Overcoming

“ The first principle in overcoming is to give no thought whatever to that which is not desired. The more completely we can forget that which we wish to overcome, the better. The second principle is to give our whole attention to that something which we know we shall realize when we have overcome. ”

“ I have either got to overcome the world, or the world is going to overcome me. I have either got to conquer sin in me—or sin about me—and get it under my feet, or it is going to conquer me. A good many people are satisfied with one or two victories, and think that is all. I tell you, my dear friends, we have got to do something more than that. It is a battle all the time. We have this to encourage us: we are assured of victory at the end. ”

“ The attitude of overcoming is usually thought of as being inseparably connected with resistance, and as being directly antagonistic, in its action, toward that which is to be overcome. Nearly every person, when trying to overcome anything, begins to resist, begins to antagonize, begins to work against that which is not desired. ”

“ What if this moment of despair be but the beginning, or the fragment, of your whole life as this winning of the object that you now seek? Our theory maintains that, in fact, this is the case. That the fulfilment of the whole of a purpose may involve the defeat of a part of this very purpose, every experience of the beauty of tragedy, of the glory of courage, of the nobility of endurance, of the triumph over our own selves, empirically illustrates. ”

“ How many a success in after-days is reckoned but as one step in that ladder of ambition some boyish review has framed, perhaps, after all, destined to be the first and only one! With what triumph we hail some goal attained, some object of our wishes gained, less for its present benefit, than as the accomplishment of some youthful prophecy, when picturing to our hearts all that we would have in life, we whispered within us the flattery of success. ”

“ But this is not to be lightly begun, nor even immaturely conceived; and how many casualties may arise to mar altogether the execution of such a project! how many casualties, even at the best, may procrastinate it to the languor of age, and the energies slackened by long familiarity with the crosses and contests of life! Often, when through youth and manhood we imagine we are cherishing our concluding triumph, we are only nursing our latest disappointment. ”

“ It is the time for the last move, the time for the mopping-up, as you have called it, the time to show the world that you have won what you have won, not by brute passion and blind luck, jut by strength of will and cleanness of mind. ”

“ They will pass even more quickly than you have passed! It is true that, in any case, within a few years you would have ceased to be. But these few years of life would have been your universe and your strength. ”

“ Through the waste of all the weary ages, how many men, he wondered, even in this desolate spot, had brooded on the hope of such advantage, and gone forth, but few to triumph, the most to fail, and all of them to learn within some short years that failure and success are one when forgetfulness has covered them. ”

“ The first use I made of our rebound was to say with intensity: 'What will you do if he does?'
'Does publish the picture?' There was an instant charm to me in the privacy of her full collapse and the sudden high tide of our common defeat. 'What can I? It's all very well; but there's nothing to be done. I want never to see him again. ”

“ Some felt themselves to be securely mounting the first rung of the long ladder of success, and hope shone visibly in their eager faces. But most of them were practically down and out, drifts among the world's human wastage. ”

“ Thrice have wrestled stoutly with me,
And the Master of Life, who sees us,
He will give to you the triumph!"
⁠Then he smiled, and said: "To-morrow
Is the last day of your conflict,
Is the last day of your fasting. ”

“ I almost stumble looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him where he is, with nothing done
To evil, no important triumph won,
More than if life had never been begun. ”

“ He would reach what would seem to be the very limit of his endurance, but if he held on, and would not rest, would not yield, this curious new vigor would come to him, this feeling of triumph, as if he had passed the boundary of normal endeavor and had become superhuman. ”

“ Every wrong road into which you have wandered has brought you, by the knowledge of that mistake, so much closer to the truth. You no longer draw your bow at a venture, but shoot straight at the mark. Your purposes concentrate, and your path is cleared. On the ruins of shattered plans you find your vantage-ground. Your broken hopes, your thwarted schemes, your defeated aspirations, become a staff of strength with which you mount to sublimer heights. ”

“ His failures are the preparation of his victories. A new thought or a crisis of passion apprises him that all that he has yet learned and written is exoteric,- is not the fact, but some rumor of the fact. ”

“ Success, in that sense, has come, though slowly, and I am considered by many a lucky fellow. My future is said to be full of promise. I have, in the sense in which you spoke, 'all things and abound,' and when I step into the arena of conflict I am conscious of this, and of this only. In the heat of the fray the joy of battle comes upon me, and I am oblivious to all else. ”

“ I will the future, the distant, the unpossessed, the victory that I have not yet won, the defeat of the enemy who still faces me in arms, the cessation of the tedium or of the pain that besets me. Do I attain my desire, my will ceases, or, which is the same thing, turns elsewhere for food. ”

“ The whole of the past lies before us; we know the halting-places on the road, and the side-paths that branch off from it, and therefore we are justified in our confidence that where these great ones now stand we also shall one day stand. Seeing and understanding the inevitableness of our destiny, we also realize that it will be quite useless to endeavour to resist it. ”

“ But that is not an end but a beginning. Unless on the ashes of the past we build to nobler purpose, all our gallant dead will have been thrown away, all this gigantic effort, with all its inevitable horror and loss, will have been in vain. ”

“ But as for me, I made off smartly for the road, my frame tingling, my head high, with never a backward look at the Settlement of suggestive aspect, or at my well-planned future which lay in fragments around it. Life had its jollities, then; life was action, contest, victory! ”

