All through life we must keep choosing. Destiny hangs on "yes" and "no." As we look back, it is to wonder what would have happened if we had gone the other way when the road forked.

On life's bargain-counter are wares piled up for the pleasing of all tastes. We marvel that some eagerly select what we contemptuously reject. Our tastes are as various as our natures.

How can Nature originate so great a variety of patterns? We speak of the mass of mankind as if it was all one. But it presents a bewildering variation. Human beings are as different from one another as their parental influences and their environments and their personal natures are different. Flesh and blood can never be run in mould of monotonous uniformity. The fascination of travel is the endless variety of mankind that one encounters, more than in silent buildings or inarticulate scenery.

The choice of personal associates is the all-influencing choice. To go wrong here is the likeliest way to cripple one's chances of eminence or of plain, everyday success. A man goes into business with partners guilty of malfeasance, and they pull him down. A woman marries the wrong husband, and though her courage may keep her at the sticking point and may enable her to preserve the appearance of domestic felicity, all that makes for the ideal relationship is absent. The basis of happiness is not in things, but in people. Those of us who are thoroughly normal cannot get along without congenial society. The kind of persons we choose to be with is the first and surest indication of character. The worthiest must be uneasy and unhappy in the company of the worst; and the best will naturally seek the best. What a man chooses, he is.
- Booker T. Washington
Philadelphia Public Speaker