Every man of us at times needs a helping hand stretched out to him; and shame to any man who will not stretch out that helping hand to his brother if that brother needs it.

You can help him up; but once up he has got to walk himself.

The only way in which you can ever really help any man is to help him to help himself.

The material counts for nothing if you do not build upon it the spiritual, if you do not build upon it the things of the soul, of the mind.

We need arms and equipment, but the best rifle ever made does not make a soldier if it has not got the right man behind it.

You may take the finest modern weapon, put it in the hands of a weakling or a coward, and a good man will beat him with a club.

If the other man is a good man too, you want a mighty good weapon, or you will get beaten.

But the weapon does not in any shape or way serve as a substitute for the spirit of the soldier.

Tactics change, weapons change, but the soul that drives a man forward to victory does not change as the ages go by.

The men of the Civil War, alike the men who wore the gray and the men who wore the blue, made a record which remains forever a heritage of honor and of glory for all this people.

They did that because they had in them the spirit which from time immemorial has made the soldiers of whom the world is proud, the spirit for the lack of which no other quality in man or in nation will atone.

We of to-day, we who, if a war should come, will have to fight under new conditions, with new arms, will win (as assuredly I believe we shall win) only because our men still have in them the spirit that made their forefathers do well in…

So you must train your children up so that in addition to having what counts for material prosperity in a State, you must have the things that tell most for greatness, the things that make for the soul of the Nation.

So in the State itself, important though it is to provide for the industrial welfare of the commonwealth, the thing that is most important is to take care of the really vital crop—the crop of citizens.

A thing that is distressing to me to see is when sometimes the man and woman who have done well in life show a curious inability to train their own children in the way that has resulted successfully for themselves.

I think that all of us know people who, because they have worked hard and triumphed, feel that somehow or other they will spare their children the acquisition of the very qualities which have made the parents triumph.

Too often you see the man, and I am sorry to say the woman, who says, “I have had to work hard; my sons and my daughters shall have an easy time.” Such a man or woman is preparing ruin for the children about whom this is said.

Of course, you want to give your children all the love possible; but it is not right to mistake folly for affection.

When you spare the child that which alone will enable it to conquer in after life, you are not giving it a blessing; you are doing it the greatest wrong in your power.

Bring up the boy and girl alike with the understanding that life is not generally soft, is not generally easy, that there will be plenty of rough times, and that what they have to show is not the spirit that avoids difficulties and…

You are proud to remember and have them remember the days of toil, of peril, of effort, the days when you had to risk life and endure every form of hardship and of labor, when you had in you the spirit that made you endure it, that made…

Surely you must not rob your sons of the right to feel in their turn the same pride that you now feel in the power to overcome difficulty, the power to work, the power of wresting triumph out of danger.

There is only one of my fellow-citizens to whom I will touch my hat quicker than to the soldier; and that is the mother, because I think she has a little harder time of it.