Words to Live By.

 

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Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.

Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.

-Benjamin Franklin

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Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

-George Washington

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The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

-Thomas Paine

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In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

Don't worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

-Abraham Lincoln

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We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

-Barack Obama

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Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him. 

-Leo Aikman

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.  '

Believe you can and you're halfway there.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.

-Theodore Roosevelt

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Don't be afraid to see what you see.

Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.

-Ronald Reagan

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Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.

-John Adams

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Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.

If you treat people right they will treat you right... ninety percent of the time.

Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else's play.

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Message to Scouts; Excerpt from the Boy Scout Handbook (June 1, 1911)

 

A MESSAGE FROM THE CHIEF SCOUT
TO THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA:

There was once a boy who lived in a region of rough farms. He was wild with the love of the green outdoors--the trees, the tree-top singers, the wood-herbs and the live things that left their nightly tracks in the mud by his spring well. He wished so much to know them and learn about them, he would have given almost any price in his gift to know the name of this or that wonderful bird, or brilliant flower; he used to tremble with excitement and intensity of interest when some new bird was seen, or when some strange song came from the trees to thrill him with its power or vex him with its mystery, and he had a sad sense of lost opportunity when it flew away leaving him dark as ever. But he was alone and helpless, he had neither book nor friend to guide him, and he grew up with a kind of knowledge hunger in his heart that gnawed without ceasing. But this also it did: It inspired him with the hope that some day he might be the means of saving others from this sort of torment--he would aim to furnish to them what had been denied to himself.

There were other things in the green and living world that had a binding charm for him. He wanted to learn to camp out, to live again the life of his hunter grandfather who knew all the tricks of winning comfort from the relentless wilderness the foster-mother so rude to those who fear her, so kind to the stout of heart.
And he had yet another hankering--he loved the touch of romance. When he first found Fenimore Cooper's books, he drank them in as one parched might drink at a spring. He reveled in the tales of courage and heroic deeds, he gloated over records of their trailing and scouting by red man and white; he gloried in their woodcraft, and lived it all in imagination, secretly blaming the writer, a little, for praising without describing it so it could be followed. "Some day," he said, "I shall put it all down for other boys to learn."

As years went by he found that there were books about most of the things he wished to know, the stars, the birds, the quadrupeds, the fish, the insects, the plants, telling their names; their hidden power or curious ways, about the camper's life the language of signs and even some of the secrets of the trail. But they were very expensive and a whole library would be needed to cover the ground. What he wanted--what every boy wants--is a handbook giving the broad facts as one sees them in the week-end hike, the open-air life. He did not want to know the trees as a botanist, but as a forester; nor the stars as an astronomer, but as a traveler. His interest in the animals was less that of anatomist than of a hunter and camper, and his craving for light on the insects was one to be met by a popular book on bugs, rather than by a learned treatise on entomology.

So knowing the want he made many attempts to gather the simple facts together exactly to meet the need of other boys of like ideas, and finding it a mighty task he gladly enlisted the help of men who had lived and felt as he did.

Young Scouts of America that boy is writing to you now. He thought himself peculiar in those days. He knows now he was simply a normal boy with the interests and desires of all normal boys, some of them a little deeper rooted and more lasting perhaps--and all the things that he loved and wished to learn have now part in the big broad work we call Scouting.

"Scout" used to mean the one on watch for the rest. We have widened the word a little. We have made it fit the town as well as the wilderness and suited it to peace time instead of war. We have made the scout an expert in Life-craft as well as Wood-craft, for he is trained in the things of the heart as well as head and hand. Scouting we have made to cover riding, swimming, tramping, trailing, photography, first aid, camping, handicraft, loyalty, obedience, courtesy, thrift, courage, and kindness.

Do these things appeal to you? Do you love the woods?

Do you wish to learn the trees as the forester knows them? And the stars not as an astronomer, but as a traveler?

Do you wish to have all-round, well-developed muscles, not those of a great athlete, but those of a sound body that will not fail you? Would you like to be an expert camper who can always make himself comfortable out of doors, and a swimmer that fears no waters? Do you desire the knowledge to help the wounded quickly, and to make yourself cool and self-reliant in an emergency?

Do you believe in loyalty, courage, and kindness? Would you like to form habits that will surely make your success in life?

Then, whether you be farm boy or shoe clerk, newsboy or millionaire's son, your place is in our ranks, for these are the thoughts in scouting; it will help you to do better work with your pigs, your shoes, your papers, or your dollars; it will give you new pleasures in life; it will teach you so much of the outdoor world that you wish to know; and this Handbook, the work of many men, each a leader in his field, is their best effort to show you the way. This is, indeed, the book that I so longed for, in those far-off days when I wandered, heart hungry in the woods.

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON,
Chief Scout.
Headquarters Boy Scouts of America,
200 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
June 1, 1911.

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This copy of the original Boy Scout Handbook is incredibly interesting, especially in contrast to the current versions. I especially liked the section on Chivalry. Great stuff!! There is something about Boy Scouts that I really admire, and that is its dedication to bringing up quality young men who are trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind.. and on and on..

This 1911 version of the Boy Scout Handbook is a truly invaluable composition, and within its pages lies insight into the era's social climate.