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The task now was to secure the safety of the party, and to that I must bend my energies and mental power and apply every bit of knowledge that experience of the Antarctic had given me.
The complete collection
The task now was to secure the safety of the party, and to that I must bend my energies and mental power and apply every bit of knowledge that experience of the Antarctic had given me.
Fear is only inverted faith; it is faith in evil instead of good.
At times we were almost disposed to give up, and try to content ourselves with our wretched lot; at others, we were firm and unbending in our determination to go.
You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man
The strength of our determination was about to be fully tested.
The hardships and dangers involved in the struggle give strength and toughness to the character, and enable it to stand firm in storm as well as in sunshine.
We have more will than wallet; but will is what we need.
As I look back on my struggle to write that little story, it seems to me that I must have had a prophetic vision of the good that would come of the undertaking, or I should surely have failed.
For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way.
If happiness is to be so measured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in a corner with folded hands and weep.
Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.
Every struggle is a victory.
Cease your complaining and fretting; none of these things which you blame are the cause of your poverty; the cause is within yourself, and where the cause is, there is the remedy.
I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship
Providence treats us like a generous father, and brings us up to labors, toils, and dangers; whereas the indulgence of a fond mother makes us weak and spiritless.
Fortune lashes and mangles us: well, let us endure it: it is not cruelty, it is a struggle, in which the oftener we engage the braver we shall become.
There are a thousand other instances in which application has conquered all obstacles, and proved that nothing which the mind has set itself to endure is difficult.
If you are beaten off, return again to the effort, and content yourself that your conduct is generally such as becomes a man.
each rational being can make every impediment in his way a proper matter for himself to act upon, and can use it for his guiding purpose, whatever it may be
Attribution contested
This is the passage behind the slogan the obstacle is the way, which Marcus never wrote. That phrase is the title of a 2014 book, and the sentence usually quoted with it -- the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way -- is Gregory Hays's 2002 translation, still in copyright. The thought is genuinely his; the memorable English is not.
the mind can convert and change everything that impedes its activity into matter for its action; hindrance in its work becomes its real help, and every obstruction makes for its progress
So few of us can understand what it takes to make a man—the man who will never say die; the man who will never give up
he kept his mind at full stretch like a bow, and never gave in to old age by growing slack
My dear Laelius and Scipio, we must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains.
And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long.
And yet, in spite of the opposition encountered, and the obstacles opposed to their acquisition of knowledge and their accumulation of property, the progress made by colored women along these lines has never been surpassed by that of any people in the history of the world.