Law of Success (21st Century Edition)

PROFITING BY FAILURE

You can get to any station that is on life's

schedule seen,

If there's fire beneath the boiler oj ambition's

strong machine,

And you'll reach a place called Flushtown at a

rate oj speed that's grand,

If for all the slippery places you've a good supply

oj sand.

891

It can do you no harm to memorize the poems quoted in this
lesson and make the philosophy upon which they are based a part of
your own.
There is a bit of philosophy taken from the works of the great
Shakespeare that I wish to challenge as I believe it to be unsound. It
is stated in the following quotation:

There is a tide in the affairs oj men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage oj their life

Is bound in shallows, and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.

Fear and admission of failure are the ties that cause us to be

"bound in shallows, and in miseries:' We can break these ties, turn

them to advantage, and make them serve as a towline with which to

pull ourselves ashore if we observe and profit by the lessons they

teach.

Who ne'er has suffered, he has lived but half,

Who never failed, he never strove or sought,

Who never wept is stranger to a laugh,

And he who never doubted never thought.