If the rosebud should try to retain all of its sweetness and beauty locked within its petals and refuse to give it out, it would be lost.

It is only by flinging them out to the world that their fullest development is possible.

The man who tries to keep his education, his superior advantages for himself, who is always looking out for the main chance, only shrivels, and strangles the very faculties he would develop.
The trouble with most of us is that, in our efforts to sell ourselves for selfish ends or for the most dollars, we impoverish our own lives, stifle our better natures.
The graduate should show the world that he has something in him too sacred to be tampered with, something marked "not for sale," a sacred something that bribery cannot touch, that influence cannot buy.

You should so conduct yourself that every one will see that there is something in you that would repel as an insult the very suggestion that you could be bought or bribed, or influenced to stoop to anything low or questionable.
The college man who is cursed with commonness, who gropes along in mediocrity, who lives a shiftless, selfish life, and does not lift up his head and show that he has made the most of his great privileges disgraces the institution that gave him his chance.
You have not learned the best lesson from your school or college if you have not discovered the secret of making life a glory instead of a sordid grind.

When you leave your _alma mater_, my young friend, whatever your vocation, do not allow all that is finest within you, your high ideals and noble purposes to be suffocated, strangled, in the everlasting scramble for the dollar.