You will grow up to be an individual whom people will like to see coming near them--an individual to whom people will go for encouragement when the hours are dark, and when everything seems to be discouraging.
Booker T. Washington
The Public Record
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, and orator. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite.
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I went at once to the vessel and asked the captain to permit me to help unload the vessel in order to get money for food.
The education that you have been getting during the last few days, you will find, as the years go by, has been of a kind that will serve you in good stead all through your lives.
The person who schools himself to see the dark side of life is likely to make a mistake, and the person who schools himself to look only upon the bright side of life, forgetting all else, also is apt to make a mistake.
Perhaps the thing that touched and pleased me most in connection with my starting for Hampton was the interest that many of the older coloured people took in the matter.
There is no more foolish person than the one who spends all he makes, and sometimes more, on dress.
But how little is the meaning of one meal, how little a thing is being inconvenienced by one meal, as compared with something that is going to be a part of you all the remainder of your lives.
What is equally important, each one of the students works half of each day at some industry, in order to get skill and the love of work, so that when he goes out from the institution he is prepared to set the people with whom he goes to…
It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.
There is one class that is schooling itself, and constantly training itself, to look upon the dark side of life; and there is another class, made up of people who are, consciously or unconsciously, constantly training themselves to look…
In thought, in talk, in action, I think you will find that you can separate life into these two divisions--the dark side and the bright side, the discouraging side and the encouraging side.
Even to this day I never see bits of paper scattered around a house or in the street that I do not want to pick them up at once.