A great deal of useless sympathy is in this day expended upon those who start in life without social or monetary help. Those are most to be congratulated who have at the beginning a rough tussle with circumstances. John Ruskin sets it down as one of his calamities that in early life he had nothing to endure. A petted and dandled childhood makes a weak and insipid man. No brawn of character without compulsory exertion. The men who sit strong in their social, financial, and political elevations, are those who did their own climbing. Misfortune is a rough nurse but she raises giants. Let our young people, instead of succumbing to the influences that would keep them back and down, take them as the parallel bars, and dumb bells, and weights of a gymnasium, by which they are to get muscle for the strife. Consent not to beg your way to fortune, but achieve it. God is always on the side of the man who does his best. God helps the man who tries to overcome difficulties.
—Reverend Dr. Thomas De Witt Talmage
A deadly viper once bit a hole snipe's hide; But 'twas the viper, not the snipe, that died.
- dave
- El Paso, Texas, United States
- Native Texan · Navy Veteran · Various Scars and Tattoos · No Talent, but yet a Character
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