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Begin your journey

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'berline' LETTER I BATH, October 9, O. S. 1746 DEAR BOY: Your distresses in your journey from Heidelberg to Schaffhausen, your lying upon straw, your black bread, and your broken ‘berline,’ are proper seasonings for the greater fatigues and distresses which you must expect in the course of your travels; and, if one had a mind to moralize, one might call them the samples of the accidents, rubs, and difficulties, which every man meets with in his journey through life. In this journey, the understanding is the ‘voiture’ that must carry you through; and in proportion as that is stronger or weaker, more or less in repair, your journey will be better or worse; though at best you will now and then find some bad roads, and some bad inns. Take care, therefore, to keep that necessary ‘voiture’ in perfect good repair; examine, improve, and strengthen it every day: it is in the power, and ought to be the care, of every man to do it; he that neglects it, deserves to feel, and

Minutes become hours

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"Take care in your minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves." Lord Chesterfield Minutes become hours, hours become days, then weeks, months and years. Take care, for too soon, your time is gone. Long before Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett proclaimed focus to be the best attribute for success in life, Lord Chesterfield was singing its praises. Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, KG, PC (1694 – 1773) was a British statesman, diplomat, man of letters, and acclaimed wit of his time. His title as Lord Chesterfield came to him by birth. His standing in British society by intelligence and hard work. "Singular focus on a task is not only practical but also a mark of intelligence," says he.