Here you will learn Boost Self Confidence, Confidence Self Help, Improve Self Confidence
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Chapter V
SOURCES OP INSPIRATION
The masterful thoughts of great minds are ours for the asking. A mans intent
upon developing his self-confidence will read the biographies of such men as
Caesar, Napoleon, Wellington, Milton, Goethe, Macaulay, Mozart, Wilberforce,
Tennyson, Ruskin, Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln, and Phillips Brooks.
It develops a man's self-confidence to study biography and to know what other
men have done in the face of difficulty and discouragement. When he reads what
they have done, he has a burning desire to go and do likewise. Just as "we
recognize in a work of genius our own rejected thoughts," so we often see
ourselves in the pages of a great book. Who could fail to be inspired by such a
description of unaffected self-confidence as this of Washington:
"No nobler figure ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life. Washington was
grave and courteous in address: his manners were simple and unpretentious; his
silence and the serene calmness of his temper spoke of a perfect self-mastery;
but there was little in his outer bearing to reveal the grandeur of soul which
lifts his figure, with all the simple majesty of an ancient statue, out of the
smaller passions, the meaner impulses of the world around him. ... It was only
as the weary fight went on that the colonists learned little by little the
greatness of their leader--his clear judgment, his heroic endurance, his silence
under difficulties, his calmness in the hour of danger or defeat, the patience
with which he waited, the quickness and hardness with which he struck, the lofty
and serene sense of duty that never swerved from its task through resentment or
jealousy, that never through war or peace felt the touch of a mean ambition,
that knew no aim save that of guarding the freedom of his fellow countrymen, and
no personal longing save that of returning to his own fireside when their
freedom was secured."
It was Correggio who, after looking at the work of Michelangelo, exclaimed, "And
I, too, am a painter!" By closely observing the lives of great men, we assume
some of their great qualities. They embody the wisdom of their time, and pass it
on to us as our heritage. "I am a part of every man I have met," said a
sympathetic writer, and one might as truthfully say, "I am part of all I have
read.'' Channing well says:
"It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and
these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best
books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their
souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant
and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are
the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society,
the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor
I am, no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure
dwelling. If the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my
roof; if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and
Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the
human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not
pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man
though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live."
The student of self-confidence should choose his books as carefully as he does
his personal friends. Books are our intimate companions, with the unusual
privilege of setting them down or taking them up at will. It is not worth while
to spend any time over a book that does not cause the reader to raise from it a
better man. "Youth is a prophesy, and old age a history, '' but great books
never grow old and are ours to command and serve at will.
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