No man has earned the right to ambition until he has learned to lay his course by a star which he has never seen —to dig by the divining rod for springs which he may never reach. For I say to you with all sadness of conviction, that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have worked alone —when you have felt around you a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and despair have trusted to your own unshaken will— then only will you have achieved.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (Read this last night and promptly lost it.)
