SUCCESS!

[Krilons Resa]

only Walden.

I actually visited Walden Pond maybe 7 years ago too. It was pretty cool. I believe I posted pics here on RC of the event.

 

[NAD]

Awesome. I should search for those. I've read Walden and On Civil Disobedience. I figure if I ever take some of his advice (in earnest, not just as general thought) I'd consider that a form of success.

 

[Dick Sirloin]

I'm teaching the Transcendentalists in class right now

 

[EffigyForgotten]

Inflicting all of you're "loved ones" with AIDS or Cancer, commit a mass shooting at a school for the mentally unhealthy, blow up a building, blow your load on the face of hottest woman you had ever met, eat a cat, marry a hooker with a STD, go to the worst movie of all times remake at the movie theaters by yourself, get a dog to lick peanut butter off your balls, nuke a small village full of gay people, become a feminist, go back in time and kill every Jew that doesn't believe a person like Hitler will ever exist, eat an entire cow in 2 hours, shove the biggest dildo size at the dollar store in your ass and jump off the highest building in the world dressed as batman.

 

[Tide In Mind Out]

For me, I think it's just having a decent job that I don't dread going to, having a comfortable home, and having enough money/time to satisfy personal interests (with my cute husband by my side). So far I've just got the first out of those three, but I'm making progress. For my husband, success will be when I'm making enough professor dollars that he can just sit at home and be a "house duck."

 

[Dick Sirloin]

he went the way of the lurch and the jaykeeley.

Interesting.

One of the most enduring misattributions of a work to Emerson is that of an inspirational prose passage called “Success” that appears, most often assigned to Emerson if to anyone, on many Web pages. It goes

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.1

As Joel Myerson demonstrates in “Emerson’s ‘Success’—Actually, it is not,” Emerson Society Papers, 11, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 1, 8, this is not a work by Emerson.

In her 17 November 1990 column, “Dear Abby” (Abigail Van Buren) answered a reader’s question “How would you define success?” with the quote from “my favorite American poet, essayist and philosopher” printed above. However, on 1 February 1992, a chastened Abby printed a letter from Arthur Stanley Harvey, who wrote that the quotation was based on something his grandmother, Bessie Anderson Stanley, had written in 1904, and that had been appropriated for many years by greeting card companies, including Hallmark, which had “erroneously credited Robert Louis Stevenson as the author.” Abby then apologized, and printed what she described as the original from the 1904 Brown Book Magazine:

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.

But more research shows another source. In the September 1904, Joe Mitchell Chapple, publisher of the Boston National Magazine, announced he would give $10,000 for “Heart Throbs,” which he defined as “those things that make us all kin; those things that endure—the classics of our own lives.” The people who sent in the ten best contributions would receive a pile of silver dollars, “one silver dollar placed flat upon the other,” as “will measure your exact height”; other major winners would receive twenty-five, ten, or five dollars; and five hundred lucky people (out of a total of 840 winners) would receive a dollar each. The results from this contest were published in a book, appropriately titled Heart Throbs, but it contained nothing by Stanley.2 Due to the success of this book, a second volume of Heart Throbs was published in 1911, “Contributed by the People,” according to the title page. Unlike the first volume, this one contained “the voluntary contribution of thousands,” including, on the very first page, “What is Success?” by “Bessie A. Stanley.” Significantly, Emerson’s “Good-Bye” is also included (p. 7-8). The proximity of Stanley’s work to Emerson’s suggests that someone might have made the initial misattribution by copying Stanley’s work, then returning to seek the author and mistakenly using Emerson’s name from three leaves later; Stanley’s name appears on the third line of a verso page, Emerson’s on the fifth of a verso page, making such an eyeskip possible.

 

[Krilons Resa]

I, frankly, couldn't give two shits. It's the "essence" of the passage that matters.

 

[Dick Sirloin]

Nah. It'd be much wiser if it were Emerson's.