Character Building
Booker T. Washington·1902·142 pages
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“No matter where you are, seize hold on the encouraging things with which you come in contact.”
Booker T. Washington · chosen by someone who read it first
Underline it in the book. In the You.Prjct app, a line from this volume meets you on today’s invitation.
A ruled margin beside the text, four lines at the foot of every page, and the Notes leave their last page open under the thing they ask you to do. A chapter opening and a Notes close, as printed.
Talent gets you in the room; character decides whether you stay. Washington's Sunday talks to his students: the small things done right, every day, until they are who you are.
On Sunday evenings at Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington stood up in the chapel and talked to his students the way, he said, he would speak to his own children around his fireside: about the coffee at breakfast, the dishes left after Commencement, the note that never reached the barn. A stenographer took the talks down, the school paper printed them each week, and in 1902 he chose the ones worth keeping for a book called Character Building. Ten of them are printed here whole, for a reader with a coach, a room to keep, and a week to answer for.
It closes with two essays: the life of a man born a slave who swept a room three times to get into school, and the South he was speaking into in 1902.
- OneTwo Sides of Life11
- TwoGrowth23
- ThreeDon’t be Discouraged33
- FourGetting on in the World43
- FiveEach One his Part51
- SixHave You Done Your Best?61
- SevenIndividual Responsibility73
- EightWhat Will Pay87
- NineThe Cultivation of Stable Habits99
- TenLast Words109
The portrait is printed on the back cover. Turn the book over, above, to meet him.
The outside follows the inside.
You.Prjct is for the extra work: the lift nobody assigned, the hour with a book that nobody sees. The reading sits next to the training on purpose. A barbell does not lie about the body. A book like these does not lie about the rest of you, and the rest of you decides what the training is for.
Black covers, a metal emblem, one range across every spine. We made the outside beautiful because of what happens on the inside. A life works the same way: put the interior in order and the rest of it follows. If that is the work you are already doing, these were made for you.
Every one closes with the Notes, and a page left open under the thing they ask you to do. Read the rest with a pen.