Latest / THE SECRET LAW OF ATTRACTION: Manifest Wealth, Success & Abundance / AN IRON WILL: Hidden Force Behind Success, Power & Unbreakable Determination - Orison Swett Marden

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AN IRON WILL: Hidden Force Behind Success, Power & Unbreakable Determination - Orison Swett Marden · THE SECRET LAW OF ATTRACTION: Manifest Wealth, Success & Abundance

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  An iron Will by Orison Sweat Martin nineteen o one, Chapter one, Training
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  the Will. The education of the will is the object of our existence,
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  says Emerson. Nor is this putting it too strongly If we take into account
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  the human will in its relations to the divine this accords with the saying of
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  J. Stuart Mill that a character is a completely fashioned will in respect to
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  mere mundane relations. The development and discipline of one's will power is of supreme
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  moment in relation to success in life. No man can ever estimate the power
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  of will. It is a part of the divine nature, all of a
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  peace with the power of creation. We speak of God's fiat fiat lucks let
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  light be man has his fiat. The achievements of history have been the choices,
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  the determinations, the creations of the human will. It was the will,
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  quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim of men like Wilberforce and Garrison,
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  good Year and cyrus Field, Bismarck and Grant, that made them indomitable.
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  They simply would do what they planned. Such men can no more be stopped
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  than the sun can be or the tide. Most men fail, not through
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  lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination,
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  from lack of dauntless will. It is impossible, says Charman, to look
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  into the conditions under which the battle of life is being fought without perceiving how
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  much really depends upon the extent to which the will power is cultivated, strengthened,
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  and made operative in right directions. Young people need to go into training
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  for it. We live in an age of athletic meets. Those who are
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  determined to have athletic will power must take for it the kind of exercise they
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  need. This is well illustrated by a report I have seen of the long
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  race from Marathon in the recent Olympian Games, which was won by the young
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  Greek peasant Sir Tyrios Lose a struggle in the race of life. There had
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  been no great parade about the training of this champion runner. From his work
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  at the plow, he quietly betook himself to the task of making Greece victorious
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  before the assembled strangers from every land. He was known to be a good
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  runner, and without fuss or bustle, he entered himself as a competitor.
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  But it was not his speed alone out distancing every rival that made the young
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  Greek stand out from among his fellows. That day, when he left his
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  cottage home at Amorussi, his father said to him, Sir Tyrie, he
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  must only return a victor. The light of a firm resolve shown in the
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  young man's eye. The old father was sure that his boy would win,
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  and so he made his way to the station there to wait till Sir Tyrie
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  should come in ahead of all the rest. No one knew the old man
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  and his three daughters as they elbowed their way through the crowd. When at
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  last the excitement of the assembled multitude told that the critical moment had arrived,
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  that the racers were nearing the goal. The old father looked up through eyes
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  that were a little dim as he realized that, truly so Tyride was leading
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  the way. He was returning a victor. How the crowd surged about the
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  young peasant when the race was fairly won, wild with excitement, they knew
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  not how to shower upon him sufficient praise. Ladies overwhelmed him with flowers and
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  rings. Some even gave him their watches, and one American lady bestowed upon
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  him her jeweled smelling bottle. The princes embraced him, and the king himself
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  saluted him in military fashion. But the young suteriors were seeking for other praise
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  than theirs. Past the ranks of royalty in fair maidenhood, past the outstretched
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  hands of his own countrymen, past the applauding crowd of foreigners, his gaze
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  wandered till it fell upon an old man, trembling with eagerness, who resolutely
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  pushed his way through the excited, satisfied throng. Then the young face lighted,
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  and as old Loos advanced to the innermost circle with arms outstretched to embrace
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  his boy, the young victor said, simply, you see, father,
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  I have obeyed mental discipline. The athlete trains for his race, and the
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  mind must be put into training if one will win life's race. It is,
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  says Professor Matthews, only by continued, strenuous efforts, repeat it again
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  and again, day after day, week after week, and month after month,
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  that the ability can be acquired to fasten the mind to one subject,
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  however abstract or naughty, to the exclusion of everything else. The process of
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  obtaining this self mastery, this complete command of one's mental powers, is a
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  gradual one. Its length varying with the mental constitution of each person, but
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  its acquisition is worth infinitely more than the utmost labor it ever costs. Perhaps
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  the most valuable result of all education, it was said by Professor Huxley,
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  is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it
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  ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the
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  first lesson which ought to be learned, and however early a man's training begins,
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  it is probably the last lesson which he learns thoroughly doing things. Once,
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  when Henry Ward Beecher was asked how it was that he could accomplish so
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  much more than other men, he replied, I don't do more, but
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  less than other people. They do all their work three times over, once
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  in anticipation, once in actuality, once in rumination. I do mine in
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  actuality alone, doing it once instead of three times. This was by the
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  intelligent exercise of mister Beecher's will power in concentrating his mind upon what he was
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  doing at a given moment and then turning to something else. Anyone who has
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  observed business men closely has noticed this characteristic. One of the secrets of a
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  successful life is to be able to hold all of our energies upon one point,
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  to focus all of the scattered rays of the mind upon one place or
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  thing, centralizing force. The mental reservoir of most people is like a leaky
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  dam which we sometimes see in the country, where the greater part of the
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  water flows out without going over the wheel and doing the work of the mill.
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  The habit of mind wandering, of worrying about this and that genius,
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  that power which dazzles mortal eyes is oft but perseverance in disguise. Many a
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  man would have been a success had he connected as fragmentary efforts spasmodic, disconnected
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  attempts without concentration, uncontrolled by any fixed idea, will never bring success.
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  It is continuity of purpose alone that achieves results. Learning to swim, the
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  way to learn to run is to run. The way to learn to swim
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  is to swim. The way to learn to develop willpower is by the actual
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  exercise of will power in the business of life. The man that exercises his
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  will, says an English essayist, makes it a stronger and more effect to
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  force, in proportion to the extent to which such exercise is intelligently and perseveringly
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  maintained. The forth putting of will power is a means of strengthening willpower.
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  The will become strong by exercise. To stick to a thing till you are
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  master is a test of intellectual discipline and power, Doctor Coiler. It is
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  astonishing, says doctor Theodore Coiler, how many men lack this power of holding
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  on until they reach the goal. They can make a sudden dash, but
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  they lack grit. They are easily discouraged. They get on as long as
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  everything goes smoothly, but when there is friction, they lose heart. They
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  depend on stronger personalities for their spirit and strength. They lack independence or originality.
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  They only dare to do what others do. They do not step boldly
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  from the crowd and act fearlessly the big trees. What is needed by him
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  who would succeed in the highest degree possible is careful planning. He is to
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  accumulate reserved power that he may be equal to all emergencies. Thomas Starr King
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  said that the great trees of California gave him his first impression of the power
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  of reserve. It was the thought of the reserve energies that had been compacted
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  into them, He said that stirred me. The mountains had given them their
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  iron and rich stimulants. The hills had given them their soil. The clouds
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  had given their rain and snow, and a thousand summers and winters had poured
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  forth their treasures about their vast roots. No young man can hope to do
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  anything above the commonplace who has not made his life a reservoir of power on
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  which he can constantly draw, which will never fail him in any emergency.
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  Be sure that you have stored away in your powerhouse the energy the knowledge that
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  will be equal to the great occasion when it comes. If I were twenty
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  and had but ten years to live, said a great scholar and writer,
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  I would spend the first nine years accumulating knowledge, getting ready for the tenth.
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  I will. There are no two words in the English language which stand
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  out in bolder relief, like kings upon a checkerboard, to so great an
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  extent as the words I will. There is strength, depth and solidity,
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  decision, confidence and power, determination, vigor and individuality. In the round,
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  ringing tone which characterizes its delivery, it talks to you of triumph over
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  difficulties, of victory in the face of discouragement, of will to promise and
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  strength to perform, of lofty, daring enterprise, of unfettered aspirations, and
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  of the thousand and one solid impulses by which man masters impediments in the way
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  of progression. As one has well said, he who is silent is forgotten.
