Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it... Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself.

"Elements of Success", as quoted in in President Garfield and Education : Hiram College Memorial (1881) by B. A. Hinsdale, p. 327–331.