Sowing and Reaping : Part 1

Architects of Fate: Steps to Success and Power
by Orison Swett Marden

(Page 7 of 21)

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man sowed, that should he also reap. - Galatians.

Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sow a character, and you reap a destiny. - G. D. Boardman.

Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined. - POPE.

How use doth breed a habit in a man. - Shakespeare.

All habits gather, by unseen degrees,
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. Dryden.

Infinite good comes from good habits which must result from the common influence of example, intercourse, knowledge, and actual experience - morality taught by good morals. - PLATO.

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt till they are too strong to be broken. - Samuel Johnson.

Man is first startled by sin; then it becomes pleasing, then easy, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed. Then man is impenitent, then obstinate, then he is damned. - Jeremy Taylor.

In the great majority of things, habit is a greater plague than ever afflicted Egypt. - John Foster.

You cannot in any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will to be true if the habit of your life has been insincere. - F. W. Robertson.

The tissue of the life to be,
We weave with colors all our own;
And in the field of destiny,
We reap as we have sown. Whittier.

"Gentlemen of the jury, you will now consider your verdict," said the great lawyer, Lord Tenterden, as he roused from his lethargy a moment, and then closed his eyes forever. "Tête d'armée" (head of the army), murmured Napoleon faintly; and then, "on the wings of a tempest that raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only power that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful warrior." "Give Dayrolles a chair," said the dying Chesterfield with his old-time courtesy, and the next moment his spirit spread its wings. "Young man, keep your record clean," thrilled from the lips of John B. Gough as he sank to rise no more. What power over the mind of man is exercised by the dominant idea of his life "that parts not quite with parting breath!" It has shaped his purpose throughout his earthly career, and he passes into the Great Unknown, moving in the direction of his ideal; impelled still, amid the utter retro cession of the vital force, by all the momentum resulting from his weight of character and singleness of aim.

"Every one is the son of his own works."

"Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the ever-living, ever-working universe: it is seed-grain that cannot die."

"It is a beautiful arrangement in the mental and moral economy of our nature, that that which is performed as a duty may, by frequent repetitions, become a habit, and the habit of stern virtue, so repulsive to others, may hang around the neck like a wreath of flowers."

Cholera appeared mysteriously in Toulon, and, after a careful examination, the medical inspectors learned that the first victims were two sailors on the Montebello, a government transport, long out of service, anchored at the entrance to the port. For many years the vessel had been used for storing old, disused military equipments. Some of these had belonged to French soldiers who had died before Sebastopol. The doctors learned that the two poor sailors were seized, suddenly and mortally, a few days after displacing a pile of equipments stored deep in the hold of the Montebello. The cholera of Toulon came in a direct line from the hospital of Varna. It went to sleep, apparently gorged, on a heap of the cast-off garments of its victims, to awaken thirty years later to victorious and venomous life.

Professor Bonelli, of Turin, punctured an animal with the tooth of a rattlesnake. The head of this serpent had lain in a dry state for sixteen years exposed to the air and dust, and, moreover, had previously been preserved more than thirty years in spirits of wine. To his great astonishment an hour afterward the animal died. So habits, good or bad, that have been lost sight of for years will spring into a new life to aid or injure us at some critical moment, as kernels of wheat which had been clasped in a mummy's hand four thousand years sprang into life when planted. They only awaited moisture, heat, sunlight, and air to develop them.

In Jefferson's play, Rip Van Winkle, after he had "sworn off," at every invitation to drink said, "Well, this time don't count." True, as Professor James says, he may not have counted it, as thousands of others have not counted it, and a kind heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is in strict scientific literalness wiped out. There is a tendency in the nervous system to repeat the same mode of action at regularly recurring intervals. Dr. Combe says that all nervous diseases have a marked tendency to observe regular periods. "If we repeat any kind of mental effort at the same hour daily, we at length find ourselves entering upon it without premeditation when the time approaches."

"The great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisition, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as soon as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we would guard against the plague."

Copyright, 1895 by Orison Swett Marden.
All Rights Reserved.