William H. Crogman

“Whatever you are in the future, young ladies and gentlemen, will depend largely upon your conceptions of life, its duties, its responsibilities, its end. For this reason I have proposed to myself to speak to you in a practical manner on the importance of correct ideals.”

“The development of an individual will invariably be in the direction of his ideal, and will partake largely of the nature and character of that ideal.”

“Is the object of his thought lofty in its character, so is he. Is it low, so is he. We rise or fall, we ascend or descend, according to our ideals.”

“Let us not, however, deceive ourselves with the thought that vaulting ambition, that lust for power and place is a disease peculiar to great minds, for nothing is more commonly found among ordinary men in the humbler walks of life. We need not travel very far in any direction to find a little Caesar or a little Napoleon.”

“Neither the black boy nor the white will ever be educated in the best and broadest sense of the term who seeks an education merely to reach an office, for, as in nature a stream never rises higher than its source, so in life men never rise higher than their ideals. The education that merely seeks an office must of necessity be limited to the dimensions of that office.”

“A large proportion of the offices in this vast country is not held by the best, most learned and most cultivated men, but by men of mediocre attainments, whose hearts and whose eyes have been fixed on those places, and who, to obtain them, have used every means, honorable and dishonorable.”

“Character is eternal; all other things are transient and fleeting. No ideal, perishable in itself, is worth striving for by an immortal soul.”