If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I'll tell you what you are.

Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide. . . . Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

Look your audience straight in the eyes, and begin to talk as if every one of them owed you money.

An effective speaker knows that the success or failure of his talk is not for him to decide - it will be decided in the minds and hearts of his hearers.

Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you? Why not let him save face? He didn't ask for your opinion. He didn't want it. Why argue with him? You can't win an argument, because if you lose, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior, you hurt his pride, insult his intelligence, his judgment, and his self-respect, and he'll resent your triumph. That will make him strike back, but it will never make him want to change his mind. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.

Everyone should have a deep-seated interest or hobby to enrich his mind, add zest to living, and perhaps, depending upon what it is, result in a service to his country.

The thing is to get the work done.