contains in itself the means of working its ovvn execution, and that something besides power will suffice to overeóme power. The art of living is not a matter of resolution, but it is a genius for playing off successfullv favorable energies agafnst those which are adverse, meeting energies with energies, only with energies that are a little bigger. One needs to be a great man in order to be able to beconie a great wreek. It requires a great deal more counter energy to recover a rowboat that is sliding down the Xiagara rapids tlian it does to recover a cockleshell.