Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden
Herschel played the oboe for his meals. Marshal Ney, the "bravest of the brave," rose from the ranks. His great industry gained for him the name of "The Indefatigable." Soult served fourteen years before he was made a sergeant. When made Foreign Minister of France he knew very little of geography, even. Richard Cobden was a boy in a London warehouse. His first speech in Parliament was a complete failure; but he was not afraid of defeat, and soon became one of the greatest orators of his day. Seven shoemakers sat in Congress during the first century of our government: Roger Sherman, Henry Wilson, Gideon Lee, William Graham, John Halley, H. P. Baldwin, and Daniel Sheffey.
A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements.
The man who has not fought his way up to his own loaf, and does not bear the scar of desperate conflict, does not know the highest meaning of success.
The money acquired by those who have thus struggled upward to success is not their only, or indeed their chief reward. When, after years of toil, of opposition, of ridicule, of repeated failure, Cyrus W. Field placed his hand upon the telegraph instrument ticking a message under the sea, think you that the electric thrill passed no further than the tips of his fingers? When Thomas A. Edison demonstrated in Menlo Park that the electric light had at last been developed into a commercial success, do you suppose those bright rays failed to illuminate the inmost recesses of his soul? Edward Everett said: "There are occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of enjoyment in a single moment. I can fancy the emotion of Galileo when, first raising the newly constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy of Copernicus, and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the moon. It was such another moment as that when the immortal printers of Mentz and Strasburg received the first copy of the Bible into their hands, the work of their divine art; like that when Columbus, through the gray dawn of the 12th of October, 1492, beheld the shores of San Salvador; like that when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of Newton; like that when Franklin saw, by the stiffening fibres of the hemp cord of his kite, that he held the lightning in his grasp, like that when Leverrier received back from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was found."
"Observe yon tree in your neighbor's garden," says Zanoni to Viola in Bulwer's novel. "Look how it grows up, crooked and distorted. Some wind scattered the germ, from which it sprung, in the clefts of the rock. Choked up and walled round by crags and buildings, by nature and man, its life has been one struggle for the light. You see how it has writhed and twisted,—how, meeting the barrier in one spot, it has labored and worked, stem and branch, towards the clear skies at last. What has preserved it through each disfavor of birth and circumstances—why are its leaves as green and fair as those of the vine behind you, which, with all its arms, can embrace the open sunshine? My child, because of the very instinct that impelled the struggle,—because the labor for the light won to the light at length. So with a gallant heart, through every adverse accident of sorrow, and of fate, to turn to the sun, to strive for the heaven; this it is that gives knowledge to the strong and happiness to the weak."
"Each petty hand
Can steer a ship becalmed; but he that will
Govern her and carry her to her ends, must know
His tides, his currents; how to shift his sails;
What she will bear in foul, what in fair weathers;
What her springs are, her leaks, and how to stop them;
What strands, what shelves, what rocks to threaten her;
The forces and the natures of all winds,
Gusts, storms, and tempests; when her keel plows hell,
And deck knocks heaven; then to manage her
Becomes the name and office of a pilot."
CHAPTER V.
USES OF OBSTACLES.
Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.—EMERSON.
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.—SPURGEON.
The good are better made by ill,
As odors crushed are sweeter still.
ROGERS.
Aromatic plants bestow
No spicy fragrance while they grow;
But crushed or trodden to the ground,
Diffuse their balmy sweets around.
GOLDSMITH.
As night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.—YOUNG.
There is no possible success without some opposition as a fulcrum: force is always aggressive and crowds something.—HOLMES.
The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.—HORACE BUSHMILL.
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.—HORACE.
For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.—SIRACH.
Though losses and crosses be lessons right severe,
There's wit there ye'll get there, ye'll find no other where.
BURNS.
Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.—HAZLITT.
"Adversity is the prosperity of the great."
No man ever worked his way in a dead calm.—JOHN NEAL.
"Kites rise against, not with, the wind."
"Many and many a time since," said Harriet Martineau, referring to her father's failure in business, "have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing and economizing and growing narrower every year; whereas, by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won friends, reputation, and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad and at home; in short, have truly lived instead of vegetating."
JOHN BUNYAN
"Sculptor of souls, I lift to Thee
Encumbered heart and hands;
Spare not the chisel, set me free,
However dear the bands.
"I do believe God wanted a grand poem of that man," said George Macdonald of Milton, "and so blinded him that he might be able to write it."
Two of the three greatest epic poets of the world were blind,—Homer and Milton; while the third, Dante, was in his later years nearly, if not altogether, blind. It almost seems as though some great characters had been physically crippled in certain respects so that they would not dissipate their energy, but concentrate it all in one direction.
"I have been beaten, but not cast down," said Thiers, after making a complete failure of his first speech in the Chamber of Deputies. "I am making my first essay in arms. In the tribune, as under fire, a defeat is as useful as a victory."
A distinguished investigator in science said that when he encountered an apparently insuperable obstacle, he usually found himself upon the brink of some discovery.
"Returned with thanks" has made many an author. Failure often leads a man to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormant purpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. Men of mettle turn disappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearl the sand which annoys it.
"Let