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  He who does not advance falls back. He who stops is overwhelmed,
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  distanced, crushed. He who ceases to become greater becomes smaller. He who
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  leaves off gives up. The stationary is the beginning of the end. It
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  precedes death. To live is to achieve to will without ceasing. Be thou
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  a hero, let thy might tramp on eternal snows its way, and through
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  the ebban walls of night h e w down a passage unto day park Benjamin
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  Chapter two, The Rulers of Destiny. There is no chance, no destiny,
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  no fate can circumvent or hinder or control. The firm resolve of a
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  determined soul gifts count. For nothing will alone is great. All things give
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  way before it soon or late. What obstacle can stay the mighty force of
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  the sea seeking river in its course, or cause the ascending orb of day
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  to wait. Each well born soul must win what it deserves. Let the
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  fool prate of luck. The fortunate is he whose earnest purpose never swerves,
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  whose slightest action or inaction serves the one great aim Ello, Wheeler Wilcox.
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  There is always room for a man of force Emerson. The king is the
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  man who can carlyle a strong, defiant purpose, is many handed, and
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  lays hold of whatever is near that can serve it. It has a magnetic
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  power that draws to itself whatever is kindred t. T. Munger. What
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  is will power looked at in a large way? But energy of character,
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  energy of will self originating force is the soul of every great character. Where
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  it is there is life. Where it is not, there is faintness,
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  helplessness, and despondency. Let it be your first study to teach the world
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  that you are not wood and straw, that there is some iron in you.
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  Men who have left their mark upon the world have been men of great
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  and prompt decision. The achievements of will power are almost beyond computation. Scarcely
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  anything seems impossible to the man who can will strongly enough and long enough.
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  One talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it,
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  as a thimbleful of powder in a rifle, the bore of whose barrel will
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  give it direction, will do greater execution than a carload burned in the open
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  air. The wills, the wants, and the cans. There are three
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  kinds of people in the world, says a recent writer, the wills,
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  the wants, and the cans. The first accomplish everything, the second oppose
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  everything, the third fail in everything. The shores of fortune, as Foster
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  says, are covered with the stranded wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but
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  who have wanted, courage, faith, and decision, and have therefore perished
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  in sight of more resolute but less capable adventurers who succeeded in making port.
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  Were I called upon to express in a word the secret of so many failures
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  among those who started out with high hopes, I should say they lacked will
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  power. They could not half will. And what is a man without a
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  will? He is like an engine without steam. Genius unexecuted is no more
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  genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks. Will has been
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  called the spinal column of personality. The will, in its relation to life,
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  says an English writer, may be compared at once to the rudder and
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  to the steam engine of a vessel, on the confined and related action of
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  which it depends entirely for the direction of its course and the vigor of its
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  movement. Strength of will is the test of a young man's possibilities. Can
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  he will strong enough and hold whatever he undertakes with an iron grip? It
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  is the iron grip that takes and holds. What chance is there in this
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  crowding, pushing, selfish, greedy world, where everything is pusher or pushed
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  for a young man with no will, no grip on life. The man
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  who would forge to the front in this competitive age must be a man of
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  prompt and determined decision, a tailor's needle. It is in one of ben
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  Jonson's old plays, when I once take the humor of a thing, I
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  am like your tailor's needle, eye go through with it. This is not
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  different from Richelieu, who said, when I have once taken a resolution,
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  I go straight to my aim. I overthrow all, I cut down all.
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  And in business affairs the counsel of Rothschild is to the same effect,
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  do without fail that which you determine to do. Gladstone's children were taught to
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  accomplish to the end whatever they might begin, no matter how insignificant the undertaking
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  might be. What is worse than rashness, It is irresolution that is worse
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  than rashness. He that shoots, says Feltham, may sometimes hit the mark,
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  but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution is
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  like an ague. It shakes not this nor that limb, but all the
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  body is at once in a fit. The man who is forever twisting and
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  turning, backing and filling, hesitating and dawdling, shuffling and parleying, weighing
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  and balancing, splitting hairs over non essentials, listening to every new mo motive
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  which presents itself, will never accomplish anything but the positive man, the decided
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  man, is a power in the world and stands for something. You can
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  measure him and estimate the work that his energy will accomplish. Opportunity is coy
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  is swift, is gone before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent,
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  or the careless can seize her vigilance in watching opportunity, said Phelps. Tact
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  and daring in seizing upon opportunity, force, and persistence in crowding opportunity to
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  its utmost of possible achievement. These are the martial virtues which must command success.
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  The best men, remark Chapin, are not those who have waited for
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  chances, but who have taken them besiege the chance, conquered the chance,
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  and made chance the servitor. Is it not possible to classify successes and failures
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  by their various degrees of will power? A man who can resolve vigorously upon
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  a course of action and turns neither to the right nor to the left,
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  though a paradise tempt him who keeps his eyes upon the goal, whatever distracts
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  him is sure of success. Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring
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  back the gold of Opher, But shall it therefore rot in the harbor mill,
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  give its sails to the wind? Conscious power, Conscious power, says
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  Mels, exists within the mind of every one. Sometimes its existence is unrealized,
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  but it is there. It is there to be developed and brought forth,
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  like the culture of that obstinate but beautiful flower, the orchid. To
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  allow it to remain dormant is to place one's self in obscurity, to trample
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  on one's ambition, to smother one's faculties. To develop, it is to
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  individualize all that is best within you and give it to the world. It
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  is by an absolute knowledge of yourself the proper estimate of your own value.
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  There is hardly a reader, says an experienced educator, who will not be
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  able to recall the early life of at least one young man whose childhood was
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  spent in poverty, and who in boyhood expressed a firm desire to secure a
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  higher education. If a little later that desire became a declared resolve, soon
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  the avenues opened to that end. That desire and resolve created an atmosphere which
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  attracted the forces necessary to the attainment of the purpose. Many of these young
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  men will tell us that as long as they were hoping and striving and longing,
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  mountains of difficulty rose before them, But that when they fashioned their hopes
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  into fixed purposes, aid came unsought to help them on the way. Do
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  you believe in yourself? The man without self reliance and an iron will is
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  the plaything of chance, the puppet of his environment, the slave of circumstances.
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  Are not doubts the greatest of enemies. If you would succeed up to
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  the limit of your possibilities, must you not constantly hold to the belief that
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  you are success organized and that you will be successful no matter what opposes you.
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  Are never to allow a shadow of doubt to enter your mind. That
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  the creator intended you to win in life's battle. Regard every suggestion that your
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  life may be a failure, that you are not made like those who succeed,
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  and that success is not for you as a traitor, and expel it
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  from your mind as you would a thief from your house. There is something
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  sublime in the youth who possesses the spirit of boldness and fearlessness, who has
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  proper confidence in his ability to do and dare. The world takes us at
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  our own valuation. It believes in the man who believes in himself, But
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  it has little use for the timid man, the one who is never certain
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  of himself, who cannot rely on his own judgment, who craves advice from
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  others and is afraid to go ahead on his own account. It is the
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  man with a positive nature, the man who believes that he is equal to
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  the emergency, who believes he can do the thing he attempts. Who wins
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  the confidence of his fellow man, he is beloved because he is brave and
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  self sufficient. Those who have accomplished great things in the world have been,
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  as a rule, bold, aggressive, and self confident. They dare to
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  step out from the crowd and act in an original way. They were not
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  afraid to be generals. There is little room in this crowding, competing age
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  for the timid, vacillating youth. He who would succeed to day must not
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  only be brave, but must also dare to take chances. He who waits
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  for certainty never wins. The law of the soul is eternal endeavor that bears
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  the man onward and upward forever. A man can be too confiding in others,
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  but never too confident in himself. Never admit defeat or poverty. Stoutly
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  assert your divine right to hold your head up and look the world in the
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  face. Step bravely to the front whatever opposes, and the world will make
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  way for you. No one will insist upon your rights. While you,
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  yourself doubt that you have any believe if you were made for the place you
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  fill, put forth your whole energies, be awake, electrify yourself, Go
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  forth to the task. A young man once said to his employer, don't
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  give me an easy job. I want to handle heavy boxes, shoulder great
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  loads. I would like to lift a big mountain and throw it into the
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  sea. And he stretched out two brawny arms, while his honest eyes danced,
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  and his whole being glowed with conscious strength. The world, in its
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  heart admires the stern, determined doer. The world turns aside to let any
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  man pass who knows whither he is going. It is wonderful how even the
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  apparent casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to
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  them, and yield to assist a design, after having in vain attempted to
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  frustrate it. The man who succeeds, says Prentice Mulford, must always in
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  mind or imagination, live, move, think, and act as if he
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  gained that success or he never will gain it. We go forth at Emerson
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  austere, dedicated, believing in the iron links of destiny, and will not
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  turn on our heels to save our lives. A book a bust or only
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  the sound of a name shoots a spark through the nerves, and we suddenly
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  believe in will. We cannot hear of personal vigor of any kind great power
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  of performance without fresh resolution. Chapter three, Force of will in camp and
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  field. Oh, what miracles have been wrought by the self confidence, the
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  self determination of an iron will. What impossible deeds have been performed by it?
