Here you will learn Success Stories, Perseverance , Sweet Smell Of Success
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50.
For most of us, perseverance has
no other goal but this. It is the means for achieving the success that means a
fortune to us, that is to say which ensures the security of our future lives.
Only for a few commonplace minds is fortune merely the satisfaction of avarice.
The ease of soul that comes from the realization of one's ambitions is quite
unknown to them. With the transitory pleasure that comes from possession there
is always mingled for them the regret that they have not been able to make more,
and the displeasure of not being able to retain intact the treasure that they
have so painfully amassed.
Composure, the fruit of hopes crowned by success, is reserved exclusively for
those for whom fortune is a means and not an end.
For those whose ambition is limited to the possession of a certain sum of money
life be- comes devoid of all interest when once this desire is satisfied.
But for the man who desires to become possessed of a fortune, not to indulge in
idleness, but in order that he may set himself free from the shackles of a
poverty which compels him perforce to devote himself to routine duties, the
future will enlarge at the moment that his first real success takes place.
Finding himself no longer obliged to labor in order to provide for his daily
needs, he can set his face toward the accomplishment of something worth while.
Mastery of himself will be much less difficult to obtain when he is no longer
under the necessity of performing tasks in which he takes no interest, nor of
undertaking enterprises that gall his spirit.
He can now choose his goal instead of having it thrust upon him by
circumstances.
He will have all the leisure he needs for setting in motion or for stopping
certain trains of action and, the future being no longer a misery to him, he
will be free to practice that latent tenacity which never makes a sign that
reveals its presence, but bears fruit without fail in due season.
He will imitate the husbandman who, in the autumn, confides to the earth the
grain that shall sleep in it all winter long.
Sleep--no it is not sleep. This is merely the outward seeming. A secret work is
going forward in the heart of the grain, which bursts its envelop and allows the
precious shoot to spring toward the light.
It is exactly the case of an idea that is not forced to develop instantly under
the urge of a feverish haste.
Born in the brain of the man whose perseverance has already gained for him, if
not a fortune, at least the certainty of his bread-and-butter, this thought,
confided to the care of reflection, will undergo a period of germination the
length of which will be proportioned to the beauty of its blossoming.
For the right sort of man, fortune will be not merely the goal of his material
satisfaction, but also the lever which will enable him to move a thousand
obstacles.
It is not granted to every one to enter life through gates of gold, but each one
of us can surely better his position along the lines which seem preferable to
him.
Some demand of fate the happiness which seems to them to reside exclusively in
the outward advantages of wealth.
Let us leave to carping critics the task of blaming them for it.
Such people are in their way elements which tend to produce the welfare of
society as a whole.
By satisfying their pleasures they give to the workers of the world the
opportunity to earn their living. Every one of the industries fed by the luxury
of the rich keeps alive a swarm of laboring people, for whom the caprices of the
wealthy make it possible to take part, in their degree, in the joys of the
intellectual life.
It is a well-known fact that those whose work is devoted to producing luxuries
for the rich have highly developed artistic tastes.
For the majority of these people their trade is merely the means, while art is
the end.
Here is the reason of this. Numbers of the artisans whose work consists in
making luxuries of various kinds for the wealthy cherish aspirations of a far
higher order than the material 'toil to which they are constrained by the
necessity of earning their livelihood.
It is to the realization of this desire that they apply the surplus means that
are derived from the earnings of their daily toil.
It is by working steadily at some material task that most artists have been able
to provide the means which they needed in order to create the works of which
they dreamed.
It would therefore be unjust, from a social point of view, to condemn those
people who see in perseverance nothing but a means of obtaining a fortune of
which they appreciate the material advantages.
In the great piece of machinery which we call "society," they are the less vital
parts of the mechanism, but are still needed in order that everything should
run smoothly.
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