There would be ten times as much accomplished in the world if men would heed the following words by the late H. L. Hastings:—
It is easy to make plans, easy to begin things, easy to give orders, easy, in the enthusiasm of some novelty, to launch out, tire out, and back out, leaving the grand undertakings that have been projected to come to nothing, a monument of the rashness and folly of their founders. A little, well and thoroughly and completely done, is worth many of these splendid undertakings. A hut built of rough boards and finished is worth a dozen towers which men begin to build and are not able to finish. There is no special virtue in that ambition which leads people to set things in motion, undertake twice as much as they are able to do, and fail in the middle of their undertakings, leaving everything in confusion and in peril, so that others must be drawn from their own proper work to avert disaster, and to gather up the wreckage produced by their recklessness. There are many people who are great to make plans, and are very generous with big talk, but who never accomplish what they undertake. Those people are more useful who plan cautiously, undertake what they are able to accomplish, finish one thing at a time, show some one thing built and completed, instead of a chaos of ill-adjusted plans, and enterprises undertaken but never brought to a conclusion.