Four things a man must learn to doIf he would make his record true:To think without confusion clearly;To love his fellow-men sincerely;To act from honest motives purely;To trust in God and Heaven securely.
Henry van Dyke · The Poems of Henry van Dyke
Courage & motivation
“Four things a man must learn to do”
- Author
- Henry van Dyke
- Work
- The Poems of Henry van Dyke
- Year
- 1911
- Chapter / part
- Four Things
- Length
- 38 words
- Source
- Project Gutenberg eBook #16229
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. Henry van Dyke died in 1933, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1911. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
Related passages
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,If all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
OUT of the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the yearsFinds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll,I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.
Louisa May AlcottLittle Women, 1868 · Chapter Forty-Four: My Lord and Lady
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