---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 5
number: 2
published: 1901-12
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Notes," *Improvement Era* 5, no. 2 (December 1901): 152.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0502unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera0502unse
start_page: 152
end_page: 152
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1901-12)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0502unse
  publication_year: 1901
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1901, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Notes

<!-- page:152 -->

— — —

NOTES.

Irresolution in the schemes of life which offer themselves to our"
choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes of all
our unhappiness. Addison.

I can hardly understand how any great imaginative man who has
deeply lived, suffered, thought, and wrought can doubt of the soul's con-
tinuous progress in after life. Alfred Tennyson.

During a long life I have proved that not one kind word ever spoken,
not one kind deed ever done, but sooner or later returns to bless the
giver, and becomes a chain, binding men with golden bands to the throne
of God. Lord Shaftesbury.

Of old, men traced Caesar's march through Gaul by the villages he
destroyed, and the fields he devastated; but we trace the heroes' progress
through the centuries by the wastes that have become gardens and the
deserts that now are Edens.— Hillis.

"The mainstay of civilization," said Gladstone, "is a living faith in a
personal God. After sixty years of public life, I hold more strongly than
ever to this conviction, deepened and strengthened by long experience by
the reality, the nearness and the personality of God."

The way to find opportunities is to perform every task you under-
take so thoroughly and so faithfully that you will attract the attention
of your employer. If you do this, you will not be likely to remain long
in obscurity. Even if you are not recognized immediately and advanced,
it is the most rapid road to promotion.

An achievement to be proud of is that which carries immortality with
it. No success is worthy the name which does not include character
development. If a career has not an upward as well as an onward ten-
dency, if a man has groveled in the mire, he is a failure though he have
millions. That only is real success which aspires, which looks up, and
which helps others to look up as well.