What! you won't! Very well; recollect, then, that I have been shot at more than a thousand times, and much nearer, before I arrived at the state in which you now find me!" The apprenticeship of difficulty is one which the greatest of men have had to serve.

It is usually the best stimulus and discipline of character.

It often evokes powers of action that, but for it, would have remained dormant.

As comets are sometimes revealed by eclipses, so heroes are brought to light by sudden calamity.

It seems as if, in certain cases, genius, like iron struck by the flint, needed the sharp and sudden blow of adversity to bring out the divine spark.