A Soldier of the Great War

by Mark Helprin

“It’ll be hard enough for you to rise. Fate, circumstances, and other men will at times be almost overwhelmingly against you. You’ll be able to beat them only if you don’t join them, only if you don’t condemn yourself from the start. If you have no faith in yourself, who will? I won’t. I wouldn’t waste my time, and neither will anyone else.

You live on not by virtue of the things you have amassed, or the work you have done, but through your spirit, in ways and by means that you can neither control nor foresee.