The Art of Manliness is a great blog for men.  Thanks for the good work guys.

There, I found this gem from way back in 1905 about the Greatness Of Simplicity. (exerpted from the book “Self-Control, Its Kingship and Majesty” by William George Jordan)  The language is definitely old school, but the message is timeless.

“No character can be simple unless it is based on truth—unless it is lived in harmony with one’s own conscience and ideals. Simplicity is the pure white light of a life lived from within. It is destroyed by any attempt to live in harmony with public opinion.
Public opinion is a conscience owned by a syndicate,—where the individual is merely a stockholder. But the individual has a conscience of which he is sole proprietor. Adjusting his life to his own ideals is the royal road to simplicity.
Affectation is the confession of inferiority; it is an unnecessary proclamation that one is not living the life he pretends to live…”

“The longest Latin derivatives seem necessary to express the thoughts of young writers. The world’s great masters in literature can move mankind to tears, give light and life to thousands in darkness and doubt, or scourge a nation for its folly,—by words so simple as to be commonplace. But transfigured by the divinity of genius, there seems almost a miracle in words…”

“The individual can attain self-control in great things only through self-control in little things. He must study himself to discover what is the weak point in his armor, what is the element within him that ever keeps him from his fullest success.

This is the characteristic upon which he should begin his exercise in self-control. Is it selfishness, vanity, cowardice, morbidness, temper, laziness, worry, mind-wandering, lack of purpose?—whatever form human weakness assumes in the masquerade of life he must discover. He must then live each day as if his whole existence were telescoped down to the single day before him.

With no useless regret for the past, no useless worry for the future, he should live that day as if it were his only day,— the only day left for him to assert all that is best in him, the only day left for him to conquer all that is worst in him. He should master the weak element within him at each slight manifestation from moment to moment. Each moment then must be a victory for it or for him.

Will he be King, or will he be slave?—the answer rests with him.”

Would you like to read the whole book?  Good Ol’ Google scanned it for you.  Get it here. You can download it as a PDF.  You know…around the turn of the last century, it seems like a lot of timeless material was written for us to discover now.  ”It Works” by  R.H. Jarrett and many others seem to distill the great lessons of life into a fine wine of meaningful thoughts.