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  It was this that took Napoleon over the Alps in midwinter. It took
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  Farragut and Duty past the cannons, torpedoes and minds of the enemy. It
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  led Nelson and Grant to victory. It has been the great tonic in the
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  world of discovery, invention, and art. It has helped to win a
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  thousand triumphs in war and science which were deemed impossible. The secret of Jeane
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  Dark's success was not alone in decision of character, but in the seeing of
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  visions, which inspired her to self confidence, confidence in her divine mission.
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  It was an iron while that gave Nelson command of the British Fleet, a
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  title, and a statue at Trafalgar Square. It was the keynote of his
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  character when he said, when I don't know whether to fight or not,
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  I always fight. It was an iron while that was brought into play when
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  Horatius with two companions, held ninety thousand Tuscans at bay until the bridge across
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  the Tiber had been destroyed. When Leonidas at THERMOPYLI checked the mighty march of
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  Xerxes, when Themisticles off the coast of Greece shattered the Persians armatto, and
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  Caesar, finding his army hard pressed, seized spear and buckler and snatched victory
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  from defeat. When vinkleried, gathered to his breast a sheaf of Austrian spears
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  and opened a path for his comrades, When Wellington fought in many climbs without
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  ever being conquered, When Ney on a hundred fields changed apparent disaster into brilliant
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  triumph, when Sheridan arrived from Winchester as the Union retreat was becoming a route,
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  and turned the tide when Sherman signaled his men to hold the fort,
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  knowing that their leader was coming. History furnishes thousands of examples of men who
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  have seized occasions to accomplish results deemed impossible by those less resolute. Prompt decision
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  and whole souled action sweep the world before them. Who was the organizer of
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  the modern German Empire? Was he not the man of iron? Napoleon and
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  Grant. What would you do if you were besieged in a place entirely destitute
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  of provisions? Asked the examiner. When Napoleon was a cadet, if there
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  were anything to eat in the enemy's camp, I should not be concerned.
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  When Paris was in the hands of a mob and the authorities were panic stricken,
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  in came a man who said, I know a young officer who can
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  quell this mob. Send for him. Napoleon was sent for. He came.
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  He subjugated the mob, He subjugated the authorities. He ruled France,
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  then conquered Europe. May tenth, seventeen ninety six, Napoleon carried the bridge
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  at Lodi in the face of the Austrian batteries trained upon the French end of
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  the structure. Behind them were six thousand troops. Napoleon massed four thousand grenadiers
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  at the head of the bridge, with a battalion of three hundred carbineers in
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  front. At the tap of the drum, the foremost assailants wheeled from the
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  cover of the street wall under a terrible hail of grape and canister, and
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  attempted to pass the gateway to the bridge. The front ranks went down like
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  stalks of grain before a reaper. The column staggered and reeled backward, and
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  the valiant grenadiers were appalled by the task before them. Without a word or
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  a look of reproach, Napoleon placed himself at their head, and his aides
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  and generals rushed to his side, forward again, over heaps of dead that
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  choked the passage, and a quick run counted by seconds, only carried the
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  column across two hundred yards of clear space, scarcely a shot from the Austrians
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  taking effect beyond the point where the platoons wheeled for the first lea. The
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  guns of the enemy were not aimed at the advance. The advance was too
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  quick for the Austrian gunners. So sudden and so miraculous was it all that
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  the Austrian artillerists abandoned their guns instantly and their supports fled in a panic,
• 25:15
  instead of rushing to the front and meeting the French onslaught. This Napoleon had
• 25:21
  counted on in making the bold attack. What was Napoleon but the thunderbolt of
• 25:26
  war. He once journeyed from Spain to Paris at seventeen miles an hour in
• 25:30
  the saddle. Is it possible to cross the path? Asked Napoleon of the
• 25:34
  engineers who had been sent to explore the dreaded pass of Saint Bernard. Perhaps
• 25:40
  was the hesitating reply, it is within the limits of possibility. Forward then,
• 25:47
  Yet Ulysses Esque Grant, a young man, unknown to fame, with
• 25:51
  neither money nor influence, with no patrons or friends, in six years,
• 25:55
  fought more battles, gained more victories, captured more prisoners, took more spoils,
• 26:00
  commanded more men than Napoleon did in twenty years. The great thing about
• 26:06
  him, said Lincoln, is cool persistence. Don't swear fight. When the
• 26:11
  Spanish fire on San Juan Hill became almost unbearable, some of the rough riders
• 26:17
  began to swear. Colonel Wood, with the wisdom of a good leader,
• 26:21
  called out amid the whistle of the mouser bullets. Don't swear fight. In
• 26:26
  a skirmish at Salamanca, while the enemy's guns were pouring shot into his regiment,
• 26:30
  Sir William Napier's men became disobedient. He at once ordered a halt and
• 26:37
  flogged four of the ringleaders. Under fire, The men yielded at once and
• 26:41
  then marched three miles under a heavy cannonade, as coolly as if it were
• 26:45
  a review. When Pelissier, the crimean chief of Zuavs, struck an officer
• 26:51
  with a whip, the man drew a pistol that missed fire. The chief
• 26:55
  replied, fellow, I order you a three days arrest for not having your
• 26:59
  arms in atter order. The man of iron will is cool in the hour
• 27:03
  of danger. I had to run like a cyclone. This was what Roosevelt
• 27:08
  said about his pushing on up San Juan Hill ahead of his regiment. I
• 27:11
  had to run like a cyclone to stay in front and keep from being run
• 27:15
  over. The personal heroism of Hobson or of Cushing, who blew up the
• 27:21
  Albemarle forty years ago, was but the expression of a magnificent will power.
• 27:26
  It was this which was the basis of General Wheeler's unparalleled military advancement. A
• 27:30
  second lieutenant at twenty three, a colonel at twenty four, a brigadier general
• 27:36
  at twenty five, a major general at twenty six, a corps commander at
• 27:40
  twenty seven, and a lieutenant general at twenty eight. General Wheeler had sixteen
• 27:45
  horses killed under him and a great number wounded. His saddle, equipments,
• 27:49
  and clothes were frequently struck by the missiles of the enemy. He was three
• 27:53
  times wounded, once painfully. He had thirty two staff officers or acting staff
• 28:00
  officers killed or wounded. In almost every case they were immediately by his side.
• 28:07
  No officer was ever more exposed to the missiles of death than Joseph Wheeler.
• 28:11
  What is this imperial characteristic of manhood? An iron will? But that
• 28:17
  which underlies all magnificent achievement, whether by heroes of the light brigade or the
• 28:22
  heroic firefighters of our great cities. Chapter four, will power in its relation
• 28:27
  to health and disease one, there is no doubt that, as a rule,
• 28:33
  great decision of character is usually accompanied by great constitutional firmness. Men who
• 28:40
  have been noted for great firmness of character have usually been strong and robust.
• 28:45
  As a rule, it is the strong physical man who carries weight and conviction.
• 28:49
  Take as an example William the Conqueror as he is pictured by Green in
• 28:55
  his history, the very spirit of the seer robbers from whom he Sprang seemed
• 29:00
  bodied in his gigantic form, his enormous strength, his savage countenance, his
• 29:03
  desperate bravery. No other night under heaven, his enemies confessed, was William's
• 29:10
  peer. No other man could bend William's bow. His mace crashed through a
• 29:15
  ring of English warriors to the foot of the standard. He rose to his
• 29:19
  greatest heights in moments when other men despaired. No other man, who ever
• 29:25
  sat upon the throne of England, was this man's match. Or take Webster,
• 29:30
  Sidney Smith said, Webster is a living lie, because no man on
• 29:34
  earth can be as great as he looks. Carlyle said of him, one
• 29:38
  would incline at sight to back him against the world. His very physique was
• 29:44
  eloquent. Men yielded their wills to his at sight. The great prizes of
• 29:49
  life ever fall to the robust, the stalwart, the strong, not to
• 29:52
  a huge muscle or powerful frame necessarily, but to a strong vitality, a
• 29:57
  great nervous energy. It is the Lord Bruggam's working almost continuously one hundred and
• 30:03
  forty four hours. It is the Napoleon's twenty hours in the saddle. It
• 30:07
  is the Franklins camping out in the open air at seventy. It is the
• 30:11
  gladstones firmly grasping the helm of the ship of state at eighty four, tramping
• 30:15
  miles every day, and chopping down huge trees at eighty five, who accomplish
• 30:21
  the great things of life. To prosper, you must improve your brain power,
• 30:26
  and nothing helps the brain more than a healthy body. The race of
• 30:30
  to day is only to be won by those who will study to keep their
• 30:33
  bodies in such good condition that their minds are able and ready to sustain that
• 30:37
  high pressure on memory and mind which are present fierce competition engenders. It is
• 30:41
  health, rather than strength, that is now wanted. Health is essentially the
• 30:47
  requirement of our time to enable us to succeed in life. In all modern
• 30:51
  occupations, from the nursery to the school, from the school to the shop
• 30:55
  or world beyond, the brain and nerve strain go on continuous, augmented and
• 31:00
  intensifying. As a rule, physical vigor is the condition of a great career.
