Keeping Up-to-Date
Write down a list of things you intend to do in spare time and don’t let a week slip away, nor a day if you can help it, without doing one of them. Each month, too, brings new interests which will be worth trying to take up.
The Ladies’ Home Journal, 1911
Rest
When we say we would like to rest forever, or that we should love to to be always busy, it is but the extravagant over-statement of a mood.
There is but one thing in this regard that we all want, and that is a due and proper alternation. The true human need is rhythm. Human torment is lack of rhythm, the continuing of anything too long.
We live in a thus-organized universe, with its night and day. And in climes where there is no change of seasons it is difficult for civilization to develop.
We crave rest only after surfeit of activity; we crave only after enough rest.
Idleness is as necessary to good work as is activity. The man who can take hold hard and to some purpose is the man who knows how to let go.
That body is strongest and fittest that can relax perfectly between efforts. That mind is likest “steel that bends and springs again.” that can dream and wander at times.
After this life I do not look to sinking into endless rest, nor to go on in ceaseless vigor: but yonder I shall tire and wake again, according to the law of all life; I shall be an endless pulsing, an endless rhythm, and not an endless note.
Frank Crane, 1913