George Schorb Quotes

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Quotes

 

"the Chinese proverb says: "The pleasure of doing good is the only one that never wears out.""

 

"Lincoln belonged to "the poor white trash." Columbus once begged for bread. Yet their minds were as calm as they were great. Mozart and his wife were so poor, and yet so cheerful, that they sometimes danced to keep warm. As we have sat among silks and jewels in a grand concert hall, and listened to the symphonies of Beethoven or the voice of Jennie Lind, how strange it was to reflect that they came from the deepest proverty! When you are borne on wings of lightning in a palace-car, and when you contemplate our marvelous railroad system, think of "the bare-legged laddie," George Stephenson, who gave us the railroad. Ah! poor father and mother, in your humble home, you may have a George Stephenson or a Jenny Lind in your little flock. Remember that He who is now called Lord of all was once a carpenter. If He had been born rich we might never have heard of Him. "He had not where to lay His head." He did not leave money enough for His burial; but He has made the whole world rich."

 

"And the object of culture will not be success in business or society, but character; not simply self-gratification, but usefulness to the world."

 

"Famine will be banished by the free transportation and distribution of food, by irrigating deserts, by making rain, and by fertilizing exhausted lands. Not only will all waste be put back into the soil, but there are in rocks and mines inexhaustible supplies of potash, phosphorus, ammonia, and nitric acid, which are the richest fertilizers."

 

"Roderick Dhu, when he declares to his Saxon lord the Highlander's vow: "To spoil the spoiler as we may, And from the robber rend the prey; The Gael, of plain and river heir, Shall, with strong hand, redeem his share.""

 

"A professor in one of our largest universities told me that he went one Sunday to hear Parsons, and while the anarchist was speaking, his baby boy toddled up to him; the father took the child in his arms, and held him for a long time while he was addressing the mob. The professor said: "I never saw anything more beautiful." Parsons was driven out of the South because he was a friend of the Negro when he came to Chicago, and befriended the slaves of capital, he was hanged. Yet let us remember that, though he attacked the abuses of the Government, still he had so much faith in the justice of the Government, and was so faithful to his friends, that he voluntarily gave himself up to the law, and asked to be tried with his comrades. He was martyr; and no martyr ever died more calmly, or had more faith in the final triumph of his cause."

 

"The world will turn a brighter page, And enter on her Golden Age, When wasting wars forever cease, And all her arts are arts of peace."

 

"I said at the outset that men, apart from business, are disposed to be kindly; indeed, the word kindness means nature."

 

"When you sit down to your table, think of the broken-down farmer and the overworked cook who raised and prepared your food; when you look at your beautiful clothes, think of the poor factory-girls and sewing-girls who made them; when you sit before your cheerful fire, think of the miners crawling like worms in the bowels of the earth; when you admire your mansion, think of the men who cut the timber, living all winter in wretched cabins and working in snow and storm; and think of the men in the quarry, who often meet death in their hard and dangerous work. Some stone in your house or church may be the tombstone of some ill-fated workman. It is strange that the people who furnish our food often go hungry, that those who give us fire are often cold, and those who give us shelter sometimes have no house of their own."

 

"Society can only be saved by being born again. Force has sometimes been of service; but it is only a secondary service. It is worse than useless without intelligence and virtue."

 

"It has been said, "You need only to prick the skin of a civilized man to find the barbarian'"

 

"Terrence said: "It is a great error to suppose that the Government is more firm when supported by force than when founded on affection."

 

"There is a Christian communism which says, 'Mine is thine;' but there is a communism of the world which says, 'Thine is mine.'"

 

"When Benjamin Franklin was a little boy, he was met one morning by a man who began to flatter him and say sweet things to him, till he got him to turn a grindstone while he ground his ax. When he was done, he said, "Clear out, you little rascal!" Franklin never forgot the lesson. In after life, when he heard any one flatter and continually declare his love for the people, he said, "He has an ax to grind.""

 

"This world is a self-regulating machine. When it goes too fast, or too far in any direction, it presses hidden springs which restore it to harmony."

 

"In 1858, Lincoln applied this thought to slavery, saying: "This nation must become all slave or all free.""

 

"And the weapons of our warfare are mighty to the pulling down of the strongholds of iniquity."

 

"We are all under the rule of gold, and not under the Golden Rule. When I say the rule of gold, I do not mean the rule of rich, but the rule of gold itself,"

 

"The vast majority of the best and wisest people come from the middle class. This, therefore, is the plane on which we all ought to live, safe from the giddy height and from the gloomy depth, safe from the dangers of wealth and from the degradation of poverty."

 

"Goldsmith says: "I have found in every land that freedom is only another name for riches."