• 31:06
  Stonewall Jackson, early in life, determined to conquer every weakness he had,
• 31:11
  physical, mental, and moral. He held all of his powers with
• 31:15
  a firm hand to his great self, discipline, and self mastery. He
• 31:19
  owed his success. So determined was he to harden himself to the weather that
• 31:25
  he could not be induced to wear an overcoat in winter. I will not
• 31:29
  give into the cold, he said. For a year, on account of
• 31:33
  dyspepsia, he lived on buttermilk and stale bread, and wore a wet shirt
• 31:37
  next his body, because his doctor advised it, although everybody else ridiculed the
• 31:41
  idea. This was while he was professor at the Virginia Military Institute. His
• 31:48
  doctor advised him to retire at nine o'clock, and no matter where he was
• 31:52
  or who was present, he always sought his bed on the minute. He
• 31:56
  adhered rigidly through life to this stern system of discipline. Such self training,
• 32:01
  such self conquest, gives one great power over others. It is equal to
• 32:07
  genius itself. I can do nothing, said Grant without nine hours sleep.
• 32:14
  What else is so grand as to stand on life's threshold, fresh, young,
• 32:19
  hopeful, with the consciousness of power equal to any emergency, a master
• 32:22
  of the situation. The glory of a young man is his strength. Our
• 32:28
  great need of the world today is for men and women who are good animals
• 32:32
  to endure the strain of our concentrated civilization. The coming man and woman must
• 32:37
  have an excess of animal spirits. They must have a robustness of health.
• 32:43
  Mere absence of disease is not health. It is the overflowing fountain, not
• 32:47
  the one half full, that gives life and beauty to the valley below.
• 32:52
  Only he is healthy who exalts in mere animal existence, whose very life is
• 32:57
  a luxury, who feels a bounding posset throughout his body, who feels life
• 33:01
  in every limb, as dogs do when scouring over the field, or as
• 33:06
  boys do when gliding over fields of ice. Two Yet, in spite of
• 33:10
  all this, in defiance of it, we know that an iron will as
• 33:15
  often triumphant in a contest with physical infirmity. Brave spirits are a balsam to
• 33:20
  themselves. There is a nobleness of mind that heals wounds beyond salves. One
• 33:25
  day set a noted rope walker, I signed an agreement to wheel a barrow
• 33:30
  along a rope on a given day. A day or two before I was
• 33:34
  seized with lumbago. I called him my medical man and told him I must
• 33:38
  be cured by a certain day, not only because I should lose what I
• 33:42
  hope to earn, but also forfeit a large sum. I got no better,
• 33:46
  and the doctor forbade my getting up. I told him, what do
• 33:51
  I want with your advice? If you cannot cure me of what good is
• 33:54
  your advice? When I got to the place, there was the doctor protest
• 34:00
  I was unfit for the exploit. I went on, though I felt like
• 34:04
  a frog with my back. I got ready my pole and my barrow,
• 34:07
  took hold of the handles and wheeled it along the rope as well as I
• 34:10
  ever did. When I got to the end, I wheeled it back again.
• 34:15
  And when this was done, I was a frog again. What made
• 34:17
  me that I could will the barrow? It was my reserve will. What
• 34:22
  does he know, asks the sage who has not suffered? Did not Schiller
• 34:28
  produce his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical suffering almost amounting to torture.
• 34:32
  Handel was never greater than when warned by palsy of the approach of death,
• 34:37
  and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works
• 34:42
  which have made his name immortal in music. Beethoven was almost totally deaf and
• 34:46
  burdened with sorrow when he produced his greatest works. Milton, writing who best
• 34:52
  can suffer, best can do? Wrote at his best when in feeble health,
• 34:55
  and when poor and blind. Yet I argu against Heaven's hand, or
• 35:00
  will nor bade a jot of heart or hope, but still bear up and
• 35:06
  steer right onward. The Reverend William H. Milburn, who lost his sight
• 35:10
  when a child, studied for the ministry and was ordained before he attained his
• 35:15
  majority. He has written half a dozen books, among them A very careful
• 35:20
  History of the Mississippi Valley. He has long been Chaplain of the Lower House
• 35:24
  of Congress. Blind Fanny Crosby of New York was a teacher of the blind
• 35:30
  for many years. She has written nearly three thousand hymns, among which are
• 35:35
  pass me not o, gentle Savior, rescue the perishing Savior, more than
• 35:39
  life to me, and Jesus keep me near the cross. The truest help
• 35:45
  we can render one who is afflicted, said Bishop Brooks, is not to
• 35:47
  take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that
• 35:52
  he may be able to bear. What a mighty will Darwin had he was
• 35:57
  in continual little health, in constant suffering, his patience was marvelous. No
• 36:05
  one but his wife knew what he endured for forty years, says his son,
• 36:08
  he never knew one day of health. Yet during those forty years he
• 36:13
  unremittingly forced himself to do the work from which the mightiest minds and the strongest
• 36:16
  constitutions would have shrunk. He had a wonderful power of sticking to a subject.
• 36:22
  He used almost to apologize for his patience, saying that he could not
• 36:27
  bear to be beaten, as if it were a sign of weakness. Bulwer
• 36:30
  advises us to refuse to be ill, never to tell people we are ill,
• 36:35
  never to own it ourselves. Illness is one of those things which a
• 36:38
  man should resist on principle. Do not dwell upon your ailments, nor study
• 36:44
  your symptoms. Never allow yourself to be convinced that you are not complete master
• 36:50
  of yourself. Stoutly affirm your own superiority over bodily ills. We should keep
• 36:55
  a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before. The mind is not the
• 37:00
  mind the natural protector of the body. We cannot believe that the Creator has
• 37:06
  left the whole human race entirely at the mercy of only about half a dozen
• 37:09
  specific drugs, which always act with certainty. There is a divine remedy placed
• 37:15
  within us for many of the ills we suffer. If we only knew how
• 37:19
  to use this power of will and mind to protect ourselves, many of us
• 37:22
  would be able to carry youth and cheerfulness with us into the teens of our
• 37:25
  second century. The mind has undoubted power to preserve and sustain physical youth and
• 37:31
  beauty, to keep the body strong and healthy, to renew life, and
• 37:36
  to preserve it from decay many years longer than it does now. The longest
• 37:40
  lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained
• 37:44
  great mental and moral development. They have lived in the upper region of a
• 37:49
  higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the friction,
• 37:52
  and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives. Every physician knows that courageous
• 37:58
  people within dooma will are not half as likely to contract contagious diseases as the
• 38:04
  timid, the vacillating, the irresolute. A thoughtful physician once assured a friend
• 38:08
  that if an express agent were to visit New Orleans in a yellow fever season,
• 38:13
  having forty thousand dollars in his care, he would be in little danger
• 38:16
  of the fever. So long as he kept possession of the money. Let
• 38:21
  him once deliver that into other hands, And the sooner he left the city,
• 38:23
  the better. Napoleon used to visit the plague hospitals, even when the
• 38:29
  physicians dreaded to go, and actually put his hands upon the plague stricken patience.
• 38:34
  He said, the man who was not afraid could vanish the plague.
• 38:37
  A will power like this is a strong tonic to the body. Such a
• 38:43
  will has taken many men from apparent deathbeds and enabled them to perform wonderful deeds
• 38:47
  of valor. When told by his physicians that he must die, douglas Gerald
• 38:52
  said, and leave a family of helpless children. I won't die. He
• 38:58
  kept his word and lived for years. Chapter five, The Romance of achievement
• 39:04
  under difficulties? What doth the poor man son inherit? Stout muscles and a
• 39:10
  sinewy heart, a hardy frame, a heartier spirit. King of two hands,
• 39:15
  he does his part in every useful toil and art a heritage, it
• 39:19
  seems to me a king might wish to hold in fee Lowell has not God
• 39:25
  given every man a capital to start with? Are we not born rich.
