C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Anxiety
Over-confidence is as evil as undue anxiety.
Anxiety never yet successfully bridged over any chasm.
Nobody should ever look anxious except those who have no anxiety.
Generally we obtain very surely and very speedily what we are not too anxious to obtain.
Among those evils which befall us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect than by their actual pressure.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too confident a security.
Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure and generally occasion ourselves.
O foolish anxiety of wretched man, how inconclusive are the arguments which make thee beat thy wings below!
Anxiety is the poison of human life. It is the parent of many sins, and of more miseries. In a world where everything is doubtful, where you may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, what means this restless stir and commotion of mind? Can your solicitude alter the cause or unravel the intricacy of human events?
Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste for natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood.
Anxiety has no place in the life of one of God’s children. Christ’s serenity was one of the most unmistakable signs of His filial trust. He was tired and hungry and thirsty and in pain; but we cannot imagine Him anxious or fretful. His mind was kept in perfect peace because it was stayed on God. The life lived by the faith of the Son of God will find His word kept: “My peace give I unto you.”
It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secretes acids; but, love and trust are sweet juices.