Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Be cheerful by Arthur Helps


Be cheerful
Arthur Helps

Be cheerful, no matter what reverse obstruct your pathway,
or what plagues follow you in your trail to annoy you.
Ask yourself what is to be gained by looking or feeling sad
when troubles throng around you, or how your condition is to
be alleviated by abandoning yourself to despondency.


If you are a young man, nature designed you to “be of good cheer;”
and should you find your road to fortune, fame, or respectability,
or any other boon to which your young heart aspires, a little thorny,
consider it all for the best, and that these impediments are only
thrown in your way to induce greater efforts and more patient endurance
on your part. Far better spend a whole life in diligent, aye, cheerful
and unremitting toil, though you never attain the pinnacle of your
ambitious desires, than to turn back at the first appearance of misfortune,
and allow despair to unnerve your energies, or sour your naturally sweet and cheerful disposition.


If you are of the softer, fairer portion of humanity, be cheerful;
though we know full well that most affections are sweet to you when
compared with disappointment and neglect, yet let hope banish despair
and ill forebodings. Be cheerful: do not brood over fond hopes
unrealized, until a chain, link after link, is fastened on each
thought and wound around the heart. Nature intended you to be
the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not
the travelling monument of despair and melancholy.

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