The answer they received was, that Cervantes had borne arms in the service of his country, and was now old and poor.

"What!" exclaimed one of the Frenchmen, "is not Senor Cervantes in good circumstances?
Why is he not maintained, then, out of the public treasury ?" "Heaven forbid!" was the reply, "that his necessities should be ever relieved, if it is those which make him write; since it is his poverty that makes the world rich!" [214] It is not prosperity so much as adversity, not wealth so much as poverty, that stimulates the perseverance of strong and healthy natures, rouses their energy and developes their character.

Burke said of himself: "I was not rocked, and swaddled, and dandled into a legislator.
'NITOR IN ADVERSUM' is the motto for a man like you." Some men only require a great difficulty set in their way to exhibit the force of their character and genius; and that difficulty once conquered becomes one of the greatest incentives to their further progress.
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure.

By far the best experience of men is made up of their remembered failures in dealing with others in the affairs of life.

Such failures, in sensible men, incite to better self-management, and greater tact and self-control, as a means of avoiding them in the future.