• 39:30
  He is rich who has good health, a sound body, good muscles.
• 39:35
  He is rich who has a good head, a good disposition, a good
• 39:37
  heart. He is rich who has two good hands with five chances on each
• 39:44
  equipped. Every man is equipped as only God could equip him. What a
• 39:49
  fortune he possesses in the marvelous mechanism of his body and mind. It is
• 39:53
  individual effort that has achieved everything worth achieving, the fun of the little game.
• 40:00
  A big Australian six feet four, James Tyson, died not long since
• 40:05
  with a property of twenty five million dollars. Who began life as a farm
• 40:08
  hand, Tyson cared little for money. He used to say, of it,
• 40:15
  I shall just leave it behind me when I go. I shall have
• 40:19
  done with it then, and it will not concern me afterwards. But he
• 40:22
  would add, with a characteristic semi exultant snap of the fingers, the money
• 40:28
  is nothing. It was the little game that was the fun. Being asked
• 40:32
  what was the little game, he replied with an energy of concentration peculiar to
• 40:37
  him. Fighting the desert that has been my work. I have been fighting
• 40:43
  the desert all my life, and I have one I have put water.
• 40:46
  Where was no water, and beef where was no beef. I have put
• 40:51
  fences where there were no fences, and roads where there were no roads.
• 40:55
  Nothing can undo what I have done, and millions will be happier for it
• 40:59
  after I am long dead and forgotten. Has not self help accomplished about all
• 41:04
  the great things of the world. How many young men falter, faint and
• 41:08
  dally with their purpose because they have no capital to start with, and wait
• 41:13
  and wait for some good luck to give them a lift. But success is
• 41:16
  the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed. Pay
• 41:22
  the price, and it is yours. A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle,
• 41:27
  to bring success from inhospitable surroundings is the price of all great achievements.
• 41:32
  Conquerors of fortune. Benjamin Franklin had this tenacity of purpose in a wonderful degree
• 41:39
  when he started in the printing business in Philadelphia. He carried his material through
• 41:44
  the streets on a wheelbarrow. He hired one room for his office, work
• 41:49
  room, and sleeping room. He found a formidable rival in the city and
• 41:53
  invited him to his room, pointing to a piece of bread from which he
• 41:58
  had just eaten his dinner. He said, unless you can live cheaper than
• 42:01
  I can, you cannot starve me out. It was so that he proved
• 42:06
  the wisdom of Edmund Burke's saying that he that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves
• 42:10
  and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. The poor and friendless
• 42:15
  lad George Peabody, weary footsore and hungry, called at a tavern in Concord,
• 42:22
  New Hampshire, and asked to be allowed to saw wood for lodging and
• 42:25
  breakfast. Yet he put in work for everything he ever received, and outmatched
• 42:30
  the poverty of early days. Gideon Lee could not even get shoes to wear
• 42:36
  in winter when a boy, but he went to work barefoot in the snow.
• 42:39
  He made a bargain with himself to work sixteen hours a day. He
• 42:44
  fulfilled it to the letter, and when from interruption he lost time, he
• 42:47
  robbed himself of sleep to make it up. He became a wealthy merchant of
• 42:52
  New York, mayor of the city, and a member of Congress Commercial Courage.
• 42:59
  The business affairs of a gentleman named Rouss were once in a complicated condition
• 43:04
  owing to his conflicting interests in various states, and he was thrown into prison.
• 43:08
  While confined, he wrote on the walls of his cell, I am
• 43:12
  forty years of age. This day, when I am fifty, I shall
• 43:15
  be worth half a million, and by the time I am sixty, I
• 43:20
  shall be worth a million dollars. He lived to accumulate more than three million
• 43:24
  dollars. The ruin which overtakes so many merchants, says Whipple, Is,
• 43:30
  do not so much to their lack of business talent as to their lack of
• 43:32
  business nerve. Cyrus w Field had retired from business with a large fortune when
• 43:38
  he became possessed with the idea that, by means of a cable laid upon
• 43:42
  the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, telegraphic communication could be established between Europe and
• 43:46
  America. He plunged into the undertaking with all the force of his being.
• 43:52
  It was an incredibly hard contest. The forests of Newfoundland, the lobby in
• 43:57
  Congress, the unskilled handling of brakes on his Agamemnon cable, a second and
• 44:01
  a third breaking of the cable at sea, the cessation of the current in
• 44:06
  a well laid cable, the snapping of a superior cable, on the Great
• 44:08
  Eastern. All these availed not to foil the iron wool of Field, whose
• 44:13
  final triumph was that of mental energy in the application of science. For New
• 44:17
  York journalists. To Horace Greeley, the founder of the Tribune, I need
• 44:22
  not allude. His story is or ought to be in every school book.
• 44:28
  James Brooks, once the editor and proprietor of the Daily Express and later an
• 44:32
  eminent congressman, began life as a clerk in a store in Maine, and
• 44:37
  when twenty one, received for his pay a hogshead of New England run.
• 44:40
  He was so eager to go to college that he started for Waterville with his
• 44:45
  trunk on his back. And when he was graduated, he was so poor
• 44:47
  and plucky that he carried his trunk on his back to the station as he
• 44:51
  went home. When James Gordon Bennett was forty years old, he collected all
• 44:55
  his property three hundred dollars, and in a cellar with a board upon two
• 45:00
  barrels for a desk, himself his own type setter, office boy, publisher,
• 45:05
  newsboy, clerk, editor, proofreader, and printer's devil, he started
• 45:09
  the New York Herald. He did this after many attempts and defeats in trying
• 45:15
  to follow the routine instead of doing his own way. Never was any man's
• 45:20
  early career a better illustration of Wendell Phillips's dictum, what is defeat? Nothing
• 45:24
  but education, nothing but the first steps to something better. Thurlow Weed,
• 45:30
  who was a journalist for fifty seven years, strong, sensible, genial,
• 45:35
  tactful, and of magnificent physique, who did so much to shape public policy
• 45:39
  in the Empire State, tells a most romantic story of his boyhood. I
• 45:45
  cannot ascertain how much schooling I got at Catskill. Probably less than a year,
• 45:50
  certainly not a year and a half, and this was when I was
• 45:52
  not more than five or six years old. I felt a necessity at an
• 45:57
  early age of trying to do something for my own support. My first employment
• 46:02
  was in sugar making, an occupation to which I became much attached. I
• 46:07
  now look with great pleasure upon the days and nights passed in a sap bush.
• 46:12
  The want of shoes, which as the snow was deep, was no
• 46:15
  small privation, was the only drawback upon my happiness. I used, however,
• 46:22
  to tie pieces of an old rag carpet around my feet and got along
• 46:25
  pretty well chopping wood and gathering up sap. But when the spring advanced and
• 46:30
  bare ground appeared in spots, I threw off the old carpet encumbrance and did
• 46:36
  my work barefoot. There is much leisure time for boys who are making maple
• 46:40
  sugar. I devoted this time to reading when I could obtain books, But
• 46:45
  the farmers of that period had few or no books, saved their bibles.
• 46:50
  I borrowed books whenever and wherever I could. I heard that a neighbor three
• 46:54
  miles off had borrowed from a still more distant neighbor a book of great interest.
• 47:00
  I started off barefoot in the snow to obtain the treasure. There were
• 47:06
  spots of bare ground upon which I would stop to warm my feet, and
• 47:10
  there were also along the road occasional lengths of log fence, from which the
• 47:15
  snow had melted, and upon which it was a luxury to walk. The
• 47:19
  book was at home, and the good people consented, upon my promise that
• 47:22
  it should be neither torn nor soiled, to lend it to me. In
• 47:27
  returning with the prize, I was too happy to think of the snow or
• 47:30
  my naked feet. Candles were then among the luxuries not the necessaries of life.
• 47:37
  If boys, instead of going to bed after dark, wanted to read,
• 47:40
  they supplied themselves with pine knots, by the light of which in a
• 47:45
  horizontal position, they pursued their studies. In this manner. With my body
• 47:50
  in the sugar house and my head out of doors, where the fat pine
• 47:53
  was blazing, I read with intense interest the book I had borrowed, History
• 47:58
  of the French Revolution. Weed's next earning was in an iron foundry at Onondaga.
