| "URGE YOUNG PEOPLE to be something with all their might! It is not enough simply to have a general desire to be something. There is but one way to accomplish it; and that is, to strive to be somebody with all the concentrated energy we can muster. Any kind of a human being can wish for a thing, can desire it; but only strong, vigorous minds with great purpose can do things.
There is an infinite distance between the wishers and the doers. A mere desire is lukewarm water, which never will take a train to its destination; the purpose must boil, must be made into live steam to do the work.
Who would ever have heard of Theodore Roosevelt outside of his immediate community if he had only half committed himself to what he had undertaken; if he had brought only a part of himself to his task? The great secret of his career has been that he has flung his whole life, not a part of it, with all the determination and energy and power he could muster, into everything he has undertaken. No dillydallying, no faint-hearted efforts, no lukewarm purpose for him!
Every life of power must have a great master purpose which takes precedence of all other motives - a supreme principle which is so commanding and so imperative in its demands for recognition and exercise that there can be no mistaking its call. Without this the water of energy will never reach the boiling point; the life train will not get anywhere.
The man with a vigorous purpose is a positive, constructive, creative force. No one can be resourceful, inventive, original, or creative without powerful concentration; and the undivided focusing of the mind is only possible along the line of the ambition, the life purpose. We cannot focus the mind upon a thing we are not interested in and enthusiastic about.
The thing which will make the life distinctive, which will make it a power, is the one supreme thing which we want to do, and feel that we must do; and, no matter how long we may be delayed from this aim, or how far we may be swerved aside by mistakes or iron circumstances, we should never give up hope or a determination to pursue our objective."
- Orison Swett Marden |