Napoleon Hill

The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point. Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed words of praise are spoken of me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies."

Study this, the philosophy of the immortal Emerson, for it may serve as a modifying force that will temper your metal and prepare you for the battles of life, as carbon tempers the steel.

If you are a very young person, you need to study it all the more, for it often requires the stern realities of many years of experience to prepare one to assimilate and apply this philosophy. Better that you should understand these great truths as a result of my undiplomatic presentation of them than to be forced to gather them from the less sympathetic sources of cold experience.

Experience is a teacher that knows no favorites. When I permit you to profit by the truths I have gathered from the teachings of this cold and unsympathetic teacher called "experience," I am doing my best to show you favoritism, which reminds me, somewhat, of the times when my father used to "do his duty" by me, in the woodshed, always starting with this bit of encouraging philosophy:

"Son, this hurts me worse than it does you." Thus we approach the close of this lesson without having exhausted the possibilities of the subject; nay, without having more than scratched the surface of it.

There comes to my mind the story of a romance of long ago through which I can leave in your mind the main import of this lesson. This story had its setting in the city of Antioch, in ancient Rome, two thousand Years ago, when the great city of Jerusalem and all the land of Judea were under the oppressive heel of Rome.

The star figure of the story was a young Jew by the name of Ben Hur, who was falsely accused of crime and sentenced to hard labor, at the galley's oar. Chained to a bench in the galley, and being forced to tug wearily at the oars, Ben Hur developed a powerful body.

Little did his tormentors know that out of his punishment would grow the strength with which he would one day gain his freedom.

Perhaps Ben Hur, himself, had no such hopes. Then came the day of the chariot races: the day that was destined to break the chains that bound Ben Hur to the oars of the galley and give him his freedom.