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"It is not in the still calm of life...that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman."

written by Abigail Adams in a farewell letter to her son {who was 9 years old at the time} as he was leaving to go on an important mission with his father and would be gone for years