nhood?

So far, then, from the power of circumstances being a hindrance to men
in trying to build for themselves an imperial highway to fortune, these
circumstances constitute the very quarry out of which they are to get
paving-stones for the road.

While it is true that the will-power cannot perform miracles, yet that
it is almost omnipotent, that it can perform wonders, all history goes
to prove. As Shakespeare says:--

"Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

"There is nobody," says a Roman Cardinal, "whom Fortune does not visit
once in his life: but when she finds he is not ready to receive her,
she goes in at the door, and out through the window." Opportunity is
coy. The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it,
or clutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it
instantly, and catch it when on the wing.

Show me a man who is, according to popular prejudice, a victim of bad
luck, and I will show you one who has some unfortunate crooked twist of
temperament that invites disaster. He is ill-tempered, or conceited,
or trifling; lacks character, enthusiasm, or some other requisite for
success.

Disraeli says that man is not the creature of circumstances, but that
circumstances are the creatures of men.

What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has
it invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any
steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals?
Was there any chance in Caesar's crossing the Rubicon? What had chance
to do with Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von
Moltke's? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to
do with Thermopylae, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe
to ourselves; our failures to destiny.

Man is not a helpless atom in this vast creation, with a fixed
position, and naught to do but obey his own polarity.

Believe in the power of will, which annihilates the sickly, sentimental
doctrine of fatalism,--you must but can't, you ought but it is
impossible.

Give me the man

"Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star."

It is only the ignorant and superficial who believe in fate. "The
first step into thought lifts this mountain of n