Torturing a man to make him confess is a trial not of guilt, but of nerve —not of innocence, but of endurance ; it compels the weak to affirm what is false, and determines the strong to deny what is true ; it converts the criminal into the witness, the judge into the executioner, and makes a direr punishment than would follow conviction precede it.
The two most precious things on this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other. A wise man, therefore, will be more anxious to deserve a fair name than to possess it, and this will teach him so to live as not to be afraid to (s§s> Half the intellectual failures of the present day come back from a lack of definite aim and an unflinching devotion to some special pursuit. When so many interesting fields of inquiry are open it requires a Roman fortitude of mind to purposely give up all save one cr two. But this is precisely what a man must do if he menus to make his power tell in the - world. To eoneentriite is to master something eventusilly, while to. diffuse one's time ami energy is to acquire a great muss of imperfect knowledge, and tv hold superficially a multitude of disconnected facts. There is not a part of the huni.'in body, or a branch of any science, upon which one could not spend a lifetime of work, and yet leave much untouched.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AMBPA18800406.2.19
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Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 383, 6 April 1880, Page 3
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267Untitled Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 383, 6 April 1880, Page 3
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