GLEANINGS by Adelaide de Yarmond

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 24, 1879

GLEANINGS

By Adelaide de Yarmond

WIND will extinguish a small fire, but increase a large one. Opposition will stop the influence of a slight effort, but increase the influence of a firm effort.

Our conversation is often as though we believed our words to be the seed that falls on stony ground, where it would have no depth of root; but if we could know the “depth of root” which our words do take, we surely would guard our conversation more closely. I had quoted to me, a few days ago, words which I had spoken a year before, and which had taken deep root in fertile soil; but I had spoken lightly, without a thought of the words after they were uttered.

What seems a cross will prove a crown.

So construct your sentences that the removal of any word would either destroy the meaning, or make the sentence inelegant. This would do away with full one-half the number of words, and give your remarks power, durability, and pleasantness,—all attributes of conciseness. Good thoughts are gladly received; but words are too common that even their fluent use should give a speaker power. The writings which have lasted for centuries are of only the words necessary to convey the thoughts. “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”

“A magnet does not lose power by inducing magnetism: it rather gains strength by the reflex action of the new magnet.” It is as true that we lose no strength by giving aid to others; no wisdom, by imparting instruction; no joy, by imparting pleasure; no courage, by giving encouragement to those dispirited: but, instead, as others have received of us, they impart the same again to us, doubling our portion but not diminishing their own. The exercise of any power is necessary to the enjoyment of that power.

Get good books, and you will not be troubled by borrowers.

We forget the labor, in thinking of the object for which we are laboring; and the pleasure we have in our work depends upon the nobleness of the object.

Have we ever neglected a duty, until it has been given to willing hands to do, while we were left without the labor, and without the blessed reward which the Master continually gives to those who serve him? “Why stand ye here all the day idle?” “He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal.”

All that is true in science or in nature is true in life.

To the idle the time seems long; to the active it seems short.

Formal or commonplace conversation bears the same resemblance to real, earnest talk, that wax or wooden imitations bear to the real, ripe fruit.

“Are we steering or drifting?”

Pearls do not float on the surface; and, in the Word of Truth, if we would find the treasures, we must seek deep.

It was in answer to prayer that Solomon obtained his wisdom.

ADELAIDE DE YARMOND.