Conversational Narcissism: How to Avoid It

Manvotional: The Power of Purpose From Talks to Young Men, 1897By Charles Henry Parkhurst When calculating the prospects of a young man, and the likelihood of his being able to go through life without being taken off his feet, I always want to know whether he stands for anything in particular. A written sentence may be mere words or it may mean something. So a young man may be only a mixture of body and soul or he may mean something: that combination of body and soul may stand as the expression of an idea. There are a great many meaningless men in the community, and what that means is that, while they have the intelligence to understand an idea and the heart to feel it, yet the idea never gets so close to them as to have its reality tremendously experienced by them. Still more apparent does the working of this principle become when for the word “idea” I substitute the word “purpose.” Purpose, and to be thoroughly wedded to that purpose, is three quarters of salvation.