If great success were possible only to men of great talents,
then there would be but little success in the world.
It has been said that talent is quite as much the ability to
stick to a thing, as the aptitude to do it better than another.
"I will fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer." This
statement of General Grant does not indicate the man of genius,
but it does show the man of indomitable perseverance, a
perseverance to which he owed all his success, for it is well
known that he was a very modest, and by no means a brilliant
man. The key to his character was perspicuity: the secret of his
success was perseverance.
"I will to-day thrash the Mexicans, or die a-trying!" was what
Sam Houston said to an aide, the morning of the battle of San
Jacinto. And he won.
The soldier who begins the battle in doubt is half beaten in
advance.
The man who loses heart after one failure is a fool to make a
beginning.
There is a great deal in good preparation, but there is a great
deal more in heroic perseverance. The man who declines to make a
beginning till everything he thinks he may need is ready for his
hand, is very apt to make a failure.
The greatest things have been achieved by the simplest means. It
is the ceaseless chopping that wears away the stone. The plodder
may be laughed at, and the brilliant man who accomplishes great
things at a leap admired; but we all remember the fable of the
tortoise and the hare; the latter, confident of her powers,
stopped to rest; the former, aware of his limitations,
persevered and toiled laboriously on--and he won the race.
We do not wish to be understood as underestimating genius. We
believe in it; but one of its strongest characteristics is
perseverance, and the next is its capacity to accomplish great
results with the simplest means.
"Easy come, easy go." Those things that are acquired without
much effort, are usually appreciated according to the effort
expended. Determination has a strong will; stubbornness has a
strong won't.The one is characterized by perseverance, and it
builds up; the other, having no purpose but blind self, ends in
destruction.
It is a fact at once remarkable and encouraging that no man of
great genius who has left his mark on his times, ever believed
that his success was due to gifts that lifted him above his
fellows. The means by which he rose were within the reach of
all, and perseverance was a prime requisite.
The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple
means, and the exercise of ordinary qualities. The common life
of everyday, with its cares, necessities, and duties, affords
ample opportunity for acquiring experience of the best kind; and
its most beaten paths provide the true worker with abundant
scope for effort and room for self-improvement. The road of
human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast
well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in
the truest spirit, will usually be the most successful.
Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is
not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will
find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as
the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators. In
the pursuit of even the highest branches of human inquiry, the
commoner qualities are found the most useful--such as common
sense, attention, application, and perseverance.
Genius may not be necessary, though even genius of the highest
sort does not disdain the use of these ordinary qualities. The
very greatest men have been among the least believers in the
power of genius, and as worldly wise and persevering as
successful men of the commoner sort. Some have even defined
genius to be only common sense intensified. A distinguished
teacher and president of a college spoke of it as the power of
making efforts. John Foster held it to be the power of lighting
one's own fire. Buffon said of genius, "It is patience."
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