“ Observe, the fates of men are balanced with wonderfully nice adjustments. The scale of this life, if it sinks, rises there, while if it rises here, it will sink to the ground there. What was here temporary affliction, will be there eternal triumph ”

“ Each had marked out a particular line of destruction for himself to follow,—each one equally confident of achieving a mighty triumph in his way. The pathway of our life is strewn with the wrecks of fond hopes blighted and promises unfulfilled ”

“ And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last. ”

“ The intervening period between fall and victory, between loss of innocency and gain of righteousness, is the period with which all human history is concerned: and there is often a corresponding period in the life-history of every fully developed individual, during which he gropes his way through darkness and longs for light. ”

“ Hence it is incumbent upon you to look forward, and with your eyes set on the wide field lying open before you, to put your hand to the plough in an earnest and determined spirit, glancing at the furrows already traced only to gain courage for additional exertions; thus using the past simply as a stimulus to the future, and not permitting yourselves to subside into indolence, delusively fancying that enough has already been accomplished. ”

“ It is now time I should come to the grand revolution of my destiny, to the catastrophe which has divided my life in two parts so different from each other, and, from a very trifling cause, produced such terrible effects. ”

“ How is it that we have been allowed to indulge in expectation of an approaching completion of success, only to behold the utter disappointment of our wishes? Why has a system of advance suddenly and inevitably been converted into a system of retreat? ”

“ Here we are, by millions, in a perpetual crash of victory and calamity, and yet--take me for an example--in spite of me my one devouring anxiety--that wakes me up in the night and gives me dreams in the day--is how to get her before this next battle get's me. ”

“ That we may grasp a time more opportune,
When desperation is not all our strength,
Nor the foe newly filled with victory? [92]
Then may we hope to conquer back thy realm
For thee, not for the gods of nothingness. ”

“ And, giving a great leap, his heart began to thrash with the excitement of a chase all but completed, with the foreknowledge that, in the next few minutes, destiny was making, life and death were being weighed, the balances of fate about to tip! ”

“ After then, whenever I came to a crucial moment in my affairs, when the big manner, the big certainty was absolutely necessary for me to carry my way, whenever I was most confident of myself and my ability and my scheme, a vision of this damned girl rose and I felt that momentary weakening, that memory of defeat, which made all the difference between success and failure. ”

“ As this web of intrigue—for so I cannot but feel it—draws more closely around me, I grow more and more impatient to break bounds and be away! It is evident enough that my destiny is to be the sport of some accident, lucky or unlucky, in the fate of others. ”

“ It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories; how little exercised we have been in our minds; how few experiences we have had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity,—though it be with struggle through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. ”

“ Is it not strange how fate seems to play with us, when once we are fairly embarked upon life's great current? I am now completely wound up in perplexities and embarrassments, which, a week ago, I never once thought of. ”

“ Think’st thou the end shall fail? Who perseveres
Assuredly shall clasp the ultimate goal;
If ultimate goal there be, for bliss shall roll
Boundless before thy view. I say not fears
Shall cease, that strife shall vanish, or that all
Conjured rhapsodical, dispassionately
Shall swim in peace. Nay, all thy passionate days
Shall reach from peak to peak, trial amid,
Gainsayers athwart, waking Life’s deepest zest.
Yet shall the goal gleam rare before thy gaze ”

“ For all our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years yet is their strength, labour and sorrow ”

“ But if we could go back and live our lives over again, at how many of the turning points would we have the courage, or the desire, to take the other direction? How often would we care to risk any different combination of events than that which we had formerly dared? ”

“ As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny, so in these first days, our destiny appears grander. What would the days, what would our life, be worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch, of darkness tangible, that you can cut with a knife! ”

“ They have overcome—have risen—are crowned, glorified, but still they remain to us, our assistants, our comforters, and in every hour of darkness their voice speaks to us: "So we grieved, so we struggled, so we fainted, so we doubted; but we have overcome, we have obtained, we have seen, we have found—and in our victory behold the certainty of thy own." ”

“ Gradually he spoke of himself, his aspirations, his plans for the future with its seemingly infinite possibilities all gone now. “There is no use in longer deceiving myself. My future in this world lies in the past.” ”

“ Where could lie in wait for them the elements of clash and struggle, of fear and hope, of stifled griefs and aching disappointments,—all the sad travail and hard-won victories bestowed upon men and women through the long procession of the years? ”

“ I forgot that the moment when fate knocks at our door, is the time to show that one is capable of receiving it and, if necessary, of throwing it downstairs; otherwise circumstances, confident of our weakness, might easily take to masking under the cloak of fate. ”

“ Can there be progress which is not progression—which does not leave a past from which to start—on which to rest our foot when we spring forward? No wise man kicks the ladder from beneath him, or obliterates the traces of the road through which he has travelled, or pulls down the memorials he has built by the way side. ”

“ The strong struggled with the strong; some failed, others triumphed; the cowards fell back, the brave pressed on; and sad was his fate who fell in the midst, for he had little chance of rising again; and many in truth fell, who never rose at all, being crushed under the throng. ”

“ Is this victory of the weak perhaps only a retarding of the tempo in the total movement of life, a protective measure against something still worse? May it not be a greater guarantee of life, in the long run? ”