"You
can only half will," he would say to people who failed. Like
Richelieu and Napoleon, he would have the word "impossible"
banished from the dictionary. "I don't know," "I can't," and
"impossible," were words which he detested above all others.
"Learn! Do! Try!" he would exclaim. His biographer has said of
him, that he furnished a remarkable illustration of what may be
effected by the energetic development and exercise of faculties,
the germs of which at least are in every human heart.
One of Napoleon's favourite maxims was, "The truest wisdom is a
resolute determination." His life, beyond most others, vividly
showed what a powerful and unscrupulous will could accomplish. He
threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work.
Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him
in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his
armies--"There shall be no Alps," he said, and the road across the
Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost
inaccessible. "Impossible," said he, "is a word only to be found
in the dictionary of fools." He was a man who toiled terribly;
sometimes employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He
spared no one, not even himself. His influence inspired other men,
and put a new life into them.
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