If I had not some strength of will I would make a first class drunkard.
Ernest ShackletonRead
Now my eyes are turned from the South to the North, and I want to lead one more Expedition. This will be the last... to the North Pole.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the determination to pursue one's goals, even in the face of challenges and the inevitability of finality.
In this quote, Ernest Shackleton expresses a powerful desire to embark on one last adventure to the North Pole. This reveals his courageous spirit and his relentless pursuit of exploration, despite understanding that this journey may be his final one. It highlights the human desire for discovery and the bravery required to confront uncertainty and risk.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about pursuing dreams despite challenges.
If I had not some strength of will I would make a first class drunkard.
I have often marveled at the thin line which separates success from failure.
(Was he talking about a polar expedition, or marriage?) -Jorge Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.
After months of want and hunger, we suddenly found ourselves able to have meals fit for the gods, and with appetites the gods might have envied.
A man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground.
I thought you'd rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.
Every start on an untrodden path is a venture which only in unusual circumstances looks sensible and likely to succeed.
Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection.
If in this supreme test, in face of which the braggart falls silent and every heroic gesture is paralyzed, a man walks straight up to the cause of his fear and is not deterred from doing that which is good -- which ultimately means for the sake of God, and therefore not from ambition or from fear of being taken for a coward -- this man, and he alone, is truly brave.
I was a milksop as a kid. I had no confidence, no guts. I felt I was going to be someone else someday - someone who didn't have my weaknesses.
The best way out of a difficulty is through it.
Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.
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