"A man a without a WILL says an anonymous writer,
is like an engine without steam. Genius unexecuted is no more genius than a
bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks. Most men fail, not through lack of
education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged
determination, from lack of dauntless will. Strength of will is the test of a
young man’s possibilities. Can he will strong enough, and hold whatever he
undertakes with an iron grip? It is the iron grip that takes and holds. What chance
is there in this crowding, selfish, and greedy world, where everything is
pusher or pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip on life? The man who
would forge to the front in this competitive age must be a man of prompt and
determined decision.”
“There is hardly a reader, “says an experienced
educator, “who will not be able to recall the early life of at least one young
man whose childhood was spent in poverty, and who, in boyhood, expressed a firm
desire to secure a higher education. If, a little later, that desire became a
declared resolve, soon the avenues opened to that end. That desire and resolve
created an atmosphere which attracted the forces necessary to the attainment of
the purpose. Many of these young men will tell us that, as long as they were hoping
and striving and longing.”
“The history of the human progress is the story
of the triumph of persistence. Every known great figure has had to endure
tremendous trials and tribulations before reaching the heights of success and
achievement. That endurance and perseverance is what made them great. Ulysses
Grant, a young man unknown to fame, with neither money nor influence, with no
patrons or friends, in six years fought more battles, gained more victories,
captured more prisoners, took more spoils, commanded more men, than Napoleon
did in twenty years. “The great thing about him, “said Lincoln, “is cool
persistence.”
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