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Humility

San Diego minister Mark Trotter tells of the time when he and his wife and several others spent an informal evening with Robert Frost.   Trotter was impressed by the great poet’s humility.   Frost had no airs about him.   No pretense.   Every reference to himself was self-effacing: “I am a Vermont farmer.”   Trotter then recalls how Archibald MacLeish, another great poet, once introduced Robert Frost.   He put it like this: “No matter what happens to him, Robert Frost always come out of it a little more like himself.”   -from “A Little More Like Himself” This ought to be the aim of every human being.

Trust Yourself

Edmund Spenser was once commissioned by the Queen of England to write a song for her. The treasurer, being totally ignorant of this man’s talent, challenged the one hundred pound fee for the poet, asked, “What?   All this for a song?” The queen then replied, “Then give him what is reasonable.” Disappointed, Spenser wrote to Queen Elizabeth the following: I was promised on a time To have reason for my rhyme. From that time, unto this season, I received not rhyme, nor reason. Sharply reproving the Treasurer, the queen ordered the payment of one hundred pounds.” - Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes When you know something to be true, do not be swayed.