Albigence Waldo: Diary, December 11-29, 1777 Mankind are never truly thankful for the Benefits of life, until they have experience’d the...

Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, Number 1: I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow...

Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, Number 1 These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will,...

no mortal existed now, nor would ever exist, who did not have a mixture of adversity in his life from the moment of his birth; indeed the...

As he looked out over the whole Hellespont, whose water was completely hidden by all his ships, and at all the shores and the plains of...

But so it is: we tribes of woeful humans never enter upon enjoyment with a sure foot, but always alongside our happiness marches some...

Furthermore, the institution of political groups and factions, and afterward of all evil practices, originated at Rome a few years before...

Cicero's advice to man who lost daughter: I am ashamed to write at greater length to you on this matter, lest I seem to doubt your good...

The excuse of “difficulty” is a cloak for our idleness. Quintilian. Quintilian, The Orator’s Education Books 1-2. Loeb Classical Library....

The philosopher Epicurus said, “the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.” Diogenes. Diogenes Laertius,...

At the same time he made it clear that his own view of Stalin was a high one.” Then Churchill shifted his comments to Roosevelt. His...

Churchill adored his parents, but they paid him little attention. “It is said that famous men are usually the product of unhappy...

Medicine, to produce health, has to examine disease, and music, to create harmony, must investigate discord. Plutarch. Plutarch’s Lives:...

Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place...

Augustus to Tiberius: My dear Tiberius, do not be carried away by the ardour of youth in this matter, or take it too much to heart that...

Alexander Hamilton and his brother:

Protestant ministers felt like lonely sentinels in their frontier outposts and so importuned eastern missionary agencies for more workers. The first Presbyterian in Iowa, Asa Turner, wrote many such letters to the American Home Missionary Society, but the response, when it came, surprised even him. In 1843 Turner received a letter from twelve young students at Andover Seminary inquiring if it were possible for them to form an "Iowa Band" to help in preaching the gospel and es

Closer to the moment, Abigail Adams wrote to her friend Mercy Otis Warren, “I am apt to think that our later misfortunes have called out the hidden excellencies of our commander-in-chief.” "Affliction is the good man’s shining time," she wrote, quoting a favorite line from the English poet Edward Young.

In less than two weeks, on December 1, the enlistments of 2.000 of his troops would be up, the free to go. It was the same nightmare prospect he had faced at Boston exactly a year before, and with the misery of the men greater now than ever, and morale suffering, there seemed every chance that his army would evaporate before his eyes.

“We want great men who, when fortune frowns, will not be discouraged.” - Col. Henry Knox

It was in the first week of August, at the end of his first month as commander, when Washington learned how much worse things were than he knew. A report on the supply of gunpowder at hand revealed a total of less than 10,000 pounds, and the situation was not expected to improve soon. Very little gunpowder was produced in the colonies. What supplies there were came mainly by clandestine shipments from Europe to New York and Philadelphia by way of the Dutch island St. Eustatiu

No one thought that Nathanael Greene would become one of the greatest leaders in American history:

Do but keep in remembrance your general principles: “What is mine? What is not mine? What has been given me? What does God will that I do now, what does He not will?” a little while ago it was His will for you to be at leisure, to converse with yourself, to write about these things, to read, to listen, to prepare yourself; you had time sufficient for that. Now God says to you, “Come at length to the contest, show us what you have learned, how you have trained yourself. How lo

Is it possible, then, to derive advantage from these things? – Yes, from everything. – Even from the man who reviles me? – And what good does his wrestling-companion do the athlete? The very greatest. So also my reviler becomes one who prepares me for my contest; he exercises my patience, my dispassionateness, my gentleness.