The Egotist (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: its highest chambers, tremble and totter as if under the weight of years, from a too intense desire to provide these means of age's power. . . . No indifference, assumed or real, can last. A man cannot sleep through life ? he must awake; want will awake him. He will awake to see the returning toiler, and to know that the day has gone. There are those who take but little hold on life. They are indifferent to its offerings; they value them but little. They never seem to be interested in anything. They live among men, yet seem not to be of them. Sometimes they feel more interest than they appear to. An over-sensitiveness has led them to assume a mask of indifference as a defence. But by wearing that mask, their natures are moulded to fit it. By striving to appear indifferent, they become so. A man will grow to the character he assumes. If you do not wish to creep along shore, but would stand out in the open sea, you must seize the rope which hoists your sails with no weak, hesitating hands. This world is not for feeble men; they have no place in it; they live by sufferance only. Live your own life. Do not seek to live the life of another. Live it in your own way. Let it be an original, not a copy. If God had intended that your life should be the copy of another man's life, he would have made your face a copy of some other chapter{Section 4man's face. No two faces ever were alike; no two faces ever will be alike. Let not authority, let not fashion, let no man dictate how you shall live. Be happy in your own way, for in that way alone can you be happy. You can trace misery from copy, not happiness. Your feet would be as comfortable in another man's shoes as your life in his methods and habits. Your shoes must be made for your feet, if you would walk with ease. Your ways, your me...