• 48:05
  My business was after a casting to temper and prepare the molding dogs myself.
• 48:10
  This was night and day work. We ate salt, pork and rye
• 48:15
  in Indian bread three times a day, and slept on straw in bunks.
• 48:20
  I liked the excitement of a furnace life. When he went to the Albany
• 48:24
  Argus to learn the printing business, he worked from five in the morning till
• 48:29
  nine at night. From humblest beginnings, the more difficulties one has to encounter
• 48:35
  within and without, the more significant, and the higher in inspiration his life
• 48:39
  will be. Horace Bushnell. The story of Weed and of Greeley is not
• 48:45
  an uncommon one in America. Some of the most eminent men on the globe
• 48:50
  have struggled with poverty in early life and triumphed over it. The astronomer Kepler,
• 48:54
  whose name can never die, was kept in constant anxieties, and he
• 48:59
  told fortunes by astrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology, as the daughter
• 49:04
  of astronomy, ought to keep her mother all sorts of service he had to
• 49:07
  accept. He made almanacs and worked for anyone who would pay him. Linnaeus
• 49:14
  was so poor when getting his education that he had to mend his shoes with
• 49:16
  folded paper, and often had to beg his meals of his friends. During
• 49:22
  the ten years in which he made his greatest discoveries, Isaac Newton could hardly
• 49:25
  pay two shillings a week to the Royal Society, of which he was a
• 49:30
  member. Some of his friends wanted to get him excused from this payment,
• 49:34
  but he would not allow them to act. Humphrey Davy had but a slender
• 49:38
  chance to acquire great scientific knowledge. Yet he had true metal in him,
• 49:43
  and he made even old pans, kettles, and bottles contribute to his success.
• 49:47
  As he experimented and studied in the attic of the apothecary store where he
• 49:52
  worked. George Stephenson was one of eight children whose parents were so poor that
• 49:57
  all lived in a single room. George had to watch cows for a neighbor,
• 50:00
  but he managed to get time to make engines of clay with hemlock sticks
• 50:05
  for pipes. At seventeen, he had charge of an engine with his father
• 50:09
  for firemen. He could neither read nor write, but the engine was his
• 50:14
  teacher, and he a faithful student. While the other hands were playing games
• 50:19
  or loafing in liquor shops during the holidays, George was taking his machine to
• 50:22
  pieces, cleaning it, studying it, and making experiments in engines. When
• 50:29
  he had become famous as a great inventor of improvements in engines, those who
• 50:32
  had loafed and played called him lucky. It was by steadfastly keeping at it,
• 50:37
  by indomitable will power, that these men won their positions in life.
• 50:43
  We rise by the things that are under our feet, by what we have
• 50:45
  mastered of good, or gain talent in tatters. Among the companions of Sir
• 50:52
  Joshua Reynolds, while he was studying his art at Rome, was a fellow
• 50:55
  pupil of the name of Astley. They made an excursion with some others on
• 51:00
  a sultry day, and all except Astley took off their coats. After several
• 51:07
  taunts, he was persuaded to do the same, and displayed on the back
• 51:09
  of his waistcoat of foaming waterfall. Distress had compelled him to patch his clothes
• 51:15
  with one of his own landscapes. James Sharpy's, the celebrated blacksmith artist of
• 51:21
  England, was very poor, but he often rose at three o'clock to copy
• 51:24
  books he could not buy. He would walk eighteen miles to Manchester and back
• 51:30
  after a hard day's work, to buy a shillings worth of artists materials.
• 51:35
  He would ask for the heaviest work in the blacksmith's shop, because it took
• 51:37
  a longer time to heat at the forge, and he could thus have many
• 51:42
  spare minutes to study the precious book, which he propped up against the chimney.
• 51:45
  He was a great miser of spare moments, and used everyone as though
• 51:50
  he might never see another. He devoted his leisure hours for five years to
• 51:54
  that wonderful production the Forge, copies of which are to be seen in many
• 51:59
  a home. It was by one unwavering aim carried out by an iron will,
• 52:04
  that he wrought out his life triumph, that boy will beat me one
• 52:07
  day. Set an old painter as he watched a little fellow named michael Angelo
• 52:13
  making drawings of pot and brushes, easel and stool, and other articles in
• 52:16
  the studio. The barefoot boy did persevere until he had overcome every difficulty and
• 52:22
  become the greatest master of art the world has known. Although michael Angelo made
• 52:27
  himself immortal in three different occupations, and his fame might well rest upon his
• 52:31
  Dome of Saint Peter as an architect, upon his moses as a sculptor,
• 52:36
  or upon his last judgment as a painter, Yet refined by his correspondence now
• 52:40
  in the British Museum, that when he was at work on his colossal bronze
• 52:45
  statue of Pope Julius two, he was so poor that he could not have
• 52:49
  his younger brother come to visit him at Bologna, because he had but one
• 52:52
  bed in which he ended. Three of his assistants slept together. Yet the
• 53:00
  star of an unconquered will arose in his breast, serene and resolute and still
• 53:05
  and calm, and self possessed concentrated energy. The struggles and triumphs of those
• 53:12
  who are bound to win is a never ending tail. Nor will the procession
• 53:15
  of enthusiastic workers see, so long as the globe is turning on its axle.
• 53:21
  Say what we will of genius specialized in a hundred callings. Yet the
• 53:24
  fact remains that no amount of genius has ever availed upon the earth, unless
• 53:30
  enforced by will power to overcome the obstacles that hedge about. Every one who
• 53:34
  would rise above the circumstances in which he was born or become greater than his
• 53:37
  calling, was not Virgil the son of a porter, Horace of a shopkeeper,
• 53:43
  Demosthenes of a cutler, Milton of a money scrivener, Shakespeare of a
• 53:46
  wolf stapler, and Cromwell of a brewer. Ben Johnson, when following his
• 53:52
  trade of a mason, worked on Lincoln's Inn in London, with trowel in
• 53:55
  hand and a book in his pocket. Joseph Hunter was a car carepenter in
• 54:00
  Youth. Robert Burns a plowman, Keats a druggist, Thomas Carlyle and Hugh
• 54:05
  Miller Masons, Dante and Descartes were soldiers. Cardinal Wolsey, Defoe and Kirk
• 54:12
  White were Butcher's sons. Faraday was the son of a hostler and his teacher,
• 54:16
  Humphrey Davy was an apprentice to an apothecary. Kepler was a waiter boy
• 54:22
  in a German hotel, Bunyan a tinker, Copernicus the son of a Polish
• 54:27
  baker. They rose by being greater than their callings, as Arkwright rose above
• 54:31
  mere barbering, Bunyan above tinkering, Wilson above shoemaking, Lincoln above rail splitting,
• 54:37
  and Grant above tanning. By being first class barbers, tinkers, shoemakers,
• 54:43
  rail splitters, tanners, they acquired the power which enabled them to become
• 54:47
  great inventors, authors, statesmen, generals. John Kay, the inventor of
• 54:53
  the fly shuttle, James Hargreaves, who introduced the spinning Jenny and Samuel Compton,
• 54:59
  who originated mule spinning. Were all artisans, uneducated and poor, but
• 55:04
  were endowed with natural faculties which enabled them to make a more enduring impression upon
• 55:07
  the world than anything that could have been done by the mere power of scholarship
• 55:12
  or wealth. It cannot be said of any of these great names that their
• 55:15
  individual courses in life would have been what they were had there been lacking a
• 55:20
  superble power, resistless as the tide to bear them upward and onward. Let
• 55:24
  fortune empty her whole quiver on me. I have a soul that, like
• 55:29
  an ample shield, can take in all, and virgin enough for more.
• 55:32
  Fate was not mine, nor am I. Fate's souls know no conquerors.
• 55:37
  Dryden, Chapter six, Staying power, Never give up. There are chances
• 55:45
  and changes helping the hopeful a hundred to one, and through the chaos,
• 55:50
  high wisdom arranges ever success if you'll only hold on never give up, for
• 55:55
  the wisest is boldest, knowing that providence mingles the cup, and of all
• 56:00
  maxims the best as the oldest is the stern watchword of never give up.
