Here you will learn Success Stories, Perseverance , Sweet Smell Of Success
Page 41 of
50.
We have spoken so far only of those
who practice perseverance or, at least, who believe in practicing it in wholly
different degrees, and from all sorts of opposing points of view.
There is another class of people whose lot is still more lamentable than that of
the slaves of routine or those who have to persevere against their will.
There are those feeble folk who can not find the courage to accomplish any
series of efforts of any description whatever.
Such people are absolutely foredoomed to be the victims of an ill fortune whose
onward inarch they can not check.
If their means enable them to live without active work they will drag out an
existence filled with disappointments, for nothing in this world can be obtained
without effort, even the things which one gets in exchange for money.
Their unstable wiles will leave them no place for any real satisfaction, and
they will abandon every project as soon as they conceive it, always recoiling in
fear before the difficulties in the way of accomplishing it.
We must not fail to comprehend the truth of the saying that there is no pleasure
to be had without taking pains.
Every sort of amusement demands some continued effort.
Journeys can not be accomplished in comfort until they have been most carefully
thought over in advance, in order to avoid the occurrence of a thousand
complications, which, by running contrary to our plans, will modify the route we
have chosen, or utterly upset our scheme of connections.
The arts all call for a culture that can only be acquired at the cost of great
application.
The making of a fortune implies the necessity of sustained labor.
The same holds true in the case of our most common recreations, such as dancing,
or out- door games, all of which demand a series of preparatory efforts on our
part, in order to perfect ourselves in exercises, which, if poorly performed,
represent nothing but weariness that lacks all interest.
Perseverance is then the guiding virtue of our daily life.
It is to it, moreover, that we owe the up building or the preservation of our
fortunes on the solid basis of economy.
Every one knows the value and power of thrift.
Without perseverance it is practically impossible to practice this virtue.
It is designedly that we make use of the word impossible, because economics are
not added up out of large sums.
One very rarely has occasion to be economical with thousand franc notes, but one
is tempted twenty times a day to spend a piece of money of a negligible value,
if one considers it as a single coin, but of considerable importance when one
multiplies it indefinitely.
"The most practical form of economy," says J. B. Withson, "is not that which
deals with large sums. "Opportunities for paying out bank notes are relatively
rare, whereas we have occasion a hundred times a day for spending small coins,
which, taken separately, are certainly insignificant, but nevertheless, when
evening comes, form a total that, multiplied by 365, represents at the end of
the year quite a respectable sum."
And a little later he adds this judicious advice:
"If we are willing to act in absolute good faith toward ourselves, and will put
into the balance the small amount of pleasure that we have received from these
little expenditures against the importance of the total sum represented by
adding them together, we will have to confess to ourselves that, to use a homely
phrase, we 'have not had our money's worth.' "
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