Norman Vincent Peale
Bowersville (Ohio), 1898.
American author.
We are a generation busy with things. Stevenson wrote, "The world is so full of a number of things; I am sure we should all be as happy as kings." The world has many more things than in Stevenson's day but there is grave doubt if their possession has really solved the problem of happiness.
I can push buttons all over my house and have light, music, and heat. My grandfather had no buttons to push, but just the same he knew the art of living. He was a happy man. The increase of things, instead of providing leisure to be enjoyed, in all too many cases has but multiplied our confusion.(...)
This has done something even more serious to modern people. I refer to its deep psychological and cultural effects. It has had a tendency to make us superficial and thus incapable of appreciating the deeper and more subtle values.
This hectic, hasty, hurrying age of ours has left the average man bewildered and out of breath. It has made him think that the chief virtue is to keep up with the flying clock.
We seem to have the idea that everyone must be constantly doing something. One must be driving a car or dancing or playing bridge or golf or going to the theater or doing something. The American people —and that means you and me— greatly need to learn to reduce life's tempo unless we are to allow this hurly-burly space age to rob us of life's deepest meaning and happiness.
Norman Vincent Peale
The Power of Positive Thinking
by Norman Vincent Peale
