Existence is the privilege of effort, and when that privilege is met like a man, opportunities to succeed along the line of your aptitude will come faster than you can use them.

If a slave like Fred Douglass, who did not even own his body, can elevate himself into an orator, editor, statesman, what ought the poorest white boy to do, who is rich in opportunities compared with Douglass?
It is the idle man, not the great worker, who is always complaining that he has no time or opportunity.

Some young men will make more out of the odds and ends of opportunities which many carelessly throw away than other will get out of a whole life-time.

Like bees, they extract honey from every flower.

Every person they meet, every circumstance of the day, adds something to their store of useful knowledge or personal power.
"There is nobody whom Fortune does not visit once in his life," says a cardinal; "but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door and out at the window." Cornelius Vanderbilt saw his opportunity in the steamboat, and determined to identify himself with steam navigation.