 

"Look at the great struggles for freedom, and what do they reveal? Sir Walter Scott says, in substance, "that the feudal barons who wrung Magna Charta from King John were the most brutal tyrants. They wanted freedom themselves, but they trampled upon the peasants and burned the Jews.""

 

"Professor Swing's last sermon. In closing, he quoted from Virgil: "When the mob is throwing stones, if wisdom could appear and speak to them, they would listen and obey." Then the professor added: "We have the mob; would that we had the wisdom!'"

 

"Why not also say, "He made the good and the bad, the wise and the ignorant, and some must therefore always be ignorant , and some bad?""

 

"In other words, if under existing conditions, some will be poor, woe to him who makes them poor, or who keeps them so!"

 

"Look at our Negroes. How they rose as soon as their shackles fell! How their minds expanded, and their characters improved, even in the same generations! On the other hand, see how the Indians have been degraded by oppression."

 

"Horace happily says: "Our fortunes are like our shoes. If too small, they pinch us; if too large, they trip us.""

 

"the kingdom of peace and rest — the kingdom of which our fathers knew more than we. "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool, sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.""

 

"Such a man has lost his soul, so that he has no soul; nature, when her scorn of a slave is divinest, often flings him a bag of money, saying: 'Take that, and away — that is thy doom!'"

 

"Not Nature's harshness, man's inhuman greed, Is cause of all our wretchedness and need. — Prof. C. W. Pearson in Methodism."

 

"If the Church worships money, she will perish with her money. Josiah Strong is high authority on this point, and he declares that "if the Church persists in her present course, bowing to wealth and caste, she may go on multiplying churches, sending out missionaries, and sowing the earth with Bibles; but her destruction is sure." We need another reformation, one that is based on the Golden Rule."

 

"but to illustrate the power of party spirit, which crucifies the best men and sacrifices the country. They cry "Give us Barrabas, and crucify Christ.""

 

"The old fable tells us that the overladen ass entreated the horse to take part of her load; the proud horse kicked the ass and went his way; the ass fell with her load and died. Then the master put the burden on the horse, and laid on the dead ass besides. It is better to employ people than to support them."

 

"Lincoln said: "The Declaration of Independence is a promise to lift the burden from the shoulders of every man." Have we kept that promise? When I was a boy, I heard the Declaration read on the Fourth of July, and heard the orator declare that this is the land of the free. Yet at that time we held millions of slaves, but we did not think of that. It is well to think. Are we lifting the grievous burden from the shoulders of every man?"

 

"No, we do not want the Government to be paternal, but it should be fraternal. And that is what we claim it is. "We believe that all men are born free and equal, and have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' ' I simply ask that we stand to our colors, and practice what we preach."

 

"When Franklin was advised to take out a patent on a useful invention, that he might realize a large revenue, he replied it would be contrary to his principles; that the public should have the benefit of these things as quickly and as cheaply as possible. If you want Scriptural authority, listen to Moses: "The land shall not be sold forever, for the land is mine, saith the Lord.""

 

"Look out for the man who is always shouting patriotism; if he has no love for other countries, he cannot have much for his own, but pretends great love for a purpose. Dr. Johnson said: "Patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels." An old bachelor said to a young woman: "You are the only woman I ever loved." She replied: "If you have loved no one else in fifty years, you cannot love me." Plato and Emerson speak of patriotism as a form of egotism: too much of it is not to be admired in a nation, any more than in a person."

 

""Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," means the neighbor across the sea, as well as the neighbor across the street."

 

"as the Spanish proverb puts it: "An ass that carries you is better than a horse that throws you.""

 

"Shakespeare exclaims : " Expose thyself, to feel what wretches feel!" If we did feel it, we might have more feeling for them."

 

"No one can be truly happy till all are happy. No one can be truly free, till all are free. No one can be truly perfect till all are perfect."

 

"But I have heard of one lady who went to an asylum to select a child, and while the matron paraded before her all the captivating ones, she spied a frail little creature in a corner. She went to her, took her in her arms, and said: "This one looks as though it needed care the most." How little we think about the suffering of the world! how little we know about it!"

 

""Manners make the man," says the Scotch proverb;"

 

"The word penitentiary implies that the object of a prison is to lead men to repentance, and not merely to punish them. You may call this sentimentalism, but whenever it has been proposed to make punishment more humane, there has been some one to sneer, "Sentimentalism!" You yourself would not wish to restore the cruel punishments of the past."

 

"The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gold for a' that." — Burns."

 

"I have often been astonished, in traveling, to find how much better I was treated when I had on my best clothes than when I wore my old clothes. You may say, "The coat shows the man." But was I not the same man in either coat ?"

