"Mental Efficiency And Other Hints to Men and Women"

I would supply the seething crowd with what they desired in the way of bodily refreshment (except spirits -- I would draw the line at poisons), and having got them and myself into a nice amiable expansive frame of mind, I would thus address them -- of course in ringing eloquence that John Bright might have envied:

Men and women (I would say), companions in the universal pastime of hiding one's head in the sand, -- I am about to impart to you the very essence of human wisdom. It is not abstract.

It is a principle of daily application, affecting the daily round in its entirety, from the strap hanging on the District Railway in the morning to the strap hanging on the District Railway the next morning.

Beware of hope, and beware of ambition! Each is excellently tonic, like German competition, in moderation.

But all of you are suffering from self-indulgence in the first, and very many of you are ruining your constitutions with the second. Be it known unto you, my dear men and women, that existence rightly considered is a fair compromise between two instincts-- the instinct of hoping one day to live, and the instinct to live here and now.

In most of you the first instinct has simply got the other by the throat and is throttling it. Prepare to live by all means, but for heaven's sake do not forget to live. You will never have a better chance than you have at present. You may think you will have, but you are mistaken. Pardon this bluntness.

Surely you are not so naive as to imagine that the road on the other side of that hill there is more beautiful than the piece you are now traversing! Hopes are never realized; for in the act of realization they become something else.

Ambitions may be attained, but ambitions attained are rather like burnt coal, ninety percent, of the heat generated has gone up chimney instead of into the room. Nevertheless, indulge in hopes and ambitions, which, though deceiving, are agreeable deceptions; let them cheat you a little, a lot. But do not let them cheat you too much.

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