Don’t Quit …
Quote
When Things Go Wrong
All My Debts Were Paid
Topic : Quit
Shortest Major League Baseball Career
The record for the shortest major league baseball career probably belongs to a member of the old Brooklyn Dodgers, a pitcher named Harry Hartman. He was a gifted young ballplayer whose day of glory arrived in 1918 when he was called up from the minors to pitch against the Pittsburgh Pirates. This was the moment he’d dreamed about, the beginning of a great career, but his dreams began to fade when his first pitch was hit for a single. The next batter tripled. Rattled, he walked the hit for a single. The next batter tripled. Rattled, he walked the next batter on four straight pitches, and when he did throw a strike to the next hitter, it went for a single. At that point, Hartman had had enough. He headed for the showers, dressed, and walked out of the stadium to a naval recruiting office, where he enlisted. The next day, he was in a military uniform, never to be heard from in professional baseball again.
Don’t Quit …
- In prayer, Luke 18:1
- In perseverance, confidence, 2 Cor. 4:1
- In hope, 2 Cor. 4:16
- In work, Gal 6:9
- In trusting, Eph. 3:13
- In well doing, 2 Thess. 3:13
- In patience under chastening, Heb. 12:5
Quote
- Ten years ago for every wife who left her family, 600 husbands did. Today for each man who leaves, two women do.
When Things Go Wrong
When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
So don’t give up, though the pace seems slow -
For you may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than it
seems to a fain and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor’s cup.
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure, turned inside out,
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt.
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit,
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.
All My Debts Were Paid
“I often wish that I could lie down and sleep without waking. But I will fight it out if I can.”
So wrote one of the bravest, most inspiring men who ever lived, Sir Walter Scott. In his 56th year, failing in health, his wife dying of an incurable disease, Scott was in debt a half million dollars. A publishing firm he had invested in had collapsed. He might have taken bankruptcy, but shrank from the stain. From his creditors he asked only time. Thus began his race with death, a valiant effort to pay off the debt before he died.
To be able to write free from interruptions, Scott withdrew to a small rooming house in Edinburgh. He had left his dying wife, Charlotte behind in the country.
“It withered my heart,” he wrote in his diary, but his presence could avail her nothing now. A few weeks later she died. After the funeral he wrote in his diary: “Were an enemy coming upon my house, would I not do my best to fight, although oppressed in spirits; and shall a similar despondency prevent me from mental exertion? It shall not, by heaven!”
With a tremendous exercise of will, he returned to the task, stifling his grief. He turned out Woodstock, Count Robert of Paris, Castle Dangerous, and other works. Though twice stricken with paralysis, he labored steadily until the fall of 1832. Then came a merciful miracle. Although his mental powers had left him, he died September 21, 1832, happy in the illusion that all his debts were paid. (They were finally paid in 1847 with the sale of all his copyrights.)
Thomas Carlyle was to write of him latter: “No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in the eighteenth century of time.”
