President Theodore Roosevelt wrote this encouraging speech. Apt for today – in all our arenas of life, eh?
“It’s not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled
or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man
who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood,
who strives valiantly;
who errs, and comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
who does actually try to do the deed;
who knows the great enthusiasm,
the great devotion
and spends himself in a worthy cause;
who, at the worst, if he fails,
at least fails while daring greatly.
Far better is it to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs
even though checked by failure,
than to rank with those poor spirits
who neither enjoy nor suffer much
because they live in a gray twilight
that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
– President Theodore Roosevelt; Hamilton Club
speech on the strenuous life, Chicago,
April 10, 1899.
(Found in: How To Meet The Enemy, John MacArthur,
Jr. Chariot Victor Publishing, 1992, p.72.)
