Are you Resolutely Determined???

One time a young man who aspired to study law wrote to Lincoln for advice. Lincoln replied - 

"If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already... always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing."

Lincoln knew. He had gone through it all. He had never, in his entire life, had more than a total of one year's schooling. 

And books? 

Lincoln once said, he had walked and borrowed every book within fifty miles of his home. 

A log fire was usually kept going all night in the cabin. Sometimes he read by the light of the fire. There were cracks between the logs in the cabin, and Lincoln often kept a book sticking there. 

As soon as it was light enough to read in the morning, he rolled over on his bed of leaves, rubbed his eyes, pulled out the book and began devouring it.

He walked twenty and thirty miles to hear a speaker and, returning home, he practised his talks everywhere - in the fields, in the woods, before the crowds gathered at Jones' grocery at Gentryville; he joined literary and debating societies in New Salem and Springfield and practised speaking on the topics of the day. 

He was shy in the presence of women; when he courted Mary Todd he used to sit in the parlour, bashful and silent, unable to find words, listening while she did the talking. 

Yet that was the man who, by faithful practice and home study, made himself into the speaker who debated with the most accomplished orator of his day, Senator Douglas. 

This was the man who, at Gettysberg, and again in his second inaugural address, rose to heights of eloquence that have rarely been attained in all the annals of mankind.

Small wonder that, in view of his own terrific handicaps and pitiful struggle, Lincoln wrote: "If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer out of yourself, the thing is more than half done already."

Thanks to Dale Carnegie: 'Effective Speaking'