 

"Still our schools are very defective, both in the matter and the manner of instruction. Of the matter, I have spoken under the head of Intelligence. I will only add, that, instead of teaching this, that, and the other, merely for the sake of discipline, we can give the same discipline by studies and employments which are useful. As to the manner, we make parrots of children, teaching them to repeat things which mean nothing to them: as, for example, giving the direction of every country from every other country. Show them the countries on the map: and their relative position will be stamped on the mind. Their time is too precious for jargon. When the average child does not like school, the fault is in the school. He loves to listen to instructive talk at home. Then why would he not at school, if it were homelike?"

 

"'The honest man though a' so poor, Is king of men for a' that." — Burns. 

'My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure." — Tennyson.

"None is deformed but he that is unkind.'' — Shakespeare"

 

"Instead of teaching our children that the great virtues are not to drink, not to smoke, and not to swear, teach them that they are honesty, purity, and love."

 

"Jesus did not attack the sellers of strong drink. He denounced the men who stood in places of authority and influence, and who claimed to have the light yet kept the people in darkness."

 

"and Miss Edgeworth's motto, "Waste not, want not." But of all forms of extravagance, the worst is vice, and the remedy is virtue."

 

"All the sewage should be boxed up and sent into the country, to be put back into the soil."

 

"Nothing is more important than the work of the nurse, yet we appreciate it so little that we often intrust it to incompetent hands. Many children turn out badly, because they are brought up under such tuition. And many have no affection for their parents, because they were not nursed or taught by them."

 

"The great profits of capital during the last thirty years have made the workman dissatisfied with his small share. And the rich have not all gained their wealth by work."

 

"As Daniel Webster said : "It is imbedded in the soil, immovable as its mountains." If the people are discontented, it may be that their education has shown them the wrongs they suffer. If they are mistaken, they need more education to see their mistake. Ignorance is a kind of indolence, and the remedy for indolence is industry."

 

""For lo ! the days are hastening on By prophet bards foretold, When with the ever-circling years Comes round the age of gold ; When peace shall over all the earth It's final splendors fling And all the world send back the song Which now the angels sing." — Sears."

 

"and the love of money, which is not dying at all, but in the opinion of many business men is growing stronger every day."

 

"O men with sisters dear, O men with mothers and wives, It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives. O God, that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap."

 

"Shakespeare says: "You take my life when you do take the means by which I live/'"

 

"What does the palace know about the shovel?"

 

"They learn too late that the politician loved the fleece more than the flock. Or, as Mr. Spurgeon puts it, "It is simply a question of which set of maggots shall have the cheese. "

 

""that you cannot have justice unless you have money ?" You may reply, "You can't have anything without money." But when we pay our taxes we pay for protection. Then why can we not have it without paying fees to private lawyers, and even to public officials?"

 

"When the law will not protect men, they will not respect the law. Bad government is the worst anarchy and rebellion against it, is the truest loyalty."

 

"And does not everybody say that the Golden Rule of Chicago is, "Do others or they will do you ?" It is clear, then, that in business and government, we do not go by the Golden Rule."

 

"The age of military war as a business is passed. It is now a commercial war. It is not so bloody, but not less deadly ,destroying millions in body and soul. Slavery is gone, but Horace Greeley said: "The slavery of capital, though more refined, is not less cruel than chattel slavery.""

 

"John Wesley said : "When money comes into my hands, I throw it away, for fear it should get into my heart,""

 

"Lincoln says: "When I first went to Washington as President, I soon received a call from a Baptist preacher of my old neighborhood. He said: My Church is too poor to support my family, so I came to see whether you had a little job for me/ 'You are the very man we want/ I said; 'we are a little short of honest men here.' We found him a place in the revenue department at two thousand dollars a year, and told him we would try to give him something better soon. But he said: 'This is good enough for me. I don't want anything better.'' 'What an honest man !' I said to myself. Then the war came on, and amid the multitude of other things I quite forgot about him. Shortly before the end of my term he came into my office in broadcloth and silk hat, and said: 'I came to bid you goodbye. I have given up my office.' 'Why so?' I said. "Stay a little longer, and let us go home together.' 'I've had it long enough,' he said; 'let somebody else have a chance.' 'Honest man,' I said again. Soon after another neighbor called, who said: 'You did pretty well by the preacher.' 'O/ I replied, 'we gave him two thousand dollars a year, the best we could do for him.' 'Well,' he said, laughing, 'he got a hundred thousand out of it, and he has gone on a trip to Europe.' " A selfish system increases selfishness, the disease aggravates itself, and breaks out in luxury and extravagance, which is bad for the body, the soul, and the pocket"