Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/29

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AVERAGE PEOPLE.
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round with religious tenets, which prevents our ease and our hospitalities, stifles our loud laughter, and generates the well-bred smile, makes its dread our enthusiasms and our heart friendships, repels us from superior and inferior, and keeps us on the look-out for snubs. They do not aim at special knowledge, nor take positions requiring it. They acquire book-knowledge from simple enjoyment of it rather than from a desire to know more than others. Culture pursued for selfish ends misses its beneficent power. Aspiration keeps its ideals, but wisdom recognizes that the grasping of them is not within the reach of all; so average people may have had dreams of possible future usefulness or attainment, but have become content to be nobodies with slight stock of general information. They take up the daily routine of daily duties, thankful that there is much in quantity to do, living to help others, and trusting that, when old age comes, serenity of mind will atone for the lack of high

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