Your Mind and How to Use It Part 13

"Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools."

"Circ.u.mstances! I _make_ circ.u.mstances!"--_Napoleon._

"He who fails only half wills."--_Suwarrow._

"That which the easiest becomes a habit in us is the will. Learn, then, to will strongly and decisively; thus fix your floating life, and leave it no longer to be carried hither and thither, like a withered leaf, by every wind that blows."

"Man owes his growth chiefly to that active striving of the will,--that encounter which we call effort,--and it is astonis.h.i.+ng to find how often results apparently impracticable are thus made possible. * * * It is will--force of purpose--that enables a man to do or be whatever he sets his mind upon being or doing."

 

"A strong, defiant purpose is many-handed and lays hold of whatever is near that can serve it; it has a magnetic purpose that draws to itself whatever is kindred. * * * Let it be your first study to teach the world that you are not wood and straw; that there is some iron in you."--_Munger._

"It's _dogged_ as does it."--_Yorks.h.i.+re Proverb._

"One talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it, as a thimbleful of powder in a rifle, the bore of whose barrel will give it direction, will do greater execution than a carload burned in the open air."--_O.S. Marden._

"Will may not endow man with talents or capacities; but it does one very important matter--it enables him to make the best, the very best, of his powers."--_Fothergill._

"Tender-handed stroke a nettle, And it stings you for your pains.

Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft as down remains."

"Don't flinch; don't foul; but hit the line hard."--_Roosevelt._

"The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be."