1.ADVICETOYOUNGPEOPLE.doc

1. ADVICE TO YOUNG PEOPLE Ernest Hemingway Young men and young women come to me for advice. I try to be generous and kind-hearted about my advice. Good advice sometimes comes too late. We do not find the deep truths of life; they find us. On Achieving Success We cannot travel every path. Success must be won along one line. We must make our business the one life purpose to which every other must be subordinate. I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly, if it be wrong, leave it undone. The men of history were not perpetually looking into the mirror to make sure of their own size. Absorbed in their work they did it. They did it so well that the wondering world saw them to be great, and labeled them accordingly. To live with a high ideal is a successful life. It is not what one does, but what one tries to do, that makes a man strong. Eternal vigilance, it has been said, is the price of liberty. With equal truth it may be said, Unceasing effort is the price of success. If we do not work with our might, others will; and they will outstrip us in the race, and pluck the prize from our grasp. Success grows less and less dependent on luck and chance. Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. The great and indispensable help to success is character. Character is crystallized habit, the result of training and conviction. Every character is influenced by heredity, environment and education. But these apart, if every man were not to a great extent the architect of his own character, he would be a fatalist, an irresponsible creature of circumstances. Instead of saying that man is a creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks, until the architect can make them somet