Abigail Adams

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.... The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. 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.

—Abigail Adams, quoted in David McCullough, John Adams p226