I shall be well enough when I get to Kentucky or Alabama. The tonic I need is the tonic of opposition. That always sets me on my feet.
Interpretation
Opposition can be a powerful motivator for personal resilience and strength.
Dorothea Dix reflects on how challenges and opposition can serve as a crucial source of motivation and energy for her. She believes that facing adversity, symbolized by her journey to Kentucky or Alabama, invigorates her and helps her find her strength, suggesting that challenges can often lead to personal growth and empowerment.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
Steady, firm, and kind government of prisoners is the truest humanity and the best exercise of duty. It is with convicts as with children: unseasonable indulgence, indiscreetly granted, leads to mischiefs which we may deplore but cannot repair.
I was early taught by sorrow to shed tears, and now when sudden joy lights up, or any unexpected sorrow strikes my heart, I find it difficult to repress the full and swelling tide of feeling.
Time passed solely in the pursuit of pleasure leaves no solid enjoyment for the future; but from the hours you spend in reading and studying useful books, you will gather a golden harvest in future years.
With care and patience, people may accomplish things which, to an indolent person, would appear impossible.
My wish is to be known only thru my work.
We are not sent into this world mainly to enjoy the loveliness therein, nor to sit us down in passive ease; no, we were sent here for action. The soul that seeks to do the will of God with a pure heart, fervently, does not yield to the lethargy of ease.
Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.
There isn't a hole out there [Augusta] that can't be birdied if you just think. But there isn't one that can't be double-bogeyed if you stop thinking.
Some of my greatest pleasures have come from finding ways to overcome obstacles.
When the sun is shining I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.
Every obstacle yields to stern resolve.
A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action. You must act as you breathe.
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