Tact, Push, and Principle

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IY. THOROUGHNESS. DR. JOHNSON said: Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well. The observance of this rule, to a gratifying extent, has contributed to the progress of mankind in art and science. It has preserved the integrity of the human race sufficiently to make real and rapid advancement. True, half-doing is miserably common. Many men content themselves with passable work. Those, only, who possess the qualities which we emphasize in this volume, among which tact leads, are known for their thoroughness. As tact is practical wisdom, it appreciates at once the necessity of thoroughness as a condition of success. Sir Fowell Buxton wrote to his son: You are now a man, and I am persuaded that you must hold an inferior station in life, unless you resolve, that whatever you do, you will do well. Make up your mind that it is better to accomplish perfectly a very small amount of work, than to half do ten times as much. What you do know, know thoroughly. I once asked Sir Edward Sudgen the secret of his success, and he replied: I resolved when beginning to read law, to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and never to go to a second thing till I had entirely accomplished the first. Many of my competitors read as much in a day as I read in a week; but at the end of twelvemonths, my knowledge was as fresh as on the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollections. This wise counsel, reduced to practice, would make the best farmers, mechanics, merchants, artists, scholars, lawyers, physicians, clergymen, and statesmen possible. Samuel Budgett ascribed a good share of his success in the mercantile business to this law of thoroughness. He was wont to say: In whatever calling a man is found, he ought to strive to be the best in his cal...