may lead
to more extraordinary development of ideas than even genius itself."

Titian, the greatest master of color the world has seen, used to say:
"White, red and black, these are all the colors that a painter needs,
but he must know how to use them." It took fifty years of constant, hard
practice to bring him to his full mastery.

"How much grows everywhere if we do but wait!" exclaims Carlyle. "Not a
difficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even a
deformity, but if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will grow
dear to us."

Persistency is characteristic of all men who have accomplished anything
great. They may lack in some other particular, have many weaknesses, or
eccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent in a
successful man. No matter what opposition he meets or what
discouragements overtake him, he is always persistent. Drudgery cannot
disgust him, obstacles cannot discourage him, labor cannot weary him. He
will persist, no matter what comes or what goes; it is a part of his
nature. He could almost as easily stop breathing.

It is not so much brilliancy of intellect or fertility of resource as
persistency of effort, constancy of purpose, that makes a great man.
Persistency always gives confidence. Everybody believes in the man who
persists. He may meet misfortunes, sorrows and reverses, but everybody
believes that he will ultimately triumph because they know there is no
keeping him down. "Does he keep at it, is he persistent?" is the
question which the world asks of a man.

Even the man with small ability will often succeed if he has the quality
of persistence, where a genius without persistence would fail.

"How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement
appertaining to it," said Dickens. "I will only add to what I have
already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a
patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me,
and which I know to be the strong point of my character, if it have any
strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my
success."

"I am sorry to say that I don't think this is in your line," said
Woodfall the reporter, after Sheridan had made his first speech in
Parliament. "You had better have stuck to your former pursuits." With
head on his hand Sheridan mused for a time, then looked up and said, "It
is in me, and it shall come out of me." From the same man came