A DAILY MESSAGE

Hokitika Guardian, 15 November 1928, Page 1

A DAILY MESSAGE

TRUE SUCCESS What n your conception of a successful many If this question were addressed to lilty persons. 1 have.no doubt that lorLy-five of them would reply very much in these terms: “A successful man is one who lias attained fame—wealth—or power.” Yet a man may have attained fame, wealth, and power, and not he in the true sense a successful man. .Success is not what one has, nor what one does, but what one is. Would you o;i|| a man successful who has accumulated a fortune by putting self before service —who has ground the last ounce out of his fellow-man in the making ol that fortune—to whom “sell interest ” has become a god ? Would you call a man successful, however famous, if the love instinct in his heart had withered to ashes? Would you call a man successful, however powerful, if that power were used to crush and not to bless? Would you call a man successful who had gained a world and lost a soul? Success is not necessarily accompanied by wealth, lame, or power. Their presence does not make it; their absence does not- take it away. A man may be wealthy, famous, and powerlul. and yet remain unsuccessful. And many a man may remain poor and unknown to lame who is still a successful man. Success has nothing to do with selfishness. but everything to do with sympathy; nothing; to do with taking, hut everything to do with giving: nothing to do with having, hut everything to do with being. 1 1 is just as surely success to he brave under lire, unflinching in adversity. strong under temptation, radiant, in sympathy, kindly, true, and just to friends and strangers, as it is to write a hook, or lead an army, or make a fortune. No life is successful unless it is radiant with human sympathy. No man in the world’s history was over wealthy enough, famous enough, or powerful enough, to he truly successful without it. —M J'RESTOX STANLEY.