The more characteristic American hero in the earlier day, and the more beloved type at all times, was not the hustler but the whittler.

To find a career to which you are adapted by nature, and then to work hard at it, is about as near to a formula for success and happiness as the world provides. One of the fortunate aspects of this formula is that, granted the right career has been found, the hard work takes care of itself. Then hard work is not hard work at all.

...it may fairly be doubted if any political tyranny ever imposed on its people such a fear, such a longing for freedom, such a paralysis of the spirit, as disease. I doubt if the average Englishman felt himself as much oppressed by Charles I as by the plague; or if any colonial American was as much in dread of taxation without representation as of smallpox. And it may reasonably be contended that Walter Reed and William Crawford Gorgas brought to man freedom in a more happy sense and in a larger measure than any military or political leader.

The more characteristic American hero in the earlier day, and the more beloved type at all times, was not the hustler but the whittler.

He has been in solitary confinement for almost two years. He has almost no contact with other human beings. He has one hour of exercise a week solitary in a cage.

[Gary,] a heavy drug user . . . didn't have the tools to really handle what he was going through, ... very similar situation . . . has turned his anger . . . into a constant attack on everything around him.