• 56:05
  Be firm. One constant element of luck is genuine, solid, old teutonic
• 56:09
  pluck. Holmes. Success in most things depends on knowing how long it takes
• 56:15
  to succeed Montesquieu. The power to hold on is characteristic of all men who
• 56:22
  have accomplished anything great. They may lack in some other particular, have many
• 56:27
  weaknesses or eccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent from a successful
• 56:31
  man, no matter what opposition he meets or what discouragement overtakes him. Drudgery
• 56:37
  cannot disgust him, Obstacles cannot discourage him, Labor cannot weary him. Misfortune,
• 56:44
  sorrow and reverses cannot harm him. It is not so much brilliancy of
• 56:47
  intellect or fertility of resource as persistency of effort, constancy of purpose that makes
• 56:53
  a great man. Those who succeed in life are the men and women who
• 56:59
  keep everlastingly added, who do not believe themselves geniuses, but who know that
• 57:02
  if they ever accomplish anything, they must do it by determined and persistent industry.
• 57:07
  Audubon, after years of forest life, had two hundred of his priceless
• 57:12
  drawings destroyed by mice. A poignant flame, he relates, pierced my brain
• 57:17
  like an arrow of fire, and for several weeks I was prostrated with fever.
• 57:22
  At length, physical and moral strength awoke within me again. I took
• 57:27
  my gun, my game bag, my portfolio, and my pencils, and
• 57:31
  plunged once more into the depths of the forests. All are familiar with the
• 57:37
  misfortune of Carlyle, while writing his history of the French Revolution. After the
• 57:42
  first volume was ready for the press. He loaned the manuscript to a neighbor,
• 57:45
  who left it lying on the floor, and the servant girl took it
• 57:49
  to kindle the fire. It was a bitter disappointment, but Carlyle was not
• 57:53
  the man to give up. After many months of pouring over hundreds of volumes
• 57:58
  of authorities and scores of manuscripts, he reproduced that which had burned in a
• 58:01
  few minutes. Proceed, and light will dawn. The slightest acquaintance with literary
• 58:08
  history would bring to light a multitude of heroes of poverty or misfortune, of
• 58:13
  men and women perplexed and disheartened, who have yet aroused themselves to new effort
• 58:17
  at every new obstacle. It is related by Arago that he found under the
• 58:22
  cover of a text book he was binding a short note from Dalembert to a
• 58:25
  student. Go On, sir, go on, The difficulties you meet with
• 58:31
  will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn and shine
• 58:37
  with increasing clearness on your path. That Maxim said, Arago was my greatest
• 58:43
  master in mathematics. Had Balzac been easily discouraged, he would have hesitated at
• 58:49
  the words of warning given by his father. Do you know that in literature
• 58:52
  a man must be either a king or a beggar? Very well was the
• 58:58
  reply, I will be a king. His parents left him to his fate
• 59:01
  in a garret. For ten years, he fought terrible battles with hardship and
• 59:07
  poverty, but won a great victory at last. He won it after producing
• 59:10
  forty novels that did not win. Zola's early manhood witnessed a bitter struggle against
• 59:16
  poverty and deprivation. Until twenty he was a spoiled child, but on his
• 59:22
  father's death, he and his mother began the battle of life in Paris.
• 59:27
  Of his dark time, Zola himself says, often I went hungry for so
• 59:31
  long that it seemed as if I must die. I scarcely tasted meat from
• 59:37
  one month's end to another, and for two days I lived on three apples.
• 59:42
  Fire, even on the coldest nights, was an undreamed of luxury,
• 59:45
  And I was the happiest man in Paris when I could get a candle by
• 59:49
  the light of which I might study at night. Samuel Johnson's bare feet at
• 59:53
  Oxford showed through the holes in his shoes, yet he threw out at his
• 59:58
  window the new pair that some one left at his door. He lived for
• 1:00:01
  a time in London on nine cents a day. For thirteen years he had
• 1:00:07
  a hard struggle with want. John Locke once lived on bread and water in
• 1:00:10
  a Dutch garret, and Hayne slept many a night on a barn floor with
• 1:00:15
  only a book for his pillow. It was to poverty as a thorn urging
• 1:00:19
  the breast of Harriet Martineau that we owe her writings. There are no more
• 1:00:23
  interesting pages in biography than those which record how Emerson, as a child was
• 1:00:29
  unable to read the second volume of a certain book because his widowed mother could
• 1:00:32
  not afford the amount five cents necessary to obtain it from the circulating library.
• 1:00:38
  Poor fellow, said Emerson, as he looked at his delicately reared little son,
• 1:00:44
  how much he loses by not having to go through the hard experiences I
• 1:00:46
  had in my youth. It was through the necessity laid upon him to earn
• 1:00:51
  that Emerson made his first great success in life as a teacher. I know,
• 1:00:55
  he said, no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as
• 1:01:00
  that tenacity of purpose which, through all change of companions or parties or fortunes.
• 1:01:06
  Changes, never bates no jot of heart or hope, but wearies out
• 1:01:09
  opposition and arrives at its port. She can never succeed. Louisa Alcott earned
• 1:01:16
  two hundred thousand dollars by her pen, Yet when she was first dreaming of
• 1:01:21
  her power, her father handed her a manuscript one day that had been rejected
• 1:01:25
  by mister Fields, editor of the Atlantic, with the message tell Louisa to
• 1:01:30
  stick to her teaching. She can never succeed as a writer. Tell him
• 1:01:36
  I will succeed as a writer, and some day I shall write for the
• 1:01:38
  Atlantic. Not long after, she wrote for the Atlantic a poem that Longfellow
• 1:01:44
  attributed to Emerson. And there came a time when she wrote in her diary
• 1:01:50
  twenty years ago, I resolved to make the family independent if I could.
• 1:01:53
  At forty that is done. Debt's all paid, even the outlawed ones,
• 1:02:00
  and we have enough to be comfortable. It has cost me my health.
• 1:02:04
  Perhaps I trample on impossibilities. So it was said by Lord Chatham, Why,
• 1:02:10
  asked Mirabeaux, should we call ourselves men? Unless it be to succeed
• 1:02:15
  in everything? Everywhere? It is all very well, said Charles J.
• 1:02:20
  Fox. To tell me that a young man has distinguished himself by a brilliant
• 1:02:23
  first speech, he may go unsatisfied with his first triumph. But show me
• 1:02:29
  a young man who has not succeeded at first and has then gone on,
• 1:02:32
  and I will back that man to do better than those who succeeded at the
• 1:02:36
  first trial. Cobden broke down completely the first time he appeared on a platform
• 1:02:40
  in Manchester, and the chairman apologized for him. But he did not give
• 1:02:45
  up speaking until every poor man in England had a larger, better and cheaper
• 1:02:49
  loaf. Young Disraeli, sprung from a hated and persecuted race, pushed his
• 1:02:53
  way up through the middle classes and upper classes until he stood self poised upon
• 1:02:59
  the top most round of political and social power. At first he was scoffed
• 1:03:04
  at, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from the House of Commons. He simply
• 1:03:07
  said, the time will come when you will hear me. The time did
• 1:03:12
  come, and he swayed the scepter of England for a quarter of a century.
• 1:03:16
  How massive was the incalculable reserve power of Lincoln as a youth or of
• 1:03:22
  President Garfield woodchopper, bell ringer, and sweeper general In college, persistent purpose.
• 1:03:29
  We hear a great deal of talk about genius, talent, luck,
• 1:03:32
  chance, cleverness, and fine manners playing a large part in one's success,
• 1:03:38
  leaving out luck and chance. All these elements are important factors. Yet the
• 1:03:44
  possession of any or all of them, unaccompanied by a definite aim, a
• 1:03:47
  determined purpose, will not ensure success. Men drift into business, they drift
• 1:03:54
  into society, They drift into politics. They drift into what they fondly and
• 1:04:00
  but vainly imagine is religion. If winds and tides are favorable, all is
• 1:04:05
  well. If not, all is wrong, Stalker says, most men merely
• 1:04:12
  drift through life, and the work they do is determined by a hundred different
• 1:04:15
  circumstances. They might as well be doing anything else, or they would prefer
• 1:04:19
  to be doing nothing at all. Yet, whatever else may have been lacking
• 1:04:24
  in the giants of the race, the men who have been conspicuously successful have
• 1:04:28
  all had one characteristic in common, doggedness and persistence of purpose. It does
• 1:04:32
  not matter how clever a youth may be, whether he leads his class in
• 1:04:36
  college or outshines all the other boys in his community. He will never succeed
• 1:04:41
  if he lacks this essential of determined persistence. Many men who might have made
• 1:04:45
  brilliant musicians, artists, teachers, lawyers, able physicians, or surgeons,
• 1:04:50
  in spite of predictions to the contrary, have fallen short of success because deficient
• 1:04:56
  in this quality. Persistency of purpose is a power. It creates confidence in
• 1:05:01
  others. Everybody believes in a determined man. When he undertakes anything, his
• 1:05:08
  battle is half won, because not only he himself, but everyone who knows
• 1:05:13
  him believes that he will accomplish whatever he sets out to do. People know
• 1:05:17
  that it is useless to oppose a man who uses his stumbling blocks as stepping
• 1:05:20
  stones, who is not afraid of defeat, who never, in spite of
• 1:05:25
  calony or criticism, shrinks from his task, who never shirks responsibility, who
• 1:05:30
  always keeps his compass pointed to the north star of his purpose, no matter
• 1:05:33
  what storms may rage about him. The persistent man never stops to consider whether
• 1:05:40
  he is succeeding or not. The only question with him is how to push
• 1:05:44
  ahead, to get a little farther along, a little nearer his goal,
• 1:05:47
  whether it lead over mountains, rivers, or morasses, he must reach it.
