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Scholars have found poverty tolerable, compared with the privation 
of intellectual food. Riches weigh much more heavily upon the mind. 
Poverty, Horace tells us, drove him to poetry, and poetry introduced 
him to Varus, the Virgil, and Maecenas. 
Obstacles are often great incentives. 
It is not prosperity so much as adversity, not wealth so much as pov¬ 
erty, that stimulates the perseverance of strong and healthy natures, rouses 
their energy and develops their character. 
Burke said to himself: “I was not rocked and swaddled and dandled 
into a legislator. ‘Nitor in adversum/ i. e., C I strive in opposition is the 
motto for a man like you.” 
Some men only require a great difficulty set in their way, to exhibit 
the force of their character and genius; and that difficulty once conquered, 
becomes one of the greatest incentives to their further progress. 
What doth the poor man’s son inherit ? 
Stout muscles and a sinewy heart; 
A hardy frame, a hardier spirit. 
King of two hands, he does his part 
For every usefid toil and art; 
A heritage, it seems to me, 
A king might wish to hold in fee. 
— F. R. Lowell. 
