"In the conquest of any weakness in our mental or moral make-up; in the attainment of any strength; in our highest and truest relation to ourselves and to the world, let us ever make “love” our watchword, not mere “duty.” If we desire to live a life of truth and honesty, to make our word …
Tag: greg hake
Fly the Airplane
Hutchinson's Law: If a situation requires undivided attention, it will occur simultaneously with a compelling distraction. Pilots face the interesting challenge if navigating in a third dimension, often at double, triple or more the speed of any other mode of transportation. As with driving a car, catching a ball or starting a new business, distractions …
Determinism and Free Will
"Again, if all motion is always one long chain, and new motion arises out of the old in order invariable, and if the first-beginnings do not make by swerving a beginning of motion such as to break the decrees of fate, that cause may not follow cause from infinity, whence comes this freedom ('libera') in …
The Red Tape of Duty II
"Duty is a hard, mechanical process for making men do things that love would make easy. It is a poor understudy to love. It is not a high enough motive with which to inspire humanity. Duty is the body to which love is the soul. Love, in the divine alchemy of life, transmutes all duties …
The Red Tape of Duty I
"Duty is the most over-lauded word in the whole vocabulary of life. Duty is the cold, bare anatomy of righteousness. Duty looks at life as a debt to be paid; love sees life as a debt to be collected. Duty is ever paying assessments; love is constantly counting its premiums. Duty is forced, like a …
The Crimes of the Tongue II
"The man who stands above his fellows must expect to be the target for the envious arrows of their inferiority. It is part of the price he must pay for his advance. One of the most detestable characters in all literature is Iago. Envious of the promotion of Cassio above his head, he hated Othello. …
The Crimes of the Tongue
"The second most deadly instrument of destruction is the dynamite gun [Editor's Note: this was written before the atomic bomb was invented though the point is still valid],—the first is the human tongue. The gun merely kills bodies; the tongue kills reputations and, ofttimes, ruins characters. Each gun works alone; each loaded tongue has a …
The Kingship of Self-Control IV
“The individual can attain self-control in great things only through self-control in little things. He must study himself to discover what is the weak point in his armor, what is the element within him that ever keeps him from his fullest success. This is the characteristic upon which he should begin his exercise in self-control. …
The Kingship of Self-Control III
"Any man may attain self-control if he only will. He must not expect to gain it save by long continued payment of price, in small progressive expenditures of energy. Nature is a thorough believer in the installment plan in her relations with the individual. No man is so poor that he cannot begin to pay …
The Kingship of Self-Control II
"Every step in the progress of the world has been a new “control.” It has been escaping from the tyranny of a fact, to the understanding and mastery of that fact. For ages man looked in terror at the lightning flash; today he has begun to understand it as electricity, a force he has mastered …