• 1:05:54
  Every other consideration is sacrificed to this one dominant purpose. The success of
• 1:06:00
  a dull or average youth and the failure of a brilliant one is a constant
• 1:06:03
  surprise in American history. But if the different cases are closely analyzed, we
• 1:06:09
  shall find that the explanation lies in the staying power of the seemingly dull boy,
• 1:06:13
  the ability to stand firm as a rock under all circumstances, to allow
• 1:06:17
  nothing to divert him from his purpose. Three necessary things. Three things are
• 1:06:24
  necessary, said Charles Sumner. First backbone, second backbone, third backbone.
• 1:06:31
  A good chance alone is nothing. Education is nothing without strong and vigorous resolution
• 1:06:38
  and stamina to make one accomplish something in the world. An encouraging start is
• 1:06:43
  nothing without backbone. A man who cannot stand erect, who wobbles first one
• 1:06:47
  way and then the other, who has no opinion of his own or courage
• 1:06:51
  to think his own thought, is of very little use in this world.
• 1:06:56
  It is grit, It is perseverance. It is moral and courage that governed
• 1:07:00
  the world. At the trial of the seven Bishops of the Church of England
• 1:07:04
  for refusing to aid the King to overthrow the Protestant faith. It was necessary
• 1:07:10
  to watch the officers at the doors, lest they send food to some juryman
• 1:07:14
  and aid him to starve the others into an agreement. Nothing was allowed to
• 1:07:17
  be sent in but water for the jurymen to wash in, and they were
• 1:07:21
  so thirsty they drank it up. At first nine were for a quitting and
• 1:07:27
  three for convicting. Two of the minority soon gave way. The third.
• 1:07:31
  Arnold was obstinate. He declined to argue. Austin said to him, look
• 1:07:38
  at me, I am the largest and the strongest of the twelve, And
• 1:07:42
  before I will find such a petition as this libel, here will I stay
• 1:07:45
  till I am no bigger than a tobacco pipe. Arnold yielded at six in
• 1:07:49
  the morning, success against odds. Yes to this thought, I hold with
• 1:07:56
  firm persistence, the last result of Wisdom's stamps. It true. He only
• 1:08:00
  earns his freedom and existence, who daily conquers them anew gerda. It is
• 1:08:06
  interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, says Irving,
• 1:08:11
  springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand
• 1:08:16
  obstacles. Opposing circumstances create strength. Opposition gives us greater power of resistance to
• 1:08:26
  overcome. One barrier gives us greater ability to overcome the next. History is
• 1:08:30
  full of examples of men and women who have redeemed themselves from disgrace, poverty,
• 1:08:35
  and misfortune by the firm resolution of an iron will. Success is not
• 1:08:41
  measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered and
• 1:08:45
  the courage with which he has maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. Not the
• 1:08:50
  distance we have run, but the obstacles we have overcome, the disadvantages under
• 1:08:55
  which we have made The race will decide the prizes. It is to eat,
• 1:09:00
  says Henry Ward Beecher, that turns bone to flint and gristle to muscle,
• 1:09:04
  and makes men invincible and form those heroic natures that are now in ascendency
• 1:09:09
  in the world. Do not then be afraid of defeat. You are never
• 1:09:15
  so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause. Governor Seymour of
• 1:09:19
  New York, a man of great force and character, said, in reviewing
• 1:09:24
  his life, if I were to wipe out twenty acts, what should they
• 1:09:27
  be should it be my business mistakes, my foolish acts, For I suppose
• 1:09:31
  all do foolish acts occasionally, my grievances. No, For after all,
• 1:09:38
  these are the very things by which I have profited. So I finally concluded
• 1:09:43
  I should expunge instead of my mistakes, my triumphs. I could not afford
• 1:09:48
  to dismiss the tonic of mortification, the refinement of sorrow. I needed them,
• 1:09:53
  every one, every condition. Be it what it may says. Channing
• 1:09:58
  has hardships, hazards, pains. We try to escape them. We pine
• 1:10:02
  for a sheltered lot, for a smooth path, for cheering friends and unbroken
• 1:10:08
  success. But providence ordained storms, disasters, hostilities, sufferings, and the
• 1:10:15
  great question whether we shall live to any purpose or not, whether we shall
• 1:10:17
  grow strong in mind and heart or be weak and pitiable, depends on nothing
• 1:10:23
  so much as on our use of the adverse circumstances. Outward evils are designed
• 1:10:28
  to school our passions and to rouse our faculties and virtues into intenser action.
• 1:10:33
  Sometimes they seem to create new powers. Difficulty is the element, and resistance
• 1:10:40
  the true work of man self. Culture never goes on so fast as when
• 1:10:45
  embarrassed circumstances, the opposition of men, or the elements, unexpected changes of
• 1:10:49
  the times, or other forms of suffering. Instead of disheartening, throw us
• 1:10:54
  on our inward resources, turn us for strength to God, clear up to
• 1:10:58
  us the great purpose of life, and inspire calm resolution. No greatness or
• 1:11:02
  goodness is worth much unless tried in these fires. Better to stem with heart
• 1:11:08
  and hand the roaring tide of life than lie unmindful on its flowery strand of
• 1:11:15
  God's occasions, drifting by. Better with naked nerve to bear the needles of
• 1:11:19
  this goading air than in the lap of sensual ease. Forego the godlike power
• 1:11:24
  to do the godlike aim to know Wittier, Chapter seven, The Degree of
• 1:11:31
  O O. When Moody first visited Ireland, he was introduced by a friend
• 1:11:35
  to an Irish merchant, who asked, at once is he and OO?
• 1:11:41
  Out and out? That was what OO stood for, out and out for
• 1:11:45
  God. That was what this merchant meant. He indeed, is but a
• 1:11:50
  wooden man and a poor stick at that, who is decided in everything else,
• 1:11:55
  but who never knows where he is at in all moral relations, being
• 1:11:59
  religiously nowhere. The early books of the Hebrews have much to say about the
• 1:12:03
  valley of decision and the development of out and out moral character. Willfully lacking
• 1:12:10
  in a well balanced will. Power is the man who stands side by side
• 1:12:13
  with moral evil personified in hands with it, to serve it willingly as a
• 1:12:17
  tool and servant morally made in God's image. What is more sane, more
• 1:12:23
  wholesome, more fitting for a man than his rising up promptly decidedly to make
• 1:12:28
  the divine will his own will in all moral action, to take it as
• 1:12:31
  the supreme guide to go by. It is the glory of the human will
• 1:12:35
  to coincide with the divine will. Doing this a man's iron will, instead
• 1:12:41
  of being a malignant, selfish power, will be useful in uplifting mankind.
• 1:12:45
  God has spoken, or he has not spoken. If he has spoken,
• 1:12:50
  the wise will hear. We search the world for truth. We call the
• 1:12:56
  good, the pure, the beautiful, from graven stone and written role,
• 1:13:00
  from all the flower fields of the soul, and weary seekers of the best,
• 1:13:03
  we come back laden from our quest to find that all the sages said
• 1:13:08
  is in the book our mother read Whittier O Earth that blooms and birds that
• 1:13:14
  sing, O stars that shine when all is dark. In type and symbol,
• 1:13:18
  thou dost bring the life divine, and bid us hark, that we
• 1:13:23
  may catch the chance sublime and rising past the bounds of time. So shall
• 1:13:28
  we win the gold divine, our immortality. Carol Norton