How is it that all these people do not achieve the successes to which
their mere thinking entitles them? I say, to which their mere
_thinking_ entitles them, because--I say it again--if you will put
them beside the great masters of affairs you will find that they have
as many ideas as have these captains of business. My young friend, it
is simply because they have not courage and constancy. Long ago I
catalogued the qualities that make up character, in relative
importance, as follows:
First: Sincerity; fidelity, the ability to be true--true to friends,
true to ideas, true to ideals, true to your task, true to the truth
Who shall deny that the martyrs Nero burned did not experience joys in
the consuming flame more delicate and sweet than ever thrilled epicure
or lover?
Second (and well-nigh first): Courage--the godlike quality that dreads
not; the unanalyzable thing in man that makes him execute his
conception--no matter how insane or absurd it may appear to others--if
it appears rational to him, and then stride ahead to his next great
deed, regardless of the gossips.
Third: Reserve--the power to hold one's forces in check, as a general
disposes his army in an engagement on which the fate of an empire or
of the world may depend.
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