And so, though skies may frown or smile,
Be diligent day by day;
Reward shall greet you after while
If you just keep pegging away.
This, then, is a proof of a well-trained mind, to delight in what is good, and to be annoyed at the opposite.—Cicero.
The Chinese tell of one of their countrymen, a student, who, disheartened by the difficulties in his way, threw down his book in despair, when, seeing a woman rubbing a crowbar on a stone, he inquired the reason, and was told that she wanted a needle, and thought she would rub down the crowbar till she got it small enough. Provoked by this example of patience to “try again,” he resumed his studies, and became one of the foremost scholars of the empire.
There never was so much room for the best as there is to-day.—Thayer.
After more than ten years of wandering through the unexplored depths of the primeval forests of America in the study of birds and animals, Audubon determined to publish the results of his painstaking energy. He went to Philadelphia with a portfolio of two hundred sheets, filled with colored delineations of about one thousand birds, drawn life-size. Being obliged to leave the city before making final arrangements as to their disposition, he placed his drawings in the warehouse of a friend. On his return in a few weeks he found to his utter dismay that the precious fruits of his wanderings had been utterly destroyed by rats. The shock threw him into a fever of several weeks’ duration, but with returning health his native energy came back, and taking up his gun and game-bag, his pencils and drawing-book, he went forward to the forests as gaily as if nothing had happened. He set to work again, pleased with the thought that he might now make better drawings than he had done before, and in three years his portfolio was refilled.
A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life.—Jean Ingelow.
A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market.—Lamb.