Tao Te Ching
David Grayson
(Ray Stannard Baker)
1870 – 1946 CE
One of the most insightful journalists, historians, and biographers of his time
A pioneering muckraker in the late 1800's, Grayson's book, Adventures in Contentment became popular worldwide selling millions of copies. The Atlanta Race Riot in 1906 inspired him to write a book called Following the Color Line which was the first in-depth and influential examination of the racial divide in America. It became knows as, "the best account of race relations in the South." A close friend and supporter of president Woodrow Wilson, he traveled to Europe on his behalf and became his press secretary during the peace negotiations after World War I. He later published 15 books about Wilson, two of which won Pulitzer Prizes. Buildings at the University of Massachusetts, Michigan State University, and an Elementary School in Waterford, Michigan are named after him.
Lineages
Historians / Journalists
Eras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Gilded Age (1860 – 1900 CE)
Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)
Victorian (1837 – 1901 CE)
Roaring Twenties (1920 – 1929 CE)
Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Unlisted Sources
Adventures in Contentment
Adventures in Friendship
Adventures in Solitude
David Grayson Omnibus
Great Possessions
The Friendly Road
Quotes by David Grayson (30 quotes)
“Things grow old and stale, not because they are old, but because we cease to see them... Life solidifies itself in words. And finally how everything wearies them and that is old age!”
from Adventures in Friendship
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“I have no preconceived impressions or beliefs or opinions... Is it not the prime struggle of life to keep the mind plastic? To see and feel and hear things newly? To accept nothing as settled; to defend the eternal right of the questioner? To reject every conclusion of yesterday before the surer observations of today?—is not that the best life we know?”
from Adventures in Friendship
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“It is marvelous how far afield some of us are willing to travel in pursuit of that beauty which we leave behind us at home? We mistake unfamiliarity for beauty; we darken our perceptions with idle foreignness. For want of that inner curiosity... we find ourselves hastening from land to land, gathering mere resemblances... With what pathetic diligence we collect peaks and passes in Switzerland... a flower blooms in our door-yard more wonderful than the shining heights of the Alps!”
from Adventures in Friendship
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“Beauty? What is it but a new way of approach?... I have no need to go a mile: I have only to come up through my thicket or cross my field... I am an adventurer upon a new earth.”
from Adventures in Friendship
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“Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.”
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“It is not short of amazing, the power of a great idea to weld men together.”
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“I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year.”
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“Most of us have collections of sayings we live by... Whenever words fly up at me from the printed page as I read, I intercept them instantly, knowing they are for me. I turn them over carefully in my mind and cling to them hard.”
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“Did you think you could have the good without the evil? Did you think you could have the joy without the sorrow?... Sooner or later, regardless of the wit of man, we have pain to face; a reality; a final inescapable, immutable fact of life. What poor souls, if we have then no philosophy to face it with! I'll think about what I am going to write tomorrow-not about me, not about my body.”
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“Measured by any standard, white or black, Washington must be regarded today as one of the great men of this country: and in the future he will be so honored.”
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“Harriet there, serious-minded, thinking I was being befooled, and the agent thinking he was befooling me, and I, thinking I was befooling both of them—and all of us wrong. It was very like life wherever you find it.”
from David Grayson Omnibus
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“It was beautiful to see commonplace facts grow phosphorescent in the heat of true feeling.”
from Adventures in Contentment
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“A life uncommanded now is uncommanded; a life unenjoyed now is unenjoyed... for the past is gone an no one knows the future.”
from Great Possessions
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“When things grow hopelessly complicated, and we can't laugh, we do either one of two things: we lie or we die. But if we can laugh, we can fight! And be honest!”
from Great Possessions
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“Talk about the courage to face cannon and Cossacks! It is nothing to the courage required to speak aloud in broad daylight of the finest things we have it us! I was not equal to it.”
from Great Possessions
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“99 out of every 100 human beings are desperately at work grubbing, sweating, worrying, thinking, sorrowing, enjoying, without in the least knowing why.”
from Great Possessions
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“Peace and comfort and happiness are terribly expensive, Horace—and prices have been going up fast!”
from Great Possessions
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“Why wait to be peaceful? Why not be peacdeful now? Why not be happy now Why not be rich now?”
from Great Possessions
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“When I was a boy I believed implicitly in God. I prayed to him, having a vision of him—a person—before my eyes. As I grew older I concluded that there was no God. I dismissed him from the universe... And now–it seems to me–there is nothing but God.”
from Adventures in Contentment
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“I have always had especial hope of those who study the sciences: they ask such intimate questions of nature. Theology possess a vain-gloriousness which places its faith in human theories; but science, at its best, is humble before nature herself. It has no thesis to defend: it is content to knell upon the earth”
from Adventures in Contentment
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“I seemed to catch a glimmer of the true light. I reflected how truly everything is in anything. If one could really understand a coneflower, he could understand this Earth.”
from Adventures in Contentment
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“The fact is, you are working for a dream, and living on dreams... How do you know that you are ever going to be old?”
from Great Possessions
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“language is a beggarly medium, wholly incapable, whether with adjectives, verbs, or nouns, of giving even a hazy conception”
from Adventures in Solitude
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“In my garden I understand dimly why evil is in the world and in my garden learn how transitory it is.”
from Great Possessions
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“how full the world is of sounds commonly unheard, and of sights commonly unseen, but in their nature, like the smallest blossoms, of a curious perfection and beauty”
from Great Possessions
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“How can we know whether a thing is evil until we reach the end of it? It may be good!”
from Great Possessions
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“He never likes to see any one thing too large, as a church, a party, a reform, a new book, or a new fashion, lest he see something else too small; but will have everything in true proportion.”
from Great Possessions
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“it is the feeling of being necessary, of being desired, flowing into a man that produces the satisfaction of contentment.”
from Adventures in Friendship
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“On thing I am coming to learn in this world and that is to let people haggle along with their lives as I haggle along with mine.”
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“I long ago decided to try to be fully what I am and not to be anything or anybody else.”
from The Friendly Road
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Quotes about David Grayson (2 quotes)
“if you are susceptible to good poetry, your heart may skip a beat or you may grow cold and numb... He will show you a pebble, an iceman, a book agent and unravel for you the inner mystery and beauty of pulsating life beneath the surface of our everyday existence.”
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“Any time we lose heart, any time we are lonely, if we take up Grayson we shall recover our confidence in life and faith in our fellow men... his philosophy of life is a native American one... he found his way to what Thoreau called the 'kernel' of living... when I find a man with such serenity of spirit, he compels my respect, for I know he has achieved something that the world in general and the modern world in particular sadly lack.”
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