Mottoes for the Blackboard

If Wisdom's ways you wisely seek,
Five things observe with care:

To whom you speak, of whom you speak,
And how, and when, and where.

A birdie with a yellow bill
Hopped upon the window sill,
Cocked his shining eye and said:

"Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head?"

-R. L. Stevenson.

Who says, "I will" to what is right,
"I won't" to what is wrong,
Although a very little child,

Is truly great and strong.

-Author not known.

Good morning, little rose bush,
I pray thee, tell me true,

To be as sweet as a sweet red rose
What must a body do?

To be as sweet as a sweet red rose,

A little girl like you

Just grows, and grows, and grows, and grows,

And that's what she must do.

In the heart of a seed
Buried deep, so deep,

A dear little plant
Lay fast asleep.

"Wake!" said the sunshine,

"And creep to the light!"

"Wake!" said the voice

Of the raindrop bright.

The little plant heard,

And it rose to see
What the wonderful

Outside world might be.

The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. -R. L. Stevenson.

All things bright and beautiful,
All things great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

-Mrs. C. F. Alexander.

Let me be a sunbeam

Everywhere I go,

Making glad and happy
Every one I know.

If a task is once begun

Never leave it till it's done;

Be the labor great or small,

Do it well or not at all.

-Author unknown.

Politeness is to do and say,

The kindest thing in the kindest way.

Swift kindnesses are best; a long delay
In kindness takes the kindness all away.

He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Then give to the world the best you have,
And the best will come back to you.

Madeline S. Bridges.

My heart leaps up when I behold
A Rainbow in the sky;

So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a Man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

-Wordsworth.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,

When duty whispers low, "Thou must,"
The youth replies, "I can.'

-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.-Emerson.

These are the best days of my life; these are my golden days.-Seton.

Keep thinking one thought ahead of the other fellow and you're bound to win out.-Jack London.

Dost thou love life? then do not squander time for that is the stuff that life is made of.-Benj. Franklin.

The year's at the Spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;

God's in his heaven

All's right with the world!

-Robert Browning.

(By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers.)

Jog on, jog on the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a;
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires a mile-a.

-A Winter's Tale.

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
-Shakespeare.

We are the mariners and God the sea;

And though we make false reckonings, and run Wide of a righteous course and are undone; Out of the depths of His love we cannot be.

All that I know

-Carey.

Of a certain star
Is, it can throw

(Like the angled spar)

Now a dart of red,

Now a dart of blue;

Till my friends have said

They would fain see, too,

My star that darts the red and the blue!

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world?

Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. -Robert Browning.

(By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers.")

In men whom men condemn as ill,
I find so much of goodness still;
In men whom men pronounce divine,
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line

Between the two, where God has not.

-Joaquin Miller.

(By permission of the author, The Whitaker & Ray Co.,

Publishers.)

O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared?
-Robert Browning.

(By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers.)

Stay not fettered in inaction,
Swiftly venture, swiftly roam,
Head and hand in glad connection,
Everywhere will be at home.
Where beneath the sun you revel,
Care with you will ne'er abide;
Room there is for all to travel,
Therefore is the world so wide.

Let those love now,

-Goethe.

Who never loved before;
Let those who always loved,
Now love the more.

Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.—(From a German inscription translated by Longfellow in Hyperion.)

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

-Tennyson.

(By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers.)

There is no death! What seems so is transition;

This life of mortal breath

Is but a suburb of the life eylsian,

Whose portal we call death.

-Longfellow.