Encouragement
Some of the greatest success stories of history have
followed a word of encouragement or an act of confidence
by a loved one or a trusting friend. Had it not been for a
confident wife, Sophia, we might not have listed among
the great names of literature the name of Nathaniel
Hawthorne.
When Nathaniel, a heartbroken man, went home to tell his wife that he was a
failure and had been fired from his job, she surprised him with an
exclamation of joy.
"Now," she said triumphantly, "you can write your book!”
"Yes," replied the man, with sagging confidence, "and what shall we live on
while I am writing it?”
To his amazement, she opened a drawer and pulled out a substantial amount
of money.
"Where on earth did you get that?" he exclaimed.
"I have always known that you were a man of genius," she told him. "I knew
that someday you would write a masterpiece. So every week, out of the
money you gave me for housekeeping, I saved a little bit. So here is enough
to last us for one whole year.”
From her trust and confidence came one of the greatest novels of American
literature, The Scarlet Letter.
- Nido Qubein
It takes so little to make people happy.
Just a touch, if we know how to give it, just a word fitly
spoken... a slight readjustment of some bolt or pin or bearing in
the delicate machinery of a soul.
- Frank Crane
