Two famous figures, one from the sciences and one from the arts, who turned suffering to advantage.
BySamuel Smiles1812-1904
Samuel Smiles1812-1904
A Scottish author and government reformer, Smiles became the premier voice of Victorian self-reliance with his bestselling book Self-Help (1859). Promoting thrift, perseverance, and moral duty, his biographical and motivational writings celebrated engineers, inventors, and self-made individuals who shaped the Industrial Revolution.
Main Text
Samuel Smiles gives two striking examples of great Englishmen who have brought much good out of their sufferings, one in the field of science, the other in the arts. Victorian biologist Charles Darwin, who developed and spread the Theory of Evolution, needs little introduction. John Donne, a poet, essayist and clergyman at the turn of the seventeenth century, is not as well known, but most people have heard his famous line “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls”.
Much of the bestMUCH of the best and most useful work done by men and women has been done amidst affliction — sometimes as a relief from it, sometimes from a sense of duty overpowering personal sorrow.
“If I had not been so great an invalid,” said Dr Darwin to a friend, “I should not have done nearly so much work as I have been able to accomplish.”
So Dr Donne, speaking of his illnesses, once said: “This advantage you and my other friends have by my frequent fevers is, that I am so much the oftener at the gates of Heaven; and by the solitude and close imprisonment they reduce me to, I am so much the oftener at my prayers, in which you and my other dear friends are not forgotten.”
Character, in its highest forms, is disciplined by trial, and “made perfect through suffering.” Even from the deepest sorrow, the patient and thoughtful mind will gather richer wisdom than pleasure ever yielded.
For the Writer In You
Keep Our Language Noble
Gentlemen, let us keep our language noble: for we still have heroes to commemorate!
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch On the Art